Our Last Sunday In Siantar

It was a very busy but happy last Sunday for us. We joined Augustina, Ester and Anna to go to a new (for us) HKBP church, located about 10 minutes away from us. 

We were excited to find several other friends there, including Matilda, who gave us a tour of the Sunday School building. This congregation has invested a great deal of money and energy into their SS program and they welcome about 250 kids each Sunday.

The church is situated on a small dirt street in the middle of a residential neighborhood. A few people drove to church, but most walked the block or two from their homes. The sanctuary itself was beautiful inside and out. It was interesting for us to note the proportion of women to men…many more women, and all the men sat up at the front left. That may be because that is the quickest route to the side door so they can smoke. Who knows. Anyway, I was the only man sitting in the middle section. 

Nancy talks to Matilda during our tour.

This is the Sunday School building with the Batak style roof.

There was a youth choir singing, among several other choirs, and these included young men. Other choirs: widowed women, men, women, and one mixed with men and women. Needless to say, we enjoyed some awesome anthems from the choirs. The congregation also showed a sense of humor as everyone laughed when one choir messed up.

The front of the church was covered in beautiful tile.

Just when we thought we were going to escape the Batak language service without a never-ending prayer or sermon, the prayer and sermon happened. They just saved them until the very end. We asked our escorts for the one sentence summary and it was “we are all one in Christ”. 

Most of the women wore their beautiful brightly
colored cabias.

After meeting several important members of the congregation in front of the church we walked down the dusty road (no rain for several days!) to Augustina’s home. It is a clean, fairly simple home, located like most homes in the neighborhood right on the edge of the street. The inside was decorated with family pictures, a tapestry featuring Jesus, calendars, Chinese plaques, etc. This is a TV watching family and the TV was immediately turned on, tuned to the celebrity gossip channel. This of course drew our eye as we never see TV here. The girls provided a running translation for us, but would forget sometimes and we’d have to remind them to continue. We were joined by Esteria, who teaches English at a local senior high school. We were tickled because Augustina’s mother, who supposedly speaks no English, kept translating the English conversation for the teacher. I think she was just guessing, but she’s probably a good guesser.

Lunch was served to us seat on the tikar, the thin mat on the tile floor. I must be getting used to it, as when I stood back up it only took a minute to get my legs to work again. Lunch included fish, rice, vegetables, tofu squares and some chili paste. They also served a variety of chips / snacks, including cassava chips that were quite tasty. 

Afterwards we had the mandatory round of picture taking, one shot of every possible combination of people with every camera. We also took pictures outside in front of the house, with the danger of the photographer being run over by passing motorbikes.

We returned home for a half hour rest before our Sunday program continued. All I knew was that Jacob had agreed to have a “Jesus party” with Siska which was to include eating pork. Don’t worry, we are not going out of our way to offend anyone here, including our Muslim friends. The main point was to visit Siska’s new “boarding house”. She told us it was by the river, and that several girls lived there. We always have a hard time visualizing what living arrangements look like here.

The over-street pedestrian bridge supports huge advertisements
on each side for the Kennedy brand of cigarettes. 

Siska and Anna (different Anna from the church Anna of this morning) arrived and we asked them what they had done this morning. They mentioned the market, and we asked twice if they had already been to the market. They confirmed this. I asked Siska if we walked or road the microbus to her house and she said we would do both. That part made sense.

You have to love the pork counter, complete with candles
to keep most of the flies away. Unfortunately the candles
have no effect on the ants!

Taking a snooze in the pork butchering department. I'm glad our
friends at Food City don't do this! Yes, those are fresh cuts of pork
right by his face.

So we climbed onto the microbus and headed into town. It already didn’t make sense, how could her house be in town and by the river too? When the microbus pulled up to the market, Siska motioned for us to get out. What?? Of course we had misunderstood, they had not been to the market earlier and that’s where we were now. Both Jacob and I have been having stomach problems for the last 12 hours, so the smells and sights of the market were especially vivid. Thank goodness Siska is a quick decision maker and negotiator, and she marched us through the chicken and pork sections of the market quickly. She also bought some spices and a watermelon. 

Heat, heat and more heat! The food here is no longer
tasting spicy, but have our taste buds been completely numbed?

With the shopping completed we loaded back onto another microbus and we’re headed back toward Nommensen. But rather than stopping there, the bus continued down the road for a few kilometers. Then it turned down a side road, indicating that Siska had convinced the driver to veer off his route and take us to her doorstep. In a matter of minutes we were there.

After unloading or purchases from the bus, we turned down an overgrown dirt lane, with a crop of sugar cane growing on one side. At the end of the lane, just before the landscape dropped off into a jungle valley, we found Siska’s home. It was a modest duplex house, but new, with beautiful tile on small porches out front and throughout the building. The inside definitely needed some furniture (there was just two chairs and a small round table) and another coat of paint or two on the walls.

For those of you who haven’t been tracking the relationships, Siska is the fiancée of Lolo, the eldest son of the Siahan family, who live a stone’s throw from our house and operate a canteen. Siska has worked at the canteen When we asked Siska how she found the house, relatively far away from campus in a somewhat isolated place, she said that Lolo’s father had heard about it from a friend. It turns out that Lolo’s father and a friend found the new house and bought it. We have to imagine that this will become the home of Lolo and Siska when they are married, which must wait until Lolo graduates. If I heard it correctly, Lolo’s father will give him the house if Lolo becomes a teacher at Nommensen. Sounds like a very generous, caring father.

We explored what little was possible to explore around the house, walking the short path between the house and the start of the dropoff, which ended in the rushing stream down below. The stream made a great sound which was refreshing and relaxing. I imagine on a really rainy day it must sound like a raging river. Then the cookout fun began. Lolo got out the charcoal, which is produced here from wood and sold in small thatched containers. He had coconut husks to use as kindling, and I thought it would be easy to light. That didn’t prove to be true, and Lolo was very persistent to sticking with it for over 30 minutes until finally the charcoal was flaming. 

Siska loads the grills with meat while Mery in the background
works on the fire.

Siska produced the familiar hand grills which hold the meat in between metal bars, making it easy to flip it over, back and forth. Siska started the grilling process, then when the first round was done she turned the grilling job over to her roommate Mary, and also to her sister Esra.

We just sat there and watched and enjoyed the action. Jacob had to run around a little and he and Leonni, with assistance from Lolo, were successful in capturing a small chick, part of the neighborhood brood. Of course Jacob immediately started discussing adopting a chick, which then graduated to a concept of leasing a chicken from our friends, the O’Hatnicks. We assured him that we did not support this idea.

Siska uses a box cutter and a butcher knife
to cut up the pork and the chicken.

When the meat was cooked and it was time to cut and serve it, Lolo cut a big banana leaf from a nearby plant, split it in two, and it was used as a table cloth and liner for the meat plates. The food was delicious, of course. Siska added rice and watermelon to make it a well rounded meal.

We returned home in time to rest again for about a half hour. We waited for Mam'Reina to come over and see us, as had been agreed for 7 pm. She finally sent an SMS (a text message) at 7:20, asking when we were going to come to her house. We went over and discussed the schedule for the coming week. I enjoyed a nice piece of chocolate cake and Nancy made the mistake of drinking down a local favorite - liquefied avocado mixed with chocolate sauce. I had one taste, and it was OK, but I knew that much avocado would just about kill me.