Hello Mister...

I don't know who you are or where...I don't even know when you were in Indonesia, but I will find you and make you pay. Yes, you must've thought it cute to teach a few locals in a few corners of Indo to shout "Hey Mister" to every foreigner that passes by; your success is my torment.

I never thought it would be THAT bad...I read books, I talked to other foreigners who've visited Indo and every source mentioned the Hey Mr. thing...come on man. In Bali and Lombok there are enough tourists that the locals have learned to say a lot more than just this rote phrase; however, when I entered Sumbawa I realized the torture one could inflict with such little effort.

I rented a motor bike when I arrived in Bima (the largest town in S'wa though still a dump, though some like it) and cruised my way through 70km of villages and beautiful landscapes. I did manage to skirt the coast for some time and get great views of a volcano that rises right from the ocean floor.

Every village I entered (and quickly left) had a chorus just for me; young children, girls and boys, old men with canes, older women walking like canes, middle aged beautiful women, middle aged men, mouth full of food or not, playing in garbage or with a soccer ball...I think the only living entities that didn't shout this taboo were children not yet able to speak and dogs; though the latter did bark incessantly at me.

On the motorbike (ahh, I mean moped with a bit more juice) the shouting of such annoyance wasn't a big deal because I could speed thru the village and just throw my hand up in the air...and I did just that.

However, when I arrived back in Bima and took care of the mess with the bike (I choose not to expound here) I had a lil' walk of about 10-15km around the town to try to plan my trip to the next island called Sumba via PELNI ship. In the end, I would make it to the location where it said it would dock and pick up passengers; however, the actualization of this was written with "VOID" in Indonesian on a paper that I saw as I rocked up with my bags several days later to a completely different island. You haven't the faintest idea what it feels like to have travelled miles and miles away from an island you want to get back to and be in the middle of a bloody huge body of water (called Sabu Sea) to interpret the marker scratch on a piece of paper only to turn around and look back, knowing it took 10 arduous days to get way out here and you would "need" to get back in 2; I melted.

Back2Bima, I walked on and on with every person, and I mean everyone literally shouting this at me, like they knew me and my name was mister. Only 3-5 other things were shouted at this more prominent 'greeting'; "where are you going, mister?", "Where RU from Mister?", "What's your name, Mister" (apparently you just said it ya @*&^*)@<~?>). It didn't matter that I was on a bike and moving way too fast to ever actually answer this question...never mind THAT.

The aggressive nature of the S'wa "Hey Mr." is what really got to me cuz they just kept shouting it until I acknowledged them...even if they had started saying it when I was well past them, I was forced to turn around and wave to their energetic jumping and screaming. This noise, this chant; it was witchlike, it was the Saturday Crew working early morning as I tried to sleep in after my celebratory Friday night of a long week. The wave of jackhammering, the cacauphony that perched itself outside my window...and the anticipation, this was the worst...just waiting for the next clank of metal on metal...knowing that this group of young boys would say it...wait, wait...wait...urgh, there it is, followed by them jumping all over and around me with this spellbound noise...this anticipation became a spring of tension that would snap me come day's end.

Now you, in your comfortable chairs at work or better at home while you glance over this can say, "come on Murr...I thought you liked things like that. Surely you understand that they don't see many foreigners and it's a big deal for them to run into one; it's normal they would react with such 'enthusiasm'...and that you should find it torturous; come on you traveler you." And ya know...I'd be in complete agreement with you on that side of this monitor...but it just ain't so...it ain't me babe. Later, in the peace and quiet of somewhere unknown to them, I did reason that it WAS normal; I mean, most of them would just spurt off the only 2-3 things they knew in English...and often times it wouldn't be complete. "Hey mister, My name is", "Hey Mr. Thank you.", or "Hey Mr. WhereyougoingWhereUfromHowRU...Mr, Thank you." Of course, I would answer and they'd be embarassed cuz they wouldn't know what to say. This, along with seeing that some of the books I signed had only 50 names in them...for the last 4 years or so; this relayed the message that it was a BIG deal to see a white man walking about their village. Sorry luv...even after "understanding" all that, it still didn't help.

If you were to experience this; to not be able to just stand and think, not be able to sit in a park or by a field, to walk around without any sense of autonomy, no peace...hearing "Hey Mister" or sometimes "Hey Miss" (doesn't matter if you're man/woman, they'll throw anything at you) from a thousand different people EVERY single day, you'd know, as I now know, fame.

Being transported on a motorbike, my driver points at 2 tourists and says, "look, Hey Mr."...as if that is our official name, "look, there's two hey misters!." I walk by a group of guys my age and one says, "Mr. likes barang laut too." I felt like I was in a well and being addressed like, "it puts the dog in the bucket, then it steps away." My name ain't mister man! At the breaking point when yet another yelled "Hey Mr." at me, I responded in the chorus of a Coen classic, "Hey dude." Then still later, in the spirit of Brian I shouted, "Ssup?!?" It did make me laugh and ease a bit of the self-inflicted storm.

All this made me realize why some of my other 'adventures' were so much more treasured than that current moment...I guess this is the important thing.

I washed myself in the cold water of my mandi and fell into bed with the feeling of an enormous headache that had pounded all day; this wouldn't stop for several more days until I would reach "the lower kingdom" of Sumba (where as Sumbawa was the "high kingdom" back in the day...whenever the hell that was). I did jump onto a mini bus with 2 swiss girls and they definately recharged my batteries and joy to plow the road.

Sumba would yield similar noises, yet I would find something very enjoyable there that I can't quite put to words.