Born in the USA and Proud of It

Last weekend I got a taste of why I’m doing this kind of work. My supervisor, Regional English Language Officer (RELO) Damon Anderson, came to town and suggested I join him at a closing ceremony outside of town. A kampung with nothing but a mosque and an Islamic grade school had applied to (RELO) and the UN for funding for five networked PCs, dial-up internet access, and two years of English and technology classes for 60 teenagers in a bid to jump-start their economy and start the crawl out of dire poverty.

Here we're having tea with the Kampung officials before the ceremony. Note the shoeless professionalism of some of us.

The two years are up. The road to Pabelan is the busy, business-lined road to the tourist attraction of Mount Merapi, but make a left about 35 minutes out of town and the road virtually disappears as Pabelan’s huts hover in the green. There is nothing here, suddenly, and obviously no road out for anyone… until now.

Pabelan’s industry is crickets, frogs, and fish. The new English-speaking technologically literate teenagers have built websites for their family businesses, and they proudly showed us their first-ever orders for ongoing shipments of thousands of tons of crickets and frogs… the kind of bulk orders they now have to learn how to fill, but which represents an affluent, educated future for a village that had none. They have potential university students among them, and English teachers. They have turned their Internet station into a money-maker, and the village kids have a new hang-out, one that teaches a form of literacy just by being what it is. And yes, we Americans made it possible, so the beer on the beach with Damon was especially tasty after.