In my children’s memories, Asia is going to taste like Pringles.

It’s the only brand of chip that can be depended upon to come in sensible western flavours like, sour cream and onion, bbq or plain salt, instead of flavours like seaweed, cuttlefish hot pot, or spicy squid.

This morning found me sitting on a plastic chair in an open air shop, sipping instant tea and conversing, through the linguistic sieve of my Bahasa Indonesia phrase book, with a woman with whom I, at once, have much, and almost nothing in common.

• We chatted about the similarities and differences of our island homes.
• We compared maternal notes: she has three boys and two girls. She is “done with babies,” she declares, patting her mama tummy and asks if I too am “done.”
• We share solidarity in being “done” together.
• We discuss husbands. She notes that mine is a good one and tells me hers is as well. I flip through my dictionary deciphering that hers does not drink, do drugs or have “wanitas” on the side. He is a good Muslim. By this standard, this makes mine almost a good Muslim.
• I point out the chickens and ask, “Ayam… for meat? Or eggs?” She tells me the Bahasa word for eggs.
• She points out the songbirds and teaches me “bintung… same, same, like ayam,” both creatures are “birds.”
• We sip tea and Tony appears with his iPad, to show her pictures of our side of the world, she gets excited with the delight of “rain that is ice.” She has never seen snow.
• We talk about snow, and cold. She notes that our houses must be very “bagus,” very good, for the cold, not like the houses here on Samalona.

She has been to New Zealand once, as the guest of another traveler who stayed for five months in her house and now pays for her daughter to attend university in Makassar. She pronounces western toilets, indoor showers, washing machines very “bagus” compared to what she has on this little island.

We slept little last night, installed in the raised house of my new friend’s cousin. Stick built on the very edge of the sea, framed in with 1×2” boards with corrugate metal screwed to exterior, painted inside and out in Easter yellow and Printemps green. The wind rattled the metal roof while wind drove rain against the tin can house with the ferocity of a snare drummer marching his troops into battle. At two in the morning I got up in frustration and unscrewed every lightbulb in the house, all of which were still burning brightly… the generator was left running to ensure our comfort, no doubt… every bulb in the entire house is wired right into the line out of the generator, no need for a switch. We wondered, in the night, what was falling, or dancing on the roof. This morning the children noted that it was rats. None have come into the house, that privilege seems reserved for a monitor lizard that my friend treats as an honored guest.

The house is immaculately clean, with wide wooden floorboards smoothed by years of sandy feet. Two bedrooms are lined up along one side of the house, the center area is one big open room that holds two closets, a set of heavy faux-leather furniture and a folding table with a lace cloth. The curtains are garish, matching the paint job. There is a television in one corner, with a red plastic and metal contraption balanced precariously on top: “That, my children, is an antennae… it’s what we used to capture television and radio signal before there was satellite.” They stare quizzically for a moment, and then barrel down the wooden steps and head for the beach.

Another bedroom, windowless and stifling, is tucked in the space behind that wall. We stuck Ez and Gabe in there. They were the only ones not bitten by insects all night; they have a bed net. A spartan kitchen is open behind that. This is where the monitor lizard has made his appearance. We’ve also spotted him in the trash pile, trolling for scraps in both places, no doubt.

There was a rare sighting of the boys just now:

Ezra passed by the porch, stomping down the beach with a long piece of bamboo slung over his shoulder like a rocket launcher. Elisha was not far behind towing a giant piece of drift wood. They appear only when in need of sustenance. There is room in their game of “desert isle” for a mother who is laden with snacks. Although last night they did capture a respectable number of sand crabs in the dark and reminded me that these could be boiled up for protein and calcium. Ez asked if he might please cook the big snail he found snorkeling. Instead they’ve been happy to tuck into the plates of grilled fish, rice, boiled vegetables and corn croquettes that our hosts have served up with pots of hot tea and “bananas that taste like guavas.”

A fort has been built out of flotsam and jetsam added to the crumbling remains of an old dock.

Elisha was serious about his task of pounding out long tubes of seaweed and setting them to dry on rusted chunk of metal roof they’d dragged in from somewhere, “We’re making rope, Mom!” Hannah was beautifying their efforts with fairy houses built of bits of shell and coral, sea glass and great big, brittle globes that are the remains of the enormous sea urchins that pepper the reef just off shore. It is pouring down rain now, they are no doubt on the other side of the island tucked into their construction, telling wild stories. Elisha has been reading Treasure Island. There was talk of someone dying of the black spot.

 All of this, the inhabitants of Samalona watch with delighted amusement.

It’s one big extended family that lives here full time: Grandparents, uncles, mothers, cousins, kids and a few chickens. During the week the families with older children are on the big island, attending school. They are palpably missed. We are the only family of outsiders here, and we are being made most welcome. Efforts are being made to educate us, increasing our Bahasa vocabulary, showing us about how the water is captured, and calling to us to help launch the proa that’s being pushed, by every islander present, into the sea for a run to the city. We are pointed towards the best coral beds whenever we emerge with a snorkel in hand, and the mama of the island runs to get the boys booties to wear so that they won’t lodge and urchin spine into a foot.

Hannah and I have been praised for our beauty, the women taking great time to carefully explain that it’s because we don’t pluck our eyebrows into thin arches, or wear bright lipstick, or paint ourselves heavily with make-up; and that we don’t have tattoos. Good Muslims don’t have tattoos.

We sat late into the tropical darkness and did the things we always do when there is no work to be done and no way to do it if there was.

• Tony read the next chapter of The Hobbit; Ezra was most displeased to be sent to bed on a cliff hanger.
• He and I knit while the story unfolded: me, on a hat for an impending niece or nephew, him on a long, narrow scarf in every shade of sunset that he’s been diligently, secretly crafting as a gift for his Hannah, “So that she’ll have something to keep her neck warm when she goes off to Peru.”
• We played cards. I lost, soundly.
• We played music, and sang, in our dissonant way, and laughed.
• The boys polished off a can of Pringles and then disappeared into the dark with a flashlight to collect crabs like the castaway pirates they are.

We’ve had some tough moments since we entered Indonesia, and I haven’t had a lot that’s good to say, but Samalona is redeeming the whole country for us. Gabe hit the nail on the head last night, when he remarked, “I think we all needed this, Mom, some sand, some quiet, getting out of the city, and just some time to play.

Indeed. We all need some time to play.