A Thin Khaki Line

"You teach English for the police? That's something," said my new friend, an Indonesian photographer who grew up homeless on the streets of Jakarta, as we sat in a tattoo parlour on Jalan Cikini. Yes, I suppose it is.

After a year in Indonesia, I've acclimated to most things. I'm used to fish heads for lunch, families of five weaving by on a motorbikes, monkeys on leashes with creepy baby doll heads on, and complete strangers asking for photos, my Facebook account, and my marital status. But, at Sebasa, The Police Language School, nothing every becomes ordinary. Only two months into my fellowship, and the adventures have already begun.

Two weeks ago, I was surprised by a text from my lil mother (my counterpart, Ibu Soegma), informing me that I was invited by the chief to attend the launching of their very first teleconference English course, the next morning. I could only imagine how this would work. The goal was to reach mid-level officers from all 31 provinces of the archipelago with a twelve-week English course. Lil mother asked me to prepare a short speech about the best way to learn English. This is the equivalent of asking a writer what his favorite book is, but I've learned the concept of a speech is a bit more fluid here, so I didn't sweat it too much. The next morning, before departing to Police HQ, the chief told me I only needed to speak between 20-30 minutes, up to me. That's when I started sweating.

We arrived at HQ and Lil mother and I followed the chief to Kapolri's (chief of all the Indonesian National Police) teleconference room. It was just like in the movies; wall to wall screens slowly filled up with video feed from regional police stations all over the country. As we waited for equipment checks from Papua to Aceh, each of those screens then filled up with 15-20 officers. 15 officers times 31 provinces....that's...carry the one...over 450 mid-rank officers, all looking at me.

The chief kicked things off with a ceremonial speech about the launching and curriculum design. Shortly there after, he turned the mic over to me to talk about, well, whatever sounded inspiring. I tried my best to decipher the chicken scratch notes that I jotted down that morning on the way to work. English...yes, it's very good to learn...blah, blah, blah. I kept that up for about 5 minutes, mostly talking about the vast benefits English language skills bring to Indonesian police officers. Then, the chief opened the floor for questions. The first was for me. I got this.

"Ms. Jackie, how do you feel we can improve relations between Embassy security services and..." (I can't even remember what he said after this point, I was still busy trying to write down a phonetic pronunciation of his rank and name). Sr. Adjunct Commis...wait, what? Embassies? Um. I definitely don't got this. I think I massacred his name and then talked in circles for a bit about not having experience in that realm. The next question was also for me, this time from Bali.

"Ms. Jackie, may I (and 450 of my closest friends) have your phone number?" I flashed a desperate look to the chief and lil mother amid the silent laughter of all the little police officers on all 31 screens. The motioned for me to go ahead. "Let me give you my email address, ok?" I haven't been back to the big room with all the flashy technology, and I'm okay with that for now.

The reason I haven't been back is because Sebasa is swamped with another special program right now in addition to our regular students and classes. For ten days, we're conducting an intensive English course for 150 officers who are going to Darfur, Sudan. They will join a UN mission as a Formed Police Unit (FPU), and they will work at an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp for one year. At the chief's orders, myself and Lisa, another Fellow new to Sebasa this year, will work with the FPU to expose them to native speakers.

We are using curriculum materials designed by the UN to practice real tasks they will encounter daily, like: writing patrol reports, radio speak, and map reading. Today, I taught how to use the future 'going to' to report future actions to HQ when confronted with a situation on patrol.

Echo 5, this is SO2, message, over.
SO2, this is Echo 5, send, over.
Echo 5, we have a man blocking our path. He is bleeding. We are going to take him to a hospital.

I can't get enough of this stuff.

Today, Lisa and I made a trip to the Embassy to talk with our bosses from the Dept. of Justice. They talked about how we can grow future programs for English learning with the police. So, it seems the adventures will not be ending any time soon. Fine by me.

Over.