What was I going to say? Over the rumble of the three engines, we explained to our 18 eighth-graders that we were going to be getting a little more adventure than we’d paid for. We were going to be experiencing a Indonesian village up close and personal. We asked our students to be patient and flexible. And for Pete’s sake, please don’t do anything to embarrass us. The boat pulled up alongside one of the numerous buildings built on stilts over the water. Because it was low tide, our boat could only get to within thirty feet of the ladder we needed to ascend in order to be in the village. So we all strapped on our backpacks, lowered ourselves over the edge of the boat into ankle deep water, and tromped through the muck. We climbed the ladder and found ourselves in an Indonesian village. My students, two co-leaders, and I milled about the large porch of a local woman who was kind enough to let us use water from her rain barrel to rinse our socks and shoes.
“Use the scoop boys and girls. Do not dip your shoes directly into her rain barrel,” I had to repeatedly tell my students.
About the time the last shoe was rinsed, Eric approached me to tell me that he had spoken to one of the village elders and had secured lodging for us for the night. Miraculously, we were all going to be staying in the same house. So with early-evening darkness now settled on this sea-side village, we made our way single-file down the dirt path pulling our wheeled luggage behind us. I detected more than a few faces of the locals peering out from the shadows of darkened doorways as our procession made its way down their street.
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