Its a story from years ago, I can not recall where I got the call for this job to be interpreter for two Arab guys from. But I remember feeling so nervous meeting them at a hotel in Samarinda on one morning, I dressed up a little formal just for this first meeting. I believe I wore that blue batik dress I bought for my date with Eric and added my black cardigan.
As I entered the hotel lobby I scanned the whole room for Arabs lol, nothing. So I dialed the contact number I had and told the person I was there at the lobby, few minutes after that two men came. Nervously I walked towards them to introduce myself.
The guy I talked to on the phone turned out to be this shorter (than the other one) guy with fairer skin and chubby cheeks, and his friend was much taller slimmer guy dressed up pretty slick. No love at the first sight, thats all I can say for now.
Job description in this mission with these guys was to bring them to places where people wanted to sell their old trucks, tractors, fork-lifters, or any other kind of those HUGE vehicles (hereinafter will be called STUFF). Later then I found out they were just gonna use the good spare parts (rip out what they find here) to build up good-shaped ones. Cheaper they said, rather than buying the whole new stuff. And they got to travel haha, thats how fun I see it. Not their first trip, I reckoned from some contacts on other places they had. I was the only one who didn't know what was going on and where we actually heading haha.
One happy jumpy rabbit as I always am, I was ready to leave Samarinda with these guys early in the morning. There at the very same hotel lobby where we sat the previous day, they introduced me to a contact they knew who turned out to be this Chinese guy who sounded more like a Banjarese to me (oh well most Chinese blend so well with the locals, why am I surprised).
After giving suggestions this Chinese guy brought us to some places (no disrespect to Chinese people, I'm just gonna keep calling him Chinese guy cos I can not recall his name) where he acted as a broker AND driver for us. We met some people who wanted to sell their stuff or being persuaded to do so. Who said being in the middle of business dealing is fun? I have to disagree, I would certainly excuse myself to have cigarette (although I didn't smoke) just to avoid the boring process. BUT I had to do the job there, translating the very simple English the guys spoke to bahasa Indonesia and vice versa.
To save our time I'll just jump to the time when they decided to check on stuff out of town. So off we go, me the two guys and the Chinese guy, our driver heading to Tenggarong's direction. For your information we were heading to mining site on this vehicle >>>
It was literally a struggle for us (actually the car) to go through the muddy road caused by the rain in the morning and previous day. We were stuck with the tires deep in the mud for maybe an hour, oh how I wish I had my camera with me all the time like I do now so I could have pics of this moment, under the blasting hot sun out of nowhere (seriously I didn't see anyone else but US for long minutes) nowhere to take shelter AND no phone reception. NO SIGNAL!
To clarify the situation, me = a girl, was with two Arab guys and a Chinese guy out of nowhere almost burned to crisp with no chance to call anyone. Was I panic? Nope. One of the Arabs was, so he asked me "if we stuck here for a long long long looong time, people will look for us right? Police will look for us?". Seriously I felt like he acted like an American who felt he was the most prestigious citizen of this world. All I could say, I had no idea... I doubted my parents would even look for me and I'm glad he didn't ask about my parents lol.
I guess I always had in me a very calm character that I didn't even think we would stay forever and ever there, a voice in side my head saying you'll be alright. What bugged me were the glaring sun and I had no where to hide or even sit, so then I decided to just sit on the ground on a plastic bag I found somewhere to keep the mud off of my pants.
By then, me and the two Arabs bonded a little so I'm gonna tell you their names. Their so very unique names or name I'd say as they had the same name hehe Muhammad, just like the prophet. They didn't tell me their last names so I could call them differently, so be it. The Muhammads. To make it easy, the shorter guy who spoke English was Muhammad A and the taller guy from Syria was Muhammad B. Nothing could save us from confusion my friend. Later that day on the trip home I asked Muhammad A if I could just call him rabbit or something to differentiate him from B hehe he was confused or maybe upset but don't worry I came home in one piece (spoiler).
Watching me sitting on the ground, crinkling my nose, narrowing my eyes cos of the sun made Muhammad B standing next to where I sat to be my shade. But then he must have felt tired so he sat next to me, saying nothing much as he couldn't speak English well. In a distance I could see Muhammad A walked away up to the hill to find signal, he found a little luck which helped us NOT.
Finally God was on our side when then a car came from the opposite direction, sadly it was the same kind of car (DUH!) which could not be expected to pull the car out of the mud trap but at least then we had more people to do the work. You can count on Indonesian (most of them, really) to give you a hand even if you're a stranger. Within a few minutes with sweat and mud all over the guys, the car was out!!! Then we tried to continue the trip to the site up until we were made to accept that the road was muddy alllllll the way so we turned around, made it through the spot where we were trapped ( I held my breath there), and made a stop at this little house by the river where some workers of the site lived.
It was wooden house which was poorly constructed, perhaps it was a "stop-by" house for workers who came through the river. There we met some men who apparently knew our driver and even let him to use their cellphone to call people at the site informing them that we couldn't make it to there to inspect the stuff. Remember I told you we couldn't get any signal there and so how their cellphone worked? These cool guys had a very long and tall antenna to receive signal, it actually worked with any cellphone you just have to stick it to your cellphone.
It's been a long day so we decided to just rest there at the house for a while. I had an urge to go to the toilet so I asked the guy where I could find a decent toilet, emphasizing on the decent before they actually pointed at the river, they then told me to go to another wooden house not too far from where we were. A green painted house which from the distance I could tell something was a bit odd with it. Stepping on its porch then I realized what the oddness was.... the house was steep, like really steep.... 45 degree (I'm bad in Math, FYI :P).
I politely asked a woman who sat on the porch if I could use her toilet, without any sign of hospitality she welcomed me to use the toilet (now there is oxymoron here hehe) and HELL it was at the back of the house and must have been the steepest part of the house. I was so terrified to get in there cos it seemed like if I leaned my body, even if just 5 % of my body weight which is not so many there, the whole house would collapse. And all that in my head was I didn't want to be wet by toilet water (along with the TOILET) falling ON me. Anyway I stepped into the toilet c.a.r.e.f.u.l.l.y so afraid I'd stumble, roll over and .....
Anyway I survived the horror house and made it back to the car where Muhammad A and B were waiting. I dont really remember what we were actually waiting for but remember how we spent the time talking which ended up with Muhammad B's proposal lol. So he, with his broken English, tried to say if I taught him bahasa Indonesia he would marry me. Apparently he was REALLY aware of the language barrier hehe. I gave him the look ~.o thank god then he sat at the front seat on the trip home although he still could manage to bite me from there (its too complicated to share the details) :P
It was getting dark when we left the wooden house by the river and it was one hell a journey home as the Chinese guy drove like he was possessed. He literally made the car jumped like a frog and we were juggled and hit the roof and and I had to listen to the guys talking, yelling and ended up singing out of desperation in Arabic. Hahaha pretty funny cos whatever the Muhammads did the Chinese guy just kept on driving like mad.
It was fun, funny, horrifying, and there was a possibility of romance lol. Something worth to remember :) Thanks for reading.
