Laundry Roulette

This just in, the eighth wonder of the world has been discovered in the distant Sumatran province of Bengkulu.  So incredible is this new discovery that grown men have pulled their scooters to an abrupt stop just to gaze upon it.  Overcome by emotion, youth scream at the top of their lungs when they see it.  It is quickly becoming one of the most photographed icons in the entire city and beyond.  Unlike the other Seven Wonders, this wonder is actually a sentient being.  It is, in fact, a twenty-six year-old white male who is on some ludicrous mission to start a sea cucumber farm.  The more I show my face around town, the more incredulous my existence here seems to be for the general population.  I assumed that after a month, the “Hey Misters” would have subsided as the novelty of a new white face wore off.  Not so.  While “Mister” seems to be the address of choice, bule is another typical exclamation that people shamelessly shout at me as their scooters whiz by.  Although it has come to mean foreigner, bule literally means albino.  For those of us who are proud of the progress of our tan, it’s a hard pill to swallow.

Despite my popularity, and the pressure of a growing fan base, since returning from the Philippines, my eyes are on the prize.  Settling into daily life in Bengkulu is equivalent to learning how to do every basic chore for the first time.  Example: laundry.  How does laundry happen here?  For me, it doesn’t.  Laundry seemed a task that was safest to outsource.  When the basket is full, I drop off my clothing to a laundry service and return three days to find it washed, dried, pressed and stored in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag. Or that is how the system is supposed to work.  On our first foray to the laundry ladies, my uncle realized, upon returning to our apartment, that his distinctly un-Indonesian sized pair of jeans had shrunk into a more Indonesian sized pair of grey briefs.  In order to avoid mix-ups of this nature, the laundry ladies count the articles of clothing at drop-off and make sure the same number is present at pick up.  It does not take a lot of mental strain to recognize the flaw in this system.  With the amount of laundry passing through every day and with that kind of sorting system, it is no wonder accidents occur.  Unless of course, you believe more devious forces are at work.  Hypothetically, should a larger than normal size pair of American jeans pass through some house of detergent and bleach, a call is made.  The laundry mafia boss, who obviously has his hand in every clothes washing operation in Bengkulu, is informed that another item on the clothing black-market wish list has been found.  One distinctly un-Indonesian sized Bengkulu native is one pair of pants happier, and one American businessman returns home with someone else’s old pair of grey briefs.  Obviously I have no proof that such an underworld exists, but I am definitely not ruling it out.

Another critical step in my adjustment was beginning language school.  Bahasa (which literally means language) Indonesia is, thankfully, a very simple language.  There are no tenses, no conjugations, and no articles.  It is not a tonal language like others in Asia, but more a system of speaking developed to allow a populous, spread of 17,000 islands, to communicate, in some form, with one another.  Next to no English is spoken or understood in Bengkulu, hence the urgency for language school.  Luckily, there is a language school in town and classes are one-on-one, which allows me to tailor my learning to things that will be most relevant to my daily life here.  Thus, my first vocabulary words included trepang – sea cucumber, bertelur – to spawn, jentik-jentik – larva, and jambu – guava.  My first sentence proved to be equally critical to my survival: Liverpool Sampai Mati – Liverpool Till Death.  Fortuitously, my language teacher and I share a similar passion for Liverpool Football Club.  Saturday night Liverpool played West Bromwich Albion at 9 PM local time.  In order to attend, I needed to buy a jersey because I foolishly left mine at home.  Once properly kitted out, my language teacher picked me up on his scooter and we headed to Dear My Bread, a café which is the home base for Liverpool F.C. Bengkulu, a 150 member fan club.  The scene would have made any Premiership manager proud.  A sea of red shirts and scarves singing in full voice.  None of the group, apart from my language teacher, spoke English, but every single member knew every single word of the team’s anthem, You’ll Never Walk Along.  And just when I thought it could not get more surreal, a very Indonesian looking young man walked into the café wearing a shirt that read “We’re not English, we’re Scousers.”  In so many senses, that statement across his chest was completely ludicrous, but the boy did not stop single for the entire ninety minute match.  When the group discovered that this bule from America had been to Anfield, the home of Liverpool F.C., they demanded to see pictures and my phone was circulated throughout the entire establishment.  Who knew?  Liverpool F.C., bringing East and West together since 1892.

 

The fan group even has their own banner

 

Basically a Dark Chocolate Snickers

I am not sure if it was Gaia or just a few irate tectonic plates, but the powers that be decided to remind me that I willingly moved to Southeast Asia by baptizing me with one of the Philippine’s strongest earthquakes in several years.  Luckily, Iloilo is several hundred kilometers away from the epicenter, and the 7.2 monster felt more like a 5.0 monster to those of us counting sea cucumber larvae.  As a seasoned earthquake country veteran, I am ashamed to admit I actually felt a bit queasy after the tremor.   Fortunately, there was no physical damage to our site, only the psychological trauma of fifty or so full-grown sea cucumbers being thrown into a North Shore surfing competition.  Unfortunately, other areas of the country did not fare so well.

After an intensive counseling session, the sea cucumbers were ready to answer the call once more.  The last days of sea cucumber school focused on the final stages of running a sea cucumber farm: the processing.  I took this to mean the process by which you turn the sluggish, feces-eating cucumber into an expensive delicacy.  What it actually entailed was learning how to properly shrink them.  Shrink, because sea cucumbers are sold dried.  In fact, a well-dried sea cucumber is only about five percent of its original weight and completely devoid of its outer skin layer.

A Grade-A processed sea cucumber which had a live weight of 1.2kg

The undercarriage 

As the picture shows, they basically look like dark chocolate Snickers bars, which is why I imagine their value has more than doubled since 2001.  As part of our inauguration into the close-knit sea cucumber farmer community, a chop suey dish featuring the delicacy was prepared for our graduation.  Believe me, they taste nothing like a Snickers bar.  Without ever having tried it, I would most compare it to the taste of bicycle tire.  Thirty or so rigorous chews later, and I was finally able to swallow my tiny sample.  To reiterate, it tasted nothing like a Snickers bar!

Passing that final test, I was ready to join the few, the proud, the insane.  I returned to Indonesia eager to begin our project.  Visions of vast ocean fields of sea cucumber frolicking amongst the sea grass played in my head as I waited to depart from the Ilioilo airport.  Despite their proximity, Indonesia and the Philippines are drastically different.  Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta is, and there is no way of saying this more delicately, a cluster-fuck of chaos.  Outside the international terminal, general concepts, like waiting lines, seem meaningless.  Apart from the occasional lost surfer, there is not a single other Western face in the crowd.  General reaction to my presence is best summarized in the famous words of Mr. Eminem, “Y’all act like you’ve never seen a white person before…”  There is one redeeming quality of the Jakarta airport, however.  Both the international and domestic terminals have multiple A&W establishments.  Bullied out of the mainstream American fast food market by giants like McDonalds and Burger King, A&W is an enclave of root beery goodness resigned to a handful of outposts in the United States.  I have always felt that it was a national tragedy not to have more homages to this greatest of all soft drinks.  Thankfully, the good people of Indonesia have seen to it that this establishment be recognized for its culinary contribution.  It is so revered, in fact, that it is the first thing the weary traveler sees upon arriving in the country; Saint Peter with a root beer float.  Cheers!

Fortified by soft drink, I braced myself for the final leg of my journey home.  Domestic travel in Indonesia, which I am fast becoming an expert at, is best left to the thrill seekers.  On August 7, 2013, the BBC reported that a plane of the domestic Indonesian airline, Lion Air, skidded off the runway after hitting a cow.  According to the article, “The pilot, Iwan Permadi, told the national news agency Antara that he could smell “burning meat”.”  Undoubtedly, it was a direct result of such recent lapses in safety that I found myself seated in an exit row on both legs of my Lion Air flights between Bengkulu and Jakarta.  Although the airline is probably unaware of my rudimentary first aid and CPR experience, I am sure they took one look at my name and decided I was the kind of guy that would remain calm and cool-headed in the event of an emergency.  The only flaw in this plan is that all instructions are given in Bahasa Indonesia, and almost only in Bahasa Indonesia.  The captain could announce that all of the engines had suddenly failed and we were making a water landing, and I would continue reading my book completely oblivious.  Enter the friendly stewardesses of Lion Air: “Sir, do you speak Bahasa Indonesia.”  Unfortunately, not yet.  No worries, we will address all of your fellow exit row passengers in Bahasa first.  Then, because your presence is not conspicuous enough, we will give you, and only you, a safety briefing in English.  No one will notice.  It is a slight exaggeration to say that there were no announcements in English.  Shortly after takeoff, one of the most pleasant voices I have ever heard came in over the intercom announcing, “Possessing or trafficking drugs is a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of death.”  Thank you.  This English speaking white guy has received that message loud and clear.  Now, if we are to hit a cow or make a water landing, could someone please pay her for a bit of overtime so I can be in on the surprise too.

 

Karaoke Nightmares

How did I find myself in the completely humiliating situation documented in the picture above?  To be honest, I am still not entirely certain but I will try to retrace my steps.  The first week of my training here at the Tingbauan Research Station in Iloilo, Philippines was dedicated to learning the techniques required to run a sea cucumber hatchery.  The second week focused on the processes involved in growing sea cucumbers from juveniles to plate-ready adults.

For that, we left Iloilo and headed to the island of Guimaras, where SEAFDEC runs its sea cucumber grow out operation.  Guimaras is famous in the Philippines for its mangos.  As we traversed the island by minibus, we passed the National Mango Research and Development Center.   The fact that such a place exists is surely an incredible testament to how far mankind has advanced.  An entire research center just on the mango, brilliant!  I imagine landing a job at such an establishment was probably done through some Wonka-bar-esque scheme.   Maybe there was a tastebud per square millimeter of tongue requirement.  One of my instructors also informed me that to celebrate its prized crop, Guimaras hosts a mango festival every year where the main event is an all you can eat competition.  The current record: 7 kilograms, or around 20 mangos in one hour.  If it has not already been done, I believe it may be worthwhile for the good folks at the National Mango Research and Development Center to evaluate just what that would do to one’s bowels.

Continuing our journey through the interior of the island, we stopped at a local market to pick up the necessary supplies for our meals for the next three days.  Since most of the ingredients were new to me, I followed behind my Philippine classmates and observed just how many different parts of a pig were on offer.  A shipment of pufferfish also seemed to be creating quite a buzz around the market.

 

Meat options

Pufferfish options 

Shopping complete, we headed to our destination, the Igang Marine Station just off the coast of the island of Guimaras.   The island is really more a pile of rocks and cannot possibly be more than twenty meters by twenty meters.  It is connected to other piles of rock and floating bamboo fish pens by a series of walkways.

Igang Marine Station

 

 

The walkway to class

About four hundred meters from our guest house are the dark blue, maybe slightly brown, pastures where our precious cargo would be calling home for the next two or three months.  As one can imagine, transporting sea cucumbers between islands is a delicate process.  When a sea cucumber is stressed, it expels its internal organs.  The biological rationale is that a predator will feed on the internal organs, allowing the sea cucumber to escape and regenerate its organs in peace.  Stress is bad for the sea cucumber and bad for business.  Without its internal organs, the cucumber cannot feed and therefore cannot grow for several days.  In order to make the transition as smooth as possible, the specimen are kept in a holding tank the night before to allow them to defecate.  Without this step, the sea cucumber might defecate during transportation.  The feces, theoretically, would absorb some of the precious oxygen in the bag, stressing the sea cucumber.  Imagine being trapped in a closet with your own feces, starting to suffocate.  Life for a farmed sea cucumber is no picnic.

Luckily, our juvenile cucumbers arrived without feces induced suffocation.  After delivering them we took a tour of the grow out facilities.  The largest of the sea cucumber cages at the Igang Marine Station is also stocked with milkfish, which are used to clean the algae from the nets.  When the milkfish mature into adults and have fulfilled their purpose, they are culled.  As new guests to the island, it was our distinct honor to be handed makeshift fishing rods and instructed to go catch dinner.  Quite literally, shooting fish in a barrel.

 

Killer fishing rod to match the killer outfit

Confirming everything I already knew, I am absolutely terrible fishermen.  You know you must be doing something wrong if you cannot even catch a fish in a fish farm.  Luckily, my classmates were more successful, and grilled fish was on the menu for the evening.

 

Grilling dinner

After dinner it was time for some island relaxation.  What does that mean to a group of budding sea cucumber farmers?  Karaoke, naturally.  The genre of choice among my Filipino classmates seemed to be love ballads, although at one point I did a double-take when I saw Stars Over Texas by Tracy Lawrence in the lineup.  There was the usual butchering of Living on a Prayer, Hotel California and I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing, but when the room of Filipino students and teachers started screaming “Let’s get physical,” I realized I was not nearly intoxicated enough to appreciate this special brand of debauchery.  After remedying that situation, I appeased the crowd with a rendition of Surfin’ USA, choreography included, and a healthy dose of Bob Marley, to continue my personal mission of spreading the joys of reggae to distant corners of the world.   I realized that the cosmos had aligned perfectly for this rare event to occur.  In addition to enjoying a little bit of alcohol, I also found myself in a room of people I barely knew, stuck on a pile of rocks in the middle of the ocean with nothing else to do.  Hence, my first and last foray into the masochistic art of karaoke.  As the diehard singers continued screaming into the TV, I couldn’t help but imagine entire cages of sea cucumbers below us, eviscerating at the sheer volume of noise pollution emanating from our tiny island.

Breathing Through the Anus

The rumors are true.  Holothuria Scabra (our sea cucumber of choice) does, in fact, breath out of its anus.  Upon hearing this news, I am sure everyone’s initial thought is the same.  What happens when it sneezes?  Does it shoot across the sea floor face first?  Is there a discernable difference between vomit and diarrhea, or is there only one word for that in sea cucumber?  So many questions.

Sea cucumber breathing apparatus

The reason the above fact is important to me is simple.  As a nocturnal creature, H. Scabra typically burrow during the day.  Understanding this behavior is important in order to estimate how deep to bury one’s net in order to prevent the sea cucumbers from burrowing under them and escaping.  Escape being a relative term here, since they rarely move more than a meter a day, if that.  My SEAFDEC instructors here in the Philippines explained to me that H. Scabra cannot bury itself more than its body height under the sand because it must still be able to breath.  Ponder, for a second, the implications of this.  It would be equivalent to sleeping with your naked buttocks outside the sheets of your bed simply so you could breath while you slept.  Despite the chaos of government shutdowns, the uncertainty of the future of the global economy, and the shortage of guava juice in the Philippines, we, as the human race, can be fortunate that that is not our predicament.

The intimate knowledge I have just shared regarding the sea cucumber H. Scabra is the result of my first week of sea cucumber farmer 101 here at the Tingbauan Research Station in Iloilo, Philippines.  The two-week course is run by SEAFDEC (Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center).  Apart from trying to absorb the knowledge of the sea cucumber geniuses here, I spent the past week reflecting how, in many respects, Iloilo feels like the anti-Bengkulu.  On a recent foray to the food court in the Iloilo mall, (which was completely air-conditioned!) pork seemed to be the meet of choice.  In a staunchly Islamic country like Indonesia, such a menu item would be unfathomable.  Equally unfathomable would be the beer stand smack in the middle of the food court restaurants.   Hoorah beer!

The highly specialized training that I am now receiving brought together a motley crew of first eight, then seven, and now six of us.  The group includes five Filipino nationals, one who left the course after the first lecture because he did not realize how technical growing sea cucumber would be.  Rounding out the group is a gentleman from the Maldives, myself, and an Omani man who did not actually show up.

So far, the training has been an incredible experience.  I am feeling more confident, and at the same, more skeptical, of my abilities as a sea cucumber farmer.  One of the key components of any farm involving live animals is obviously producing more animals.  In our case, the challenge is to induce sea cucumbers to spawn.  H. Scabra reproduce sexually, as opposed to asexually.  However, the image of two sea cucumbers tussling around on the sea floor does not apply here.  H. Scabra is a broadcast spawner, meaning the male releases his sperm into the water, which generally prompts the female to release her eggs, and fertilization occurs in the ocean.  So, the question is, how does one force the creatures to engage in this steamy physical encounter?  If the first attempt with Barry White and candles is unsuccessful, there are several possible options.  The technique that seems most effective is what I am dubbing as the “surprise party” induction method.   The party involves three surprises.  Step 1: drain all the water from the sea cucumber tank and allow them desiccate for thirty minutes.  Surprise! You’re in a sun bed.  After putting the specimen back in an ambient temperature tank for thirty to sixty minutes, a thermal shock bath is given.  Step 2: add sea cucumber to a tank 5 degrees Celcius warmer than ambient temperature.  Surprise! You’re in a Jacuzzi!  If that does not induce spawning, after a brief trip back to an ambient temperature tank, it is time for the piece de resistance.  Step 3: add sea cucumber to a Spirulina bath.  Surprise!  You are swimming in a giant protein shake, enjoy!

 

Preparing the sea cucumber for their protein shake bath

If this does not make your sea cucumbers feel extremely randy, it is difficult to imagine what will.   Our strategy when faced with this predicament, throw them a second surprise party the following day!  What I am beginning to realize is the term farmer may not be quite accurate.  Party planner appears to be my true calling.  I am looking forward to another educational week of revelry.