Jun 30, 2016

Arrested!!! My experience of working in Indonesia

Beaming from ear to ear I was the proud owner of a teaching certificate telling me I was now supposedly qualified to teach English overseas – but where? Where did I want to live and work for the next twelve months? I initially applied for a teaching post in Portugal, however, I was kindly told by the agency that they are only considering teachers with experience – would I be interested in Poland? Several applications later I was offered a teaching post with English First who had a huge network of schools worldwide, their main locations being China, Russia and Indonesia.

I was immediately drawn to Indonesia as a destination, Russia was too cold, China was slightly appealing but the pull of South East Asian food did it for me. All those spices and flavours – lemongrass, chillies, lime, galangal – yum! And of course, Nasi Goreng, that lip-smacking Indonesian fried rice dish. My decision was made.” I did have a picture of Bali in my mind. All those lovely beaches and palm trees but following an e-mail from a school in Pekanbaru, I ended up in a huge city where road kill were the rats that ran out from the gutters full of sewage and where drivers believe that by honking their car horns it made their car go faster! So not quite the idyllic beach setting that I had imagined.

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English First School, Pekanbaru, Indonesia

When I look back at my teaching experience in Indonesia it fills me with terror. My daily routine in the city of Pekanbaru, which is situated in the middle of the Sumatra Island, was a very hectic one. Having arranged with the Director of Studies at the school to enter Indonesia on a tourist visa and observe the other teachers for the initial three weeks, I was told on the day I arrived that I would have to teach immediately! No observing! I was immersed into the frantic world of teaching in a foreign country. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population thus my morning normally started at 4am by the call to prayer. This is broadcast at extreme high volume from amplifiers mounted outdoors on tall minarets. In fact, they are powerful enough to be heard as far as three miles away! You can imagine how piercing that sound is if you are only a few doors away. The humidity hovers at around 80% making it feel like it is constantly raining and my clothes were forever clinging to my dampened body. Writing lesson plans would take up the morning and then teaching started after lunch and continued into the evening. Not a thought given to my tourist visa.

I knew something was seriously wrong when four policemen entered my classroom and signalled for me to leave with them”. The Indonesian nightmare had just started. Unbeknownst to me I had been employed by a shady businessman who had ran away with the school funds. This infuriated the wife of the school’s Director and I was reported to the police in an attempt to get revenge on the owner. I spent hours and hours being interrogated by the police and with having only the school owner’s nephew to translate for me, this did not bode well. I had unintentionally committed a crime. The sentence was five years in an Indonesian jail! I had already had an insight into the corruption and unscrupulousness of the law system in Indonesia which was very disturbing. I had chosen the subject of ‘Crime and Punishment’ during one of my adult lessons and one student had eagerly told me alarming stories of police intimidation, threats and extortion. Now here I was being faced with just that!

The students did not lie. The shady school owner reappeared to provide the appropriate bribes to the police station. “I know the Chief of Police and many of his cousins who are in very high ranking positions within the police force” he boasted, “I am working on a contact at the Pekanbaru police station”. It is now Christmas Eve when I should be looking forward to the festive season, instead I am on the telephone to the English First Head Quarters in Jakarta pleading for someone to help me but was told “it’s Christmas dear…everyone has gone…ring back in two weeks”. Clearly the receptionist at the British Embassy in Jakarta had also finished for Christmas as there was no-one at their offices to even answer the ringing telephone!

A plan was made and on Christmas Day the school owner escorted me to the airport in order to make any necessary pay-offs to the airline staff and we both boarded a plane to take us to the Indonesian island of Batam where he ensured I received that all important exit stamp on my passport. With a sigh of relief I narrowly avoided a five year prison sentence and escaped on a boat from Indonesia to Singapore. The following morning the Indian Ocean tsunami and earthquake devastated parts of Indonesia but thankfully there were no deaths in Pekanbaru that day as a direct result of the earthquake.

With hindsight, alarm bells should have rang when I was instructed to enter Indonesia on a tourist visa even with the agreed observing period from the school’s Director. For anyone considering a teaching career overseas I would now strongly suggest that a working visa is obtained irrespective of what is promised by the school. The only reason for this request I now know is that it was cheaper for the school to obtain a working visa from their agent in Singapore than for me to purchase one in the UK. A miserly cost-cutting exercise to reduce visa expenses!

It did take me ten years and a new passport to pluck up the courage to enter Indonesia again! A very tense, uneasy moment was had at the Bali immigration counter last year when the officer scrutinised my passport. After a strained smile from me and a penetrating look from him, he finally handed back my passport with the much desired entry stamp and more importantly, no arrest!

One thought on “Arrested!!! My experience of working in Indonesia

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