Fish Spa
About a month ago, Curtis and I visited Kuala Lumpur. It was our first time there. Kuala Lumpur is a strange land—Malaysian mixed with Indian and Chinese. For tourists, two of the most popular areas of the city are the Indian section, where fabrics after fabric shop lines the streets, and China Town. China Town is famous for knock-offs. People go there to find knock-off purses, t-shirts, music, movies, perfume, Tiffany jewelry—and for entertainment. In China Town, the day market is for produce, meat, spices—more like a traditional market. The knock-off market opens at night. It is made up of fabric-sided stalls jabbed full of merchandise, much like those at a street fair or flea market. The hawkers call to us as we pass by, luring us with their “cheap purses” or “genuine leather belts.” Others stop us as we make our way through the narrow passageways enticing us with DVDs and “genuine” Rolex or Omega watches. At the intersections, vendors roast chestnuts. When they aren’t stirring their smoking woks, they peel a chestnut and break it open, offering it up for us to try.
Beyond the stalls, in the buildings lining the street are the permanent businesses—restaurants, some larger clothing and shoe stores, and massage and reflexology parlors. Narrow doorways lead upstairs too, to other businesses without signs. No telling what they sell, but an interesting mix of people, mostly expats, go in and out.
Now one thing Curtis Bennett loves is reflexology. Since living in Jakarta, he has taken to having regular reflexology schedules, along with pedicures. And rumor had it that Kuala Lumpur reflexology is a must. So, after a long, hot shuffle-push-and-weave through the night market, he pulled me back through the stalls to the reflexology parlors.
Each parlor posts a menu of the offerings with length of time and price. I trailed behind while Curtis searched for the best one. A sign reading “Fish Spa” did the trick.
Curtis loves the TV series Ugly Betty. In one of the episodes, Wilhelmina, the beautiful but devious, needs her feet to be seductively soft so she instructs her assistant, Mark, to “get the fish.” Before seeing that episode, we never imagined that a “fish spa” was possible, let alone that we could have such a treatment. We signed up for the full package—a 15 minute fish spa followed by an hour of reflexology.
The spa worker led us into a side room, instructed us to remove our shoes, scrubbed our feet, gave us sandals to wear and led us up to a raised pillow-covered island encircled by tanks filled with tiny fish, no more than finger-length long. We were instructed to sit down and put our feet in the water—but not our hands. Only our feet.
At first nothing happened. Then, as soon as the water stilled, the fish attacked. They swarmed around our feet nibbling, tickling, gobbling our skin. Now, anyone who has ever been swimming and had a fish nibble them knows that it usually, doesn’t really hurt. But it does pinch or tickle and a zillion of these little monsters gobbling at the same time is like feeling ants crawling over you.
I held my feet still and tried to endure the fish tickling. They wouldn’t be nibbling if I didn’t have dead skin on my feet,
would they?... They won’t keep nibbling after the dead stuff is gone will they?... What if they don’t stop… What if they draw blood?... Am I bleeding?
—Jerk the feet out, take breaths, get my nerve back up and plunge them in again… “Hold still, try not to notice as the fish nibble, nibbling….nibbling… too much. And I’d pull my feet out again.
Curtis loved it! And the fish loved him. He must have had loads more tasty dead flesh on his feet that I had on mine, because those fishlets were fighting each other to get at his feet.
And, after a while, I did get used to the feeling. And the idea of tiny fish nibbling off all my dead skin was appealing. I asked the spa owner how often they indulged.
Every night,” he said.
“Do you feed the fish anything else—like regular food?” I asked.
Oh yes,” he assured me. They feed them about 4:00 in the morning so they will be good and hungry when the customers come.
“Can we put our hands in?” I asked. "No, no,” he said, “Your hands are dirty. The fish will die from the oils on your hand.” He went on to explain that before, when they were newly opened, they didn’t wash the customer’s feet first. But the fish died from eating so much oil and lotion and dirty foot stuff. So they bought new fish and now they wash the feet and the fish are fine.
“Do you ever sit in the pools,” I asked. I was imagining having my body exfoliated by these fish.
Curtis poked me. He was thinking I meant without a bathing suit. No telling what the spa owner was thinking, but he said, “Never, never, no.”
These spa fish are grayish with dark heads and they look like some type of carp—their bodies are shaped the same as those plant eating fish we had had in the pond way back when….
After a few days in Kuala Lumpur, we flew to Penang where we met up with our friends, Joy, Michael and Alexander. Curtis and I didn’t tell them about the Fish Spa, but he was on the look out. Curtis checked every reflexology parlor we passed. (No telling what our friends were thinking he was after.) We finally found a Fish Spa Parlor with the tanks right in the window so passersby could watch. That fish nibble session was even better than the first because we knew what to expect, because I had learned to work through the ticklish phase, and especially because we got to watch Alexander the Most Ticklish try to endure.
I can’t get those dead-skin nibblers out of my mind. Every time I look in the pond that is not my pond anymore, I think about those spa fish. One afternoon, when Rusnati and I were out in the backyard together, I told her about those spa fish—it just slipped out.
She asked me what the fish looked like.
She said back in Cirebon her father raised fish in a pond and when she was little, she would wade in the pond and the fish would nibble on her legs.
I said I would like to fill the pond with those little fish and have them nibble the dead skin off my legs.
She seemed to like the idea, too
Under African Skies, a note from Kate in Kenya
Kate, my son Max's squeeze, is in Kenya right now working with a women's group as part of her senior project. A few days ago, she sent us the following note about her experience. Her observations/experience moved me so that I asked Kate for permission to print her letter here, to share with you. She said yes so enjoy: Msawa Ahinya Osiepna,
I write now after a very pleasant afternoon rain. Mrs. Opondo and I have just reached home in time. Yes, we have had another busy day.
I suppose I'm really here now. It certainly feels that way. I believe it has really taken this long for me to get used to the pace, the routine, the climate, and the feeling that I am really here in this remarkable part of the world. I miss a lot of things about home. So much of this is not easy. And for every time my spirits are shot, or my heart broken, something happens to make it all better again. It is that roller-coaster-like sensation of really high high's, and very low low's. The hardest part, so far, is the sticking out so much. I am really sick of it. Really, really sick of it. It's entirely awkward and generally just very annoying. I constantly work to accept that things are just this way, and I am so happy to have real refuge here at the Opondo's home.
Mr. and Mrs. Opondo are really, really lovely. Their home is very lively. They have many people moving in and out. They have animals running all around. They also have Charlie, the houseworker's son who is about 2, I think (but no one really knows). He and I are officially friends since I brought out the bouncy ball yesterday. He brings so much joy to my days. It's true, I am really liking the food. I have to say I'm even coming around to ugali. In the beginning I would always grab myself a utensil when sitting for a meal, but now I'm beginning to enjoy just using my fingers as everyone else does. Yesterday we stayed home, where I learned a few things in the kitchen. They cook over fire with a very limited supply of pots and pans. Thanks to all of my time cooking in the woods, I am pretty well practiced for this kind of culinary routine. I also practiced milking the cows. As it turns out, this is indeed much more difficult than I had always thought. Go figure. Armundi is the name of the other permanent resident besides Rose the houseworker. Mrs. Opondo took him in after meeting him and becoming friendly on the streets in Nairobi and discovering that he is a total orphan. He is currently attending day school and is in grade eight, though I believe he is older than just 18. I have perhaps never known anyone to work as hard as Armundi. He starts every day at 1am, when he gets up and studies until 5am. At five he gets ready and walks about 10km to school, where he sits in class until about 6pm. After reaching home, he immediately goes to help Rose to cook dinner. After dinner he studies some more, bathes, and then goes to bed by 11pm. Only two or maybe three short hours later, he is up and at it again. I wasn't sure this kind of lifestyle was possible, but he is proving it so. He is also one of the most jovial people I have met here, always smiling and laughing and chatting. I like to spend time with him in the kitchen in the evenings. He is but one example of a person working so very hard against such great odds that I have seen so far. There have been many others just as impressive as this, if not more so.
Mrs. Opondo and I spend our days traveling to schools in the area. NYASHEP has students in 23 schools in the area, and none are easy to get to. We spend a lot of time waiting for buses, riding in buses, switching buses, waiting again for different buses. It is truly exhausting. Transportation limitations are NYASHEP's biggest challenge, it seems. There is only so much time in a day. We come home every evening completely worn out having done what we have managed, and yet there is still SO much more to do.
On some visits we check in with students who may or may not be having some troubles with discipline or marks. Sometimes we just meet with administrators to introduce ourselves and the Girl's Empowerment vision. Sometimes, we meet with already established Girl's Clubs to see what they have been up to. We worked on one particularly delicate case just last week where a young girl named Dorcas, just 15 years old, had been expelled from her all girls boarding school on the suspicion that she had been practicing "lesbianism". Oh the restraint it took to sit in that room while the school's disciplinary committee read out loud from the Bible, further insisting that homosexuality is an abomination. This poor girl. The story that they had which supposedly proved her engagement in this forbidden behavior was totally mixed up and choppy. She was to stand in this room of mostly big men, and tell us the exact details of her history of lesbianism. It came out she was sexually molested as a young child by a woman. Oh I tell you. I forget how lucky I am to live in a place that is so free. Dorcas has been traumatized yet again. Her friends have all abandoned her. Her widowed mother is ashamed. She is still so confused about what homosexuality even is, if she is indeed interested in it, and she will never find out. All of this will just be repressed for her. It will go deep down, and manifest itself slowly and subtly for the rest of her life in damaging ways. And all I could do was to take a moment alone with Dorcas outside when it was all over to tell her that I really thought that she was ok. I told her that I didn't think that she had done anything wrong. I couldn't do any more than that.
There are other tender cases such as this. We have a never-ending supply. Mrs. Opondo is a very modern woman. We are generally always on the same side of things. Although she does not necessarily embrace homosexuality as I do, she understands the damage being done to the girl, and that is the most important thing. She is a remarkably compassionate woman. She really cares for people. She practically runs a rescue home right here in her own house. She has been this way her whole life. It is rare that a woman be such a prominent social worker here, and for this she deserves additional respect. She is really taking good care of me. I have been introduced to all of the important people around. She has amazing connections in the educational world, as that is where she worked as an inspector for most of her life.
We have just come back from a Women's Group meeting. Women's Groups are like grassroots feminist clubs that are somewhat monitored by the local government. They work usually doing small scale farming, tailoring, or even weaving in order to make a bit of cash. They then use this cash to serve the community and particularly women and girls however they choose. There were about 200 people, all gathered at a school. Mrs. Opondo and I walked in and were taken right to the front panel. I had to address the whole crowd and introduce myself (using the Luo vernacular of course). Then the rest of the entire day's event proceeded and was conducted in Luo, meaning I got only 2% of what was being said, but was sitting in front looking very important the whole time. It went on for four and a half hours. Something else good did come of it for me, though. Next week Mrs. Opondo and I have a date to visit one of the weaving groups (Mom this is most definitely because of you) and figure out more about what they do.
It is so hard, once I get started, not to tell all. I am doing some good writing on my own, which has been a great outlet. I am feeling very healthy, no more intestinal problems. My running routine is almost as it was before I left, only I have to go at the crack on dawn. I wish you all could see the looks I get when running. People are saying to themselves, "now why would anybody go out and run so far, only to turn around and come back". It just doesn't make much sense. Which I suppose is true, only where I come from it is a very normal thing to do. I get people who start to run alongside me, laughing, laughing, laughing. I get people yelling at me to stop. I also get every single person who is out staring at me the entire time I am in view. Talk about self-conscious. But I continue to do it because it is worth it for the way it makes me feel.
I'm just about two weeks in now. Two months from today I'll be headed home. I know there is so much more coming. I will do my best to keep you all updated. If I haven't already told you, I have the mobile modem up and running. It works very well here. The only problem is charging the computer. I can only spend a limited amount of time each day. But feel free to write when you can. I love getting news! I wanted to tell those of you for whom this place, Kenya, means so many treasured things, that I have taken you with me here. Kenya says hello to you. I am so happy to be getting to know it as you have.
And so now I sign off as I begin to digress. I am safe. I am happy. I am really growing. I am missing you all terribly much of the time. I miss the comfort. The knowing look. The hand to hold and the ear to bounce my ups and downs off of. Slowly I am making friends who I can begin to trust to be those people for me too.
So much love to you all, Aherou, Kate
Rise of the Pond King
My pond is no longer mine.Before, through all of its phases, trials and tribulations—mud hole to dinner bowl, salt pond to oasis and even through the attack of the diving birds and the arrival of the suspected killers-and-still-on-probation-in-my-book monster leles, the pond in our back yard was mine—I graciously shared it with Rohemon. Sure, he did all the work and tending, but I was actively involved in the process. I decided what plants would be permitted to live in it, and what type of fish to buy. I decided the pond would have rocks on the bottom and around the edges, what kind and what color—even when those rocks turned out to be salt emoting, freshwater fish suffocating coral. And because it was mine, I cared about the pond’s growth, death, and multiple incarnations even as it morphed into its current form: a holding pen for slimy, ugly, beige-brown-and-white-splotched, bewhiskered, eelish leles, I cared.
The last Sunday I fed the fish—or should I say casually tossed in a handful of feed and turned away without watching to see if anything surfaced or not—I realized that I don’t care anymore. My ownership of the pond, and with it my love of the pond, has passed. For me, it has become “the water feature in the yard” or Rohemon’s kolom ikan, “pool for fish”/folly. And my Sunday pond and fish ritual has become a joyless chore. Rohemon has taken over the pond—he is the Pond King.
The lease on our Jakarta house is up for renewal. Before we resign our lease we will re- negotiate our agreement. The property manager will try to get more money from us and we will make a list of repairs/changes we want them to make. This is the time—the only time during the term of our lease--when we can expect any remodeling, painting, or fixing from our landlord.
Rohemon may be the new Pond King, but I hold the purse. I am the Super Power in our little world. I could retake possession of the pond—force Rohemon out, turn those nasty lele into bird food (or people food), have the whole pond redesigned, replanted, repopulated. Or….I could have the whole blasted thing ripped out.
There's No Place Like...
“No matter where I wander, no matter where I roam...la la la la la there is no place like home.” A few days ago I read that Starbucks is closing hundreds more stores. My mind knows that these closings are a necessary reaction to our economic situation. Still, my heart pinched at the news.
I’ve heard other Americans comment that McDonald’s Golden Arches reassured them when traveling to unfamiliar places—they can always count on the bathrooms being familiar. Bathrooms aren’t a big concern of mine—I can (and have) gone just about anywhere. But I do understand the comfort of familiarity. For me, Starbucks is a touchstone.
True, there have been times when I have scoffed at the overabundance of Starbucks—Starbucks in the Forbidden City…really???—One more example of the homogenization of the world, big biz pushing the little guy out, sheep, sheep, everyone’s a sheep... And as a Starbucks shareholder, I applauded the last batch of Starbucks closings; the world did not need that many Starbucks. It was ridiculous, Starbucks to the left of me, Starbucks to the right… But this last closing announcement has me worried.
I’m writing this from the totally alien city of Reno, Nevada, where cowboy-miners meld with grey-haired slot-a-holics. Down the road and across the big street from my mother’s assisted living apartments I found one. I stuck out early this morning, while Mom was still asleep, before breakfast and med call. I left a note, “I’m at Starbucks, downloading mail” (I had to make it sound like work.)
What happens the next time I find myself traveling alone, low on caffeine, with no way to download my e-mail? The next time I am wandering through the fog of the unfamiliar? Will there be familiar green awning and beige signs waiting for me?
No matter what language the locals may speak, we never have trouble communicating in Starbuckese: “vente latte” “half caf” “double shot…hold the foam.” All Starbuck seats are modern, upright, western. The music is always some rock-folk-jazz-indy mix with a little Ella, Frank, Counting Crows, Tony, Diana thrown in. (Dino is playing right now.) The scones and muffins are always in the counter and taste exactly the same. The rack of mugs and coffee paraphernalia are reassuringly earth-colored and the place never smells like anything but coffee—blessedly ordinary, roasted coffee, nothing more. And often, if I’m willing to pay, there is almost a way to download my e-mail. No matter where I wander, no matter where I roam, when I’m in need of caffeine and an e-mail fix, there’s no place like Starbucks.
Alas, Mom just called: “where the heck are you?”