One of Indonesia's top models in the early 1990s, Avi Basuki moved with her Italian husband to his homeland. Although they have since parted, she has stayed on as an Indonesian expatriate. Now a graphic artist and writer, she explains why she has not come home.
The flight back to Milan was empty. I moved to one of the front rows in economy and had three seats to myself. It was still uncomfortable, but at least I could stretch my legs and once in a while sneak into the first-class toilet and steal a few drops of Bulgari body lotion.
Returning to what I now call home, I sometimes wonder why I am making the journey. For I have a wonderful house in South Jakarta (actually my parents' home), a maid I can yell at and have slice me delicious mango whenever I like, my mom's driver, who is basically on 24-hour call to ferry me through the macet-ridden city, and a security guard who waits patiently for me to return from a night of dancing.
There also are the friends for any time and any occasion; the ones who hold your hand when you are drunkenly stumbling along after a bit too much of a good time; those who point you in the right direction for the next spiritual craze, and others who take you to a nice Italian restaurant to prove to you that while Indonesians' preference for spice can sometimes make a huge mess of foreign food, some simple Mediterranean cuisine can still be found.
Moreover, this is still my country and I'm a first-class citizen holding middle-class rights, despite all the natural disasters and political clowning that make notoriously flamboyant Italian politicians seem like amateurs by comparison.
So why, after three days of pampering in my hometown, am I going back to a country that I have no blood ties to? I'm a lonely janda kembang (divorced woman) in a male chauvinist country where women are always trying to have their say. Well, the women have succeeded in getting their reproductive rights on track (American women should be envious), but the males still rule, one way or another.
Unfortunately for me, I'm a born Asian through and through, so I wait and contemplate, never wanting to be too forward in this demonstrative land. Is that my loss or my gain?
Every year my answers for returning change slightly. At first it was because of love. My life was devoted to a man. My dream came true; I got out of Indonesia and had the freedom to be a stranger in pasta paradise. Yum. I also had a career, small enough not to interfere with family but sufficient to give me pocket money to satisfy my love of Italian shoes. But love expires over time and I needed a challenge, as in my younger life. So I stayed on.
I have also found a spiritual explanation. In Anatomy of the Spirit, Caroline Myss describes the first chakra, Muladhara, the tribal chakra, which is the basis of all the energy points in existence. It holds the mystery of the whole nation and of our attachment to the material world.
By understanding the meaning of each chakra (there are seven of them, based on a vertical line through the human body, from the bottom of your feet up to the top of your head), we can progress to a sense of enlightenment.
To put this in simpler terms, if we are too attached to material things, to tribal things, to a place, to a home, to family, to a soccer team, we might be lost if we can't seem to find that togetherness that we were born into. That may be true especially for Indonesians because we are surrounded by family all our lives and thus entwined tightly with our roots.
Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion, if it makes you happy. But I spent my early childhood in the Philippines, when my parents were living there, and from then on, I always wanted to leave Indonesia, to "get out". I didn't feel that I could relate to anything, as though the first chakra left me when I was about 5 years of age.
My reasons now for living abroad are not merely to run away from a certain reality that doesn't suit me (anymore) but also the different things that I find are common reasons for my expatriate friends living around the world.
The static village-style life, disappointment, the lack of freedom to be who you really are, dependence on others and hypocrisy are among a long list of the things these modern nomads tell me. Others include man-made environmental destruction, corruption and political and economic instability.
For me, though, most important is my freedom. A simple example: I can be a waiter abroad and nobody will judge me. Alas, if I did that in Indonesia, coming from an educated middle-class family, people would talk. I may not care, but do the gossips ever think about what my parents would feel hearing their spiteful words?
I guess not; we are not a people who mind our own business. Just look at the popularity of TV infotainment shows - who got dumped, who was cheated on by whom, who has fallen on hard times. Sure, it happens in other places, too, but over there it's not the national sport to judge others without knowing the full story.
Many labels are waiting for you if you get pregnant before marriage. If you are gay, you had better do your best to pretend to be normal and hide your homosexuality until going abroad brings you freedom. For Indonesia is such a tightly connected society, where everybody knows each other and you cannot run away. Who needs a broadband connection?
Isn't it a problem abroad, too? Perhaps, if you are a local. But the fortunate thing of being a foreigner is that you are allowed to make mistakes; you are a visitor, after all, and are not supposed to know the rules of the game. I still make many grammar mistakes in Italian, even though I have lived there for 10 years. Sono una straniera, mi dispiace. I'm a foreigner, I'm sorry.
After all these years abroad, I have realized there are two types of Indonesian expats. There are those who develop a new identity - a chameleon nomad of sorts - who mingle with locals, speak the local language, eat local food and are interested in local behaviors so they blend in, without of course losing their identity as Indonesians.
Then there are those who adamantly remain Indonesian abroad; they have mainly Indonesian friends, eat Indonesian food and even try to make their few local friends as Indonesian as possible.
Realistically, there should be a third, "in between" category, occupying a gray area of half-and-half. I would probably stay in this category as long as I could, because it's the most comfortable area to be. Eventually, however, both sides will demand that you make up your mind.
I admit that I'm with the outsiders, and the locals. In my opinion, instead of trying to make a little Indonesia in a foreign country, stay at home. I left my homeland to seek diversity, to learn and seek challenges in life, and to leave my comfort zone. And that is what I have done.
