The mid-day sun beats down heavy on Gobang, lighting up the bright green rails of a new suspension bridge. Construction remains in progress, and the men hammering together floorboards take breaks to cautiously escort girls in long skirts and headscarves from one side to the other. The old wooden crossing, previously the only means of accessing this 50-household village, teeters off to the side looking beat down and forlorn.

Gobang sits in the elbow of the Durian River, a shallow chocolate-colored artery that feeds the lime green rice fields. The farmers who make their livelihood here rely on the river for irrigation. Children and women use it to bathe and wash clothing. There is no piped water and no Internet in the village. But during the rainy season porches are replete with piles of cucumbers, tomatoes and papaya leaves.

Located a mere three-hour journey from Jakarta, Gobang should not seem so remote. But life here follows a different pace than that of the capital. People sit and chat on porches, children play music and card games. Everyone knows everyone’s business, and not because they’ve heard it through their Blackberry. Many youths have never left the village.

It is the ideal setting for a new program that aims to bring young teachers into far-flung villages. Much like Teach for America, Indonesia Mengajar sends volunteers out for a year to help under-resourced schools. They bring books and outside knowledge to children in need of adults who will listen and support their ambitions. And they gain skills that program managers say will position them to be future leaders.

In Gobang the teacher is a young woman named Astuti Kusumaningrum, or Tuti, a name that evokes playfulness and energy, and one that suits her well. Her living quarters include a room that barely fits her small bed and a living space where she has pasted students’ drawings and an alphabet chart to the wall. A bamboo shelf built by some of the boys holds books donated by the program.

Since Tuti’s arrival the house has become the neighborhood hangout. Children gather on the porch to play chess or color. Once a week she lets them cook over the small propane burner that comes as a alternative to the wood fires most families still use.

In addition to her daily teaching schedule, Tuti also assists with religion classes in a small building across from the village mosque. The bare, crumbling concrete walls support two chalkboards that have been turned so their wooden backs face out. Tuti tries to get the children to focus on an Arabic grammar book she has spread out on the floor. A few of her younger pupils lay on the ground copying the graceful, swirling characters, but most bounce around the room to keep themselves entertained. “Usually we write on the chalkboard, but we ran out of chalk today,” Tuti says.

The lack of resources is what brought Tuti here from Jogjakarata, a more developed university town where she lived and studied. “In my place we were living almost like a kampung [village], but with big houses and high fences,” she said. “Here people don’t have fences and the doors are always open.”

The lack of privacy can be irksome, but it is something she has learned to accept. When Tuti really needs some time alone she’ll retreat to her room and watch DVDs on her computer. What’s harder is having someone to talk to about the challenges of teaching and life in the village.

“I don’t interact a lot with people of my own age,” said Tuti, explaining how most of the women her age are already married with children. Many of the 20-somethings from the village have gone away to school or to work factory jobs in Jakarta, leaving an age gap that is noticeable.

Despite the loneliness, Tuti says it’s hard to think about leaving. “When I think about it, I think ‘Oh my God,’” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “I think, will they achieve what they were dreaming and will there be someone to support them in that?”

Indonesia Mengajar will send another volunteer once Tuti’s year is up, and she’s convinced that the next teacher will be just as engaged with the students as she. But to be sure she’ll leave the sign she hung above her bed as a measure of what she wants for them: To be proud of themselves and to know it’s possible to make their dreams come true.

It was a forceful reminder for residents of Banda Aceh, the city closest to the devastating 2004 earthquake and Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 230,00 across South East Asia.

But despite lingering fears from the Dec. 26, 2004 monster wave that killed roughly 170,000 people in Aceh alone and altered the social fabric of the region, Rahmadi, who owns a small perfume shop in Banda Aceh says people are more prepared than they were a little over six years ago because of government programs.

“My parents put all our important things to a bag, and they know which road to use to escape,” says Rahmadi.

Published on the Christian Science Monitor, 11 January 2012

Indonesian youths with a penchant for the past have injected new life into Jakarta’s Old City. Once home to the city’s main port and 17th-century Dutch settlements, the area known then as Batavia is now abuzz with teens who come to ride vintage bicycles, visit the history museum, or snap pictures in front of several crumbling colonial facades.

Groups such as the Sahabat Museum, an informal community of history aficionados, lead walking tours of the area. Sahabat Museum has organized nearly 100 tours around Indonesia since starting in 2003, but founder Ade Purnama says the Old City remains a favorite among youths.

“Because they live here, they grew up here, and they want to know the city’s history,” he says, noting that the last tour he organized there drew roughly 1,000 people.

Many participants come to enhance their knowledge of the country’s past. But Mr. Purnama sees the tours as part of a broader effort to get people to appreciate Jakarta.

Many buildings in the Old City remain in ruin. Their owners say they won’t invest in rehabilitation until the government enacts a widespread revitalization program.

In the meantime, Indonesians are finding other ways of bringing new life to the area. The Indonesian Heritage Society leads tours of historical sites, such as an old bank, a soy sauce factory, and the former homes of Dutch elite, as does a group called Cultural Explorer.

“This is an interesting way to learn about our city,” says Bulan Mendota, who was on a recent Sahabat Museum tour.

By learning about Jakarta, says Purnama, youths will also learn how to make it better.

Published in the Christian Science Monitor, 21 December 2011

As consumers pay more attention to the environmental damage caused by palm oil planting, pressure has increased on manufacturers to use sustainable sources. Unilever, McDonald’s and Nestlé have pledged to use only sustainable palm oil by 2015.

However, a scorecard released by the W.W.F. last month found that the companies that had promised to move toward sustainable oil still got only 47 percent of their supply from sources certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, showing no improvement from 2010.

Published in the New York Times, 05 December 2011

Achmad Ibrahim/AP

Indonesia glowed with gold as it captured the top of the medals tally at the 26th Southeast Asian Games, beating out Thailand, the third week in November. The biennial event brings together the 11 countries of Southeast Asia and includes competitions ranging from swimming to badminton to wushu – a full-contact variation of a traditional Chinese martial art.

Indonesia had hoped the event would highlight its increasingly powerful role in the region, but a scandal involving rigged bids for the construction of athletes’ dormitories and poor planning that threatened to delay some events drew criticism from visiting officials.

Despite its increasing economic heft, Indonesia hasn’t topped the medals table since it last hosted the games in 1997, during the reign of autocratic President Suharto.

The games themselves were not without incident. Rowdy Indonesian soccer fans barraged the Malaysian soccer team during its semifinal match to the extent that its coaches called for an armored vehicle escort into the stadium for the gold-medal match against Indonesia. Malaysia won on a penalty shot.

But neither archrivals nor scandals could dim the light of this emerging nation at the end of the games. Indonesia finished the week-long competition with more than 182 gold medals.

Published on the Christian Science Monitor, 30 November 2011

“I have a picture of you with your pets,” said a photographer I met in Goreme. He had shot me with his telephoto lens walking along a mountain ledge, trailed by a triad of dogs, none of which actually belonged to me.

Days later a man who called himself Mike would say, “ I like to play with colors,” and I would record his innocuous statement in my journal. Mike and his brother Alp run a boutique hotel in Istanbul. It includes a “chill out” room and a café whose ceiling is strung with hundreds of colorful glass lanterns.

Istanbul still carries what native author Orhan Pamuk calls the sad joys of black-and-white – crumbling fountains, forgotten quarters – that melancholy residents consider their shared fate. The greatness of the city’s old architecture makes those who visit feel poorer and weaker in its shadows, notes Pamuk. In part, he’s right.

The city Pamuk describes is one claimed by huzun, a collective melancholy that provokes both pride and sadness in Isanbullius It is a feeling that stems from the city’s destruction at the end of the Ottoman Empire.

Visiting writers and poets describe this trait as “poetic,” others call it an illness. Pamuk merely tells us when we’re in its presence: teahouses packed with unemployed men; empty, creaky mansions; dirty, soot-encrusted building facades; tiny ribbons of smoke rising from single-pipe chimneys; men fishing from the Galata Bridge; broken steps; beggars. He then describes the things visitors do not see – disappointed people tucked away in crumbling villas and apartments turned to knitting factories.

I asked an acquaintance if she felt the weight or despair of living in a city with constant reminders of Turkey’s former greatness. “For in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible,” writes Pamuk.

But Ebru said no, dismissing the hang-ups of the older generation, which Pamuk seems to think is paralyzed by Turkey’s geopolitical limbo between East and West. Her worldview remains deeply rooted in current events, and she eagerly shares her impassioned views on politics and social justice. She is critical of the government, but embraces Turkey as it is, not a variant of the West striving for approval.

I appreciate this. I appreciate her insights and advice. Ebru recommends places I must see in the city – an old cemetery, an art museum, a neighborhood once rundown and dangerous but now the center of a trendy revival.

After our meeting I walk back to my hotel from the very north of the city. I start in Taksim, the name of a large square in Istanbul perfect for rallies, and a word that can mean both to divide and to gather. It takes me more than an hour, but seeing Istanbul alive at night imparts something about where this city – and perhaps the country – is headed.

Among its youth Turkey is on an upswing.

Some visitors called it other-worldly, like a set from Star Wars, an alien terrain unlike anything they’ve seen on earth. Indeed, Cappadocia does fascinate. Not just for its spectacular topography, but its rich history. It’s a past in which Turks take great pride, though one they also struggle with at a time when the triumphs of the Ottoman empire, and the innovations of the ancient settlements long before that have been relegated to the trash heap of history.

To begin, the world’s oldest human settlement is found near modern Cappadocia, while not far from today’s Boghazköy lived the Hittites, the first people to use an Indo-European language and record it on clay tablets (archaeologists have uncovered wills and wedding certificates in this form, as well as debt paper and divorce agreements). The University of Chicago has spent decades deciphering these ancient tablets as part of the Chicago Hittite Diary Project.

These fun facts are part of a typical history lesson most visitors to Goreme receive. Guides then segway into the terrain, explaining how a massive volcanic explosion millennium ago covered the land in ash, much like it would in Italy’s Pompeii. Over millions of years the soft “tuma” rock would erode, revealing harder rock formations that today are known as fairy chimneys.

The Central Turkish city eventually become a crossroads for people from Europe and Central Asia. Less a melting pot than the site of invasions and subsequent conquests, Goreme still managed to give birth to a populace influenced by disparate ethnicities. “No one should claim that Turkey is pure Turkish today; that would be ridiculous,” said Levent Kocabas, a Goreme guide, historian and patriot, who rattles off the country’s achievements.

Forty percent of the world’s marble comes from Turkey, he says. In the 4th century, Emperor Constantine, the Roman emperor known for being the first leader to convert to Christianity, helped stopped the persecution of the Christians. During his reign he gathered global leaders of the time to a conference during which the four books of the new testament were chosen.

When the capital moved to what is today Istanbul, it was named Constantinople.

Many of today’s modern Asiatic languages – Russian, Kyzak – share similarities with Turkish. Levent says Turks can even understand Uighurs, from northern China. The 16th century was the height of the Ottoman Empire, which included all of northern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, The Caucasus, Greece and Hungary up to Vienna. It was the zenith of the empire under Sulaiman the Magnificent, who has an iconic hilltop mosque dedicated to him in Istanbul.

In later years the Empire would crumble, becoming the “sick man of Europe,” explained Levent. Turkey allied with Germany during WWI, and Greece invaded. The relationship between the two countries has been historically fraught. It is far better today, but the fractures from a legacy of mutual hatred and distrust remain.

“We lived in peace for 1,000 years with them, but that have a hard time digesting that,” said Levent, referring to Greece’s abuse during the war and more recent efforts to keep Turkey from entering the European Union. After a trip to Greece, the change in perspective opens a new window on the legacies of this region – legacies that remain visible far beyond modern history.

Greece’s current turbulence seems to be merely the latest in a series of struggles since the country gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1830s. Despite claiming the title the birthplace of democracy, the great powers of the time – Britain and France – sought to install a monarchy in Greece headed by Bavarian Prince Otto.

For decades foreigners ruled the country, eventually creating so much ill will that a series of coup attempts finally brought them down.

By the time of World War I Greece was grappling with were it stood in the world order. England duped it into siding with the allies in return for land grants – none of which were ever honored. As a result, Greece turned its back on the allies in WWII. Later, a peace agreement with Turkey saw the return of around 1.5 million Greeks to the country, putting a severe strain on the economy. For decades after Greece suffered from widespread poverty and underdevelopment. A short civil war exacted an even higher price than the world wars.

Meanwhile, the ruins that stood as tributes to Greek greatness watched over all these years of conflict and strife.

The Acropolis, described by travel guides as Greece’s “crowning architectural feat,” is dedicated to Athena, the goddess who symbolizes the power of the city. The site’s museum houses wholly preserved statues from that era, as well as a time known as the “severe” period, when sculpted faces were stern and serious.  History did take its toll on the Acropolis – the Parthenon was converted to a cathedral, a mosque, and finally, an ammunitions depot. But looting by British explorers exacted the most damage.

When Greece entered the European Union in the early 1980s some saw it as Greece’s chance to leave the past behind and join Europe’s progress toward the future. But it wasn’t so simple.

“The profound gap between the ancient and the modern had to be bridged, to satisfy Europe’s romantic expectations of Greece,” author George Zarkadakis wrote recently in The Washington Post.

Indeed, Greece sits strategically between Europe and Asia Minor. The Euro is one way of justifying its Westernization. But Greeks have their own character. Austerity does not appear to be something they do well, and many now resent European leaders for prescribing solutions to the economic crisis that call for thrift. The economy won’t grow if people are not spending, they counter.

The inflationary knock-on effects also stir anger. A tour guide we met in Meteora, a site famed for its cliff-top monasteries, explained. “Milk used to cost around 0.70 Euros; now it’s 1.20 Euros,” she said. “That is nearly double the price, but salaries have not increased.”

Behind her a group of black-robbed nuns snapped pictures of the monasteries that blend seamlessly into the rock pinnacles. Inside the cathedrals murals depicted saints being slaughtered by Turkish invaders, their severed heads still carrying their golden halos.

“Stay away from the center of Athens,” she warned with a wry smile, referring to expected protests the following week.

Zarkadakis writes that the financial crisis is a “crisis of identity as much as anything else.” But it’s not just Greece that is struggling with its place in the world – a world in which China is offering to bailout Europe and Indonesia is considered a safe haven for overseas investment.

Times are changing in the West, and Greece may just be ground zero.

Talk on the streets in Athens is gloomy; faces here as empty as the buildings vacated by failed businesses. Even the police, sent out to guard against protests that erupted into violence in late October, are complacent. “This isn’t a civil war,” says one officer, while absentmindedly twisting a Rubic’s Cube.

The national psyche has perhaps been beaten down the most by a financial crisis that has stirred fierce debate about the longevity of the Euro zone and led to finger-pointing across Europe about who is to blame for Greece’s problems. Many in Athens say the EU is using Greece as the fall guy, since its fiscal woes – a combination of over borrowing, massive debt and faulty economic data – could have happened to other countries, namely Italy.

Some European leaders blame the problem on the “lazy” men of Europe. It’s time to “throw the bums out,” they opine. A debt-relief deal struck between the EU and Greece on October 26 only created more political turmoil and economists have criticized the plan for being shortsighted.  On November 6 Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou agreed to create a new government, under a new prime minister, in the hope of breaking a deadlock crucial to containing the crisis.

Greece’s potential economic ruin raises concerns that have long been discussed whenever talk about the viability of a common Euro currency comes up. But among ordinary citizens the trauma of the financial paralysis has stoked a long-simmering rage. In this land of ancient greatness, ruins remind Greeks of just where they stand in the current global world order. Take the ruins, for instance, many of which mingle among modern infrastructure and commercial enterprises – a glass floor below the cash register at H&M reveals an ongoing excavation. At this shop people are buying, but in many places they are not.

The owner of a small jewelry boutique near the Acropolis says she has only sold the smaller, cheaper items in recent months. She keeps shorter hours. When I visited, the electricity was off. At night lights illuminate the Parthenon, a tribute to Greek advancement in architecture and construction. Young professionals in their 20s and 30s view it from the rooftop bar of a swanky joint called A is for Athens.

It was there I met a Greek acquaintance, who explained that the crisis was exerting both an economic and emotional trauma on the country. She said the city center is more quiet as more buildings stand empty. Shop owners, waiters and others I met during my short visit to Athens all referred to Greece’s troubles by sweeping their hands toward the Acropolis and exclaiming that the country has been in decline since it was built.

“It is all we have to be proud of in this … economic crisis,” said a server at Cafe Avyssinias, injecting a few colorful adjectives to describe the crisis he referenced.

“For Rent” signs (Enoikiazetai) plaster buildings and locals find ways of injecting the hardship into everyday conversation. An employee at an Italian sandwich shop scoffed when asked to break a 50 Euro bill. My friend blamed the bank machine for only giving out large notes. “You’d think we were rich,” he retorted.

On the holiday island of Santorini shop owners hurry to make their final sales of the season before heading back to Athens for the winter. Nathalia, another jewelry store employee, offered 50 percent discounts. In contrast, local brewery, Volkan, which boasts “lava rock” filtered beer, has promised to donate 50 Euro cents on each 1 Euro profit to tackling the Greek national debt.

That staggering commitment is rare. For the most part it seems the Greek psyche has been severely dented by the crisis, as has people’s trust in the country’s financial institutions. Credit card payments are frowned upon by vendors who would prefer to have cash available in case of a sudden bank closure. These are only the minimal insights I gathered during my trip. Many other journalists and Greek bloggers have been closely documenting the changes in the country. For more, check out this recent New York Times’ article. And stay posted for upcoming travel journals.

Read more at The Christian Science Monitor