A Sissy Mary's Journey to a Tiny Island

This is my friend Karen. She is a Fullbright teacher at a high school in Samarinda. Karen and I have spent a lot of time together this year. Karen just graduated from Spellman College last May. Yes, this means that I am technically old enough to be her mom. Luckily, Karen is sweet enough to never draw attention to this fact [when I was her age people my age used to totally freak me out]. She has also taught me about a lot of stuff I didn’t know anything about, like line sisters [sorority sisters], and HBCs [Historically Black Colleges]. Hanging out with Karen has made me sorta feel like the Marisa Tomei character in A Different World if she had been an old, kooky grad student instead of a Coed. Karen, of course, is not familiar with A Different World because it was on before she was born.

Last week Karen said that she was planning a trip to The Derawan Islands not too, too far away from our little city. At first I said I couldn’t go. I blamed my advanced age. It makes me tired. I blamed my money situation. I spend too much of it. While both of these things are true, they were not the reason I didn't want to go.

The Tiny Island

The truth was I was a little scared. Getting to these islands meant flying on a little plane from our tiny local airport, jumping in a taxi for two hours, and then taking an hour long speedboat ride. I knew the flight would make me edgy, the roads would be bumpy, and the speedboat would not have any life jackets [they never do, Indonesia must be a nation of really excellent swimmers]. I figured since I’d made it through this much time in Indonesia unscathed, I should not go around tempting fate. I should just hunker down and wait until it was time to say good bye to my year of third world living.

On my behalf, Indonesia is dangerous. There are earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, poisonous snakes and spiders, airlines with the worst safety records in the WORLD, malaria, and Dengue Fever. I routinely hear of people dropping dead from everyday ailments like asthma and hypertension [which leads me to believe that all of the rumors about the medical system here are in fact true]. I often see people who are missing or about to be missing one of their eyes. There are no traffic laws and terrible roads. Therefore, my hesitation to go on trip so far off the beaten path made me simply concerned with my physical safety, not a total neurotic, right? I have seen several episodes of Monsters Inside Us on Animal Planet that tell the stories of people who go to visit exotic locals in Africa and Asia only to find a couple of years later that the refreshing dip they took in a crystal blue lake left them with hungry worms living inside their bodies [when you live in Borneo or some place anything like it Animal Planet is definitely not your friend. I try to stick to the Law and Order reruns from the 90s which have pretty much convinced me that my ideal man is Detective Logan as played by Chris Noth circa 1997].

But then I thought about the fact that I will most likely never find myself in Borneo ever again. The trip to The Derawan Islands might be kinda a hike , but it was pretty cheap. I decided I had to stop being such a Sissy Mary. Karen had no hesitations about the trip, so it was time for me to man up. [I would love to blame this on the difference in our ages and suggest that since I have reached a somewhat advanced age I have developed a more intimate understanding of my own mortality. However, this would be a lie. Even when I was 22 all it took was a little turbulence to give me visions of my untimely demise and I never drank on planes because I was sure that if I had too much wine I would never be ready for the inflatable slide if we were to crash over water. And this was way before I started getting little lines around my eyes or started running into hot guys from college who had gained 30 pounds and started to look a lot less like a heartthrob and a lot more like someone's dad.]

Yes, the trip was exhausting and long, but it was totally worth it. The island was tiny and gorgeous and surrounded by shimmering blue water. There were giant sea turtles swimming off the shore. The ocean looked like it went on forever. I saw dolphins and swam in a salt water lagoon with jellyfish who had lost their stingers. The best part was that the island has not yet been overrun by teen backpackers. There were no tacky tourist joints and nobody was trying to hustle you that much. It was totally worth 4 days of traditional food [which I sorta hate] and squatty potties [which are difficult and make my thighs burn like hell].

Everything was perfect until it was time to head home. The skies were gray and the water was choppy and I had a feeling I would not love our ride back to the mainland on a teeny, tiny speedboat. Boy, was I right.

The water was fine until we got further out. This was when our speedboat started getting tossed around by the waves, each time we landed with a loud and scary thud. After each landing, I involuntarily made some sort of really strange noise. Finally, the driver stopped the boat and asked with a huge smile if I was OK. Since smiling is appropriate for pretty much ALL occasions in Indonesia, the one worn by the driver neither calmed my nerves or did anything to convince me that we were not in fact dead meat.

He then asked if I knew how to swim. Given the language barrier I was unable to explain that while, yes, I do know how to swim, since I am not a Navy Seal I would not be able to swim the mile or so to shore. Therefore, if our teeny tiny boat happened to capsize, which had begun to seem highly possible [at least in my mind] I would be doing more drowning than swimming.

I then looked at Karen and saw that she was totally relaxed. Since I was not interested in playing the role of the crazy and nervous old lady or annoying her, I decided to get quiet. I decided to get real quiet. In order to do this I started saying The Hail Mary. However, I soon begun to mess up the lines and figured it was probably not a great time to piss off you know who with my lapsed Catholicism. I contemplated taking out the laminated prayer card in my wallet [I then realized that I perhaps am not as dedicated an atheist as I would like to think since most atheists probably don't keep laminated prayer cards in their wallets], but felt the ride was too bumpy and having my laminated prayer card fall into the ocean would certainly not calm me down.

This was when I decided to switch gears. I started using the techniques of The Secret. I started visualizing myself on shore and in my bed later that night. I kicked all visions of me falling overboard out of my head and really tried to let the universe know that under no circumstance did I have any interest in being lost at sea.

I guess I'll never know if it was the power of my positive thought waves or JC that helped me through, but Karen and I did make it to shore. Five minutes later a torrential downpour began. Thankfully we were not still on the boat when that happened or I'm pretty sure that I would have really freaked out.

All in all, I was very happy that I did not let my Sissy Mary tendencies get the better of me. It ended up to be one of my best trips all year. However, I would be a big, fat liar if I tried to suggest that I was not thrilled to find myself out of harms way and watching Law and Order after a hot shower in my little house that night. All of the praying and visualizing had left me totally exhausted. Let's just hope that visiting such a far off place didn't leave me with any hungry worms inside me that are currently trying to eat my brain. I never, ever want to star in an episode of Monsters Inside Us. That stuff is totally scary.