She went to school in Baa, the capital of the island because the family lived there. Her mother was a widow with 6 kids to raise and pieces of lands here and there. Her mother's father was a sort of elder of a small kingdom back then (Rote's already a small island, but there were ample of small small kingdoms there), and they actually had pieces of land, gold and jewelries, but because of the strong patriarchal culture of the Rotinese, most inheritances went under the management of the father's male family members (be it uncle, cousins, etc). And one cannot always expect those who have blood ties to be kind to the deceased's widow and children, so they got only small parts of the inheritance, and my mom's mother did not protest it, and always tried to make it enough with what she had to feed her children.
Almost similar to my dad's story, my mom also lost a parent in the very early year of her life. Her father passed away when she was around two years old, 1945, the same year the younger brother was born. Her late father was a local reverend, whose salary was paid by the Dutch government, so a kind of civil servant actually. The difference with my dad was that my mom's mother had never remarried after her husband passed away, unlike my dad's father who remarried and had seven (!) more children from the second marriage.
Massive poverty blanketed the population of Rote Island those days. Mom said that she and her friends those days have not so many choices for their daily diet, so they sometimes must looked for and ate those kind of edible maggots, which habitat is on the inside of tree trunk, as alternative protein source. The taste is, "..a bit sweet if you grill them well", she recalled. Ooouuch...... Those were not so good days, after WW II, the country was not yet consolidated into a 'real' country, political turmoil in Jakarta I suppose (1950s) and they lived in an island, a tiny little island thousands kilometer away from Jakarta, and politically not influenced, so it must have not on the priority list of the young nation of Indonesia. My mom also remember the first time she looked and tasted crystal sugar (I mean, sugar as we know now, to differentiate it with palm sugar or brown sugar which was the only sweetener she knew those days) with awe, admiring the crystal-like granules like it's something luxurious, because it's expensive and not everyone can have it at their house. Also when she touched ice at the first time (somebody must have just brought refrigerator to the island). She was like..wow ..so coooold... and also about the the plain rice porridge that they had to eat everyday, to save rice stock (I understood then why until now plain rice porridge is still her favorite!). And about many other "newly invented" things that we take for granted these days that were luxurious those days.
Her 'saved by the bell' moment finally came to pass. Her older sister who worked as a teacher in the primary school nearby, got married with a Rotinese guy from Kupang (the town in other island, the province's capital). Since her sister's husband lived and worked in Kupang as a teacher, her sister moved to Kupang as well. She captured it as an opportunity. She was a bit panicked because her mother had an even clearer plan for her: matchmaking her with an officer who worked at the local synod's office so that she could get married soon, and to find her a job in that office too. She was horrified with the plan. What?? A Grade 9 graduate get married, at her age? Definitely not. She decided that she's going to escape the mother's plan. The academic year had commenced at that time, and she had not made it into senior high school yet since she stayed in Rote. So she got an idea. She told her mother that she missed her sister and was going to visit her in Kupang. Her mother allowed, knowing that it's just gonna be a visit. Without her mother's knowledge, she packed her clothes in jars that supposed to be filled with rice, palm sugar and other stuff for her sister. She runaway from home, from her mother's plan, in practice. It was around October or so, end 1950s (1958 perhaps). She persuaded her sister to look for school. And she could only get into SGKP, Sekolah Guru Kepandaian Putri, a pariah school, she said, that's why she was allowed to enroll: not all seats were filled in October. She did not like it, she liked maths and exact subjects, and she would prefer to go to general senior high school, but no regular school opened for enrollment anymore that time. At least going to school and not staying in Rote or get married young, she thought. So there she was.
Completing the school, she went to continue at the local university, where it was more costly. So she had to stay in at the house of one of the rich aunt from her mother side. A prominent family they were in Kupang at that time. They had a big house at the conjuction of Straat A in Kupang. Many young relatives who were studying in Kupang stayed there (pretty common those days, to stay in a relative's house if one's parents' live in kampung), and the husband and wife were so disciplined it seemed like the students (despite the family ties) went into slavery. They must wash the clothes and other garments (curtains, bed cover etc) with hands, hundred meters away from the house, walking (going with dry laundry was OK, mom said, but return with soaked laundry, was a nightmare!). Washing them with tapioca powder. And there could not be any dot of stain or dirt stayed in the garment, or the aunt would take it off from the clothes line and drop it off so they got dirty again, and they had to do the same thing once more. Frustrating. In addition, they must teach the children of the uncle and aunt at night, and the kids were not the smart ones, even more frustrating. They also had to flush the toilet after the family members (parents and kids) used it (yukks, disgusting!). Mom said she could get through all the troubles just because of her dream to be better educated, so she could have more choices, rather than simply one choice that her mother had chosen for her. That's the education at its heart, I conclude: to provide one with more than one choices. Cannot agree more.
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