“Must taste good after the places you’ve been to, eh?” I nodded my head, and he stopped and tilted his with a searching look. “I’m curious, Harry, why all this microfinance stuff? I never really pegged you….” He trailed off, and I read his mind. I swallowed, took another drink, and answered for him.
“Kyle. You’re a smart guy and have obviously done well for yourself. The truth is, and maybe you didn’t know this about me before, I grew up without much and spent my whole professional life making sure I was comfortable enough not to have to worry about things the way my father did. Maybe I overshot a little, because at this point I have enough money not to have to worry for a few lifetimes. But that’s just it. I don’t have a ton of time left on this earth. I’ve got at most thirty years left in me. Since I also don’t have children or anyone else to pass it along to, it doesn’t make sense to hold on to more than I need. I don’t know, even if I did have kids, not sure I would be handing it over to them either. I’d rather people earned their money instead of a handout, no matter who they are. I suppose that’s why I find these small loans to the poor so appealing. It’s not charity. Even if it doesn’t move the needle much on poverty, at least it’s a little money going a long way for a family that really needs it.”
“I guess there are worse ways to spend your golden years. Actually, I envy you a bit.” He pulled the napkin across his mouth and let out a sigh, continuing in a slower and more deliberate manner. “At this point your only boss is some faceless deity who probably doesn’t even exist. Instead of frittering away an early retirement on a golf course you’re trying to do something good in this world and in a way that’s more sustainable than some pet charity project–some sinkhole. That sounds noble to me.”
“Well, thank you, Kyle. That means a lot to me.”
“Let me know if you ever need a hand in what you’re doing. It’s a different kind of banking, but it’s still banking and only a matter of time before the two worlds collide. High finance and low finance–at the end of the day it’s still finance, right? Besides, with the way the economy’s going these days, we might all wind up needing these micro-loans.”
“Hmmm, I guess I haven’t been reading much lately. I know we had a correction in March and the housing market is cooling off.”
“Oh, it’s worse. Haven’t you heard?” He gave me dark glance and his face took on an ominous expression. “The feds just took over Fannie and Freddie earlier in the month. Lehman Brothers collapsed a week and a half ago. Merrill Lynch bit the dust. AIG got a bailout. Personally, I think it was a huge mistake for Paulson to let Lehman Brothers go under, but the whole financial landscape is changing. In fact, yesterday the FBI said they were investigating the whole lot of them for fraud. Probably a good thing.”
“Shit, really? I haven’t heard any of this. I guess I’ve been under a rock for the past several weeks.”
“Yeah, big changes going on. You’d better check your positions, make sure you’re protected.”
“Definitely, thanks for the heads up.”
We chatted away for a few more minutes before we finished up and he walked me back to the MTR and saw me off. Kyle’s endorsement surprised me, and I thought about his words on the ride back. I might have posed as a banker for thirty years, but he was a real banker with a shrewd grasp of the future and the winds of economics. Kyle might have been right that seeking to eradicate poverty was a pie-in-the-sky notion that failed to factor in crucial aspects of human nature and culture. I would later recall that conversation many times when pondering the opportunities for big players to participate in these efforts to alleviate the effects of poverty. People are always going to suffer, that’s just the human condition. Giving them a hand up might ease things a bit. That was true of Bold up in Ulaanbaatar, who I wondered about over the past few months. How was that little girl of his? Did he ever get his clean cook-stove?
CHAPTER 2 | father jack
Jakarta was a mess. Kyle was right. I was glad that I looked into flights down to Adipala once I stepped off the plane, which couldn’t be had from the international airport. The closest one was Yogyakarta, a few hours’ drive from where I was headed, but there was a small airport a town over on the map from Fr. Jack. The one problem was connecting flights went out of the old military airport on the other side of Jakarta and I landed just in time for morning rush hour. I assumed four hours would be enough cushion to get there and avoid staying in Jakarta any longer than I needed to–judging by the plethora of traffic and people everywhere I wanted to avoid–but I nearly missed my flight.
I’m not sure what I expected, but the airport looked like a dilapidated bus station. I had just enough time to telephone Fr. Jack’s office and give his secretary my flight details before hopping on my flight. The plane was smaller than I imagined–a slight step up from a Cessna–a twelve-seater single prop plane with no bathrooms and two fresh young New Zealand pilots sitting up front like bus drivers. I was exhausted from the overnight flight from Hong Kong, and so I dozed off after take-off, tucked into a window with no one sitting next to me–the plane half-full. When I woke up, forty minutes later, we were descending over a misty jungle canopy and so low I thought we were going to plow through the trees. Those pilots earned their stripes on that flight, struggling to keep her steady like wrangling an angry bull to the ground. With a rough bounce we zipped along the concrete runway strewn with weeds like some derelict parking lot. I thought Dumaguete’s airport was small, but this one seemed like an old converted highway, the little red roofed terminal house resembling an oversized toll booth. I suppose it didn’t get much air traffic, and after the 24-hour journey, I was glad not to be greeted by yet another desperate horde asking if I needed a taxi.
I picked up my suitcase straight off the plane and wheeled it up to the little house, where I could see Fr. Jack’s face through the glass window, his shining smile covering a face structurally designed for scowling. The warm weather, his blue floral print shirt and relaxed manner, everyone moving at half-speed; the whole scene made me wonder if I’d spent the past half century living the wrong life. As I passed through the doorway, Fr. Jack lifted himself from a half-seated position against a wooden railing, exuding the same charm I’d seen in the footage Patrick had shown me. His eyes were a blazing blue burning with intelligence and a hint of childlike vulnerability.
“Good to meet you, Harry.” His powerful hand gripped mine while the other snatched my suitcase before I could even consider shrugging him off. His singsong Irish brogue seemed both out of place and befitting an already strange environment causing me to feel like I was on the edge of the world again. “How was your journey?”
“Oh, fine.”
“A bit long from Manila. You must be tired, yeah.” He said “yeah” as a half-question, but meant it more as a way of keeping the human connection. At least that’s what I took it for. I suppose it was his version of “you know what I mean?” that I heard sometimes back home. I would come to hear that little word of his so often that it grew to give me more comfort than annoyance.
“A little bit tired, but I’m alright.”
“Well, we’ll drop you at the hotel to give you a few hours’ rest before dinner.” Once he’d deposited my suitcase in the back of his Isuzu, he passed me a cold sweaty bottle. “Here, take this. You’ve got to drink plenty of water in this humidity. It’ll bloody well sap the life out of you, yeah.”
“You’ve been here a while,” I said to him more as a question as we both sat in the front seat. I took his form in after noticing the comfortable gait and his rapport with the locals.
“Oh, yes,” he bellowed and gave me a shrewd glance through thick glasses, tossing the Isuzu into reverse and stomping on the gas, lurching us out of the parking spot and on our way along a narrow road cut through the jungle. “Nearly forty years.”
“Wow, that’s a long time.”
“Well, it’s like this, you see.” I heard his tone change to storytelling mode. “When I finished seminary ba
ck in Ireland, the superiors told me I wasn’t a gentleman. That’s their code for not acting like an Englishman, yeah. Well, I told them if that’s what passes for a gentleman, I don’t want any part of it. Rubbish! I was a bad student anyways, so they didn’t know what to do with me.”
“So, you came here?”
“Not at first, no.”
“They sent me to the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Australia, exiled me.”
“Oblates?”
“The Oblates is a Catholic order to which I belong, yeah. I lasted a few years in Australia and didn’t fit in there either. I think the Bishop thought I was a rabble-rouser and perhaps a bit of a heretic. So, he exiled me over here. Perhaps he hoped that sending me deep into the jungle would cure me of my crooked ways.”
“Did it?”
“Hell no! I’m a bit arrogant and I know it. A bit of a crook, too–and I think the fella upstairs thinks that too, yeah. He mustn’t mind it so much because I keep doing the things I’m doing and receiving blessings on my path. I believe in getting things done and helping the poor, that’s my path. I also believe in gay marriage and that women should be priests and loads of other things that get the Church fathers back in the Vatican in a tangle. So, I’m here on my own… a blissful exile.”
His words stunned me. I don’t have a lot of experience around Catholic priests aside from being bored by their Sunday masses throughout my childhood. From what little I know, Fr. Jack didn’t espouse the usual party line. In fact, I’ve never even heard of a priest advocating for gay rights or women in the priesthood. What shocked me even more was how candid he’d been with a man he’d just met. Was he a fool or a very wise judge of character? Perhaps he said all those things just to provoke a reaction. As usual, I tried to put on my poker face, with limited success. One thing I could tell right away from Fr. Jack was his ability to read people. All the while he spouted his opinions he held one eye on the road and the other searching the contours of my face. It’s fair to say I was instantly captivated by this man content with no other role save striving to grow larger than life.
The trip to the hotel took less than ten minutes in a tiny town with few other cars on the road. Once we pulled into the driveway, I could tell from the décor and smartly-dressed porters that someone had put a lot of money into it. The whole scene seemed out of place amidst a neighborhood adorned with rows of run-down shacks made of plywood and corrugated steel-roofs all set up to do business. Tired and desiring as much luxury as possible, I wasn’t about to complain. I noticed a vendor across the street with a pyramid of coconuts stacked on an old wooden pushcart, making a mental note that I’d visit her at some point. Once we arrived, Fr. Jack grabbed my suitcase and strutted into the lobby, waving off the two young porters and saying something in Javanese that made them laugh. The petite front desk clerk stood behind a sleek new desk gleaming in white, her smile radiating warmth.
“Good afternoon, sir. Welcome to the Orchid. We are pleased to have you.” She tipped her head like an aristocrat while a colleague beside her beamed at me. I couldn’t help but feel like their first guest, noticing a few workmen installing a chandelier in the distance. I turned to Fr. Jack.
“New hotel?”
“Yes. We are getting more and more foreign visitors this way. If you’d come two months ago you’d have had to stay with me in the parsonage. Trust me, the atmosphere here is a lot more pleasant and the food in the restaurant is much, much better, yeah.” He turned away from me and said a few words to the clerk before shooting me an inquisitive look, “How long are you planning to stay?”
I turned to address the front desk clerk, scanning her name tag first. “Lia, I will probably stay for a week, maybe longer. Is there a room available?”
“Of course, sir. Everything will be taken care of.” She said this as a short boy who looked all of fifteen edged up to me carrying a tray with a drink on it that looked like iced coffee.
“Sir, a welcome drink? It is made with fresh coconut milk.” he said to me with a soft smile.
“Terima kasih.” I tried out a phrase from the little dictionary I picked up at the airport, glancing down at the book like a rookie traveler.
“You are most welcome.”
Fr. Jack and I exchanged a few more words before he left, promising to pick me up later for dinner. As excited as I was to jump right in and learn more about this intriguing man and his work, I was exhausted and desperate to keep my eyes open. After the porter showed me to my room and apologized that the Internet was not yet hooked up to the hotel, I fell straightaway to my bed and didn’t wake up again until the phone rang several hours later. When I answered it, I heard a female voice on the other end tell me I had a visitor. So disoriented was I that I had trouble remembering what country I was in–thinking through a mental list: Mongolia, the Philippines, Hong Kong… before settling on Indonesia. After hanging up I looked around the room at the furnishings as if waking from a nightmare and talking myself back into reality. With a groggy head and stooping body, I willed myself to push my legs over the bed and slump into a sitting position. Then I stood up. After changing shirts and splashing water on my face, I bolted out the door and down to the lobby, where Fr. Jack stood there as though he’d never left. Sensing my incoherency, he gave me a simple nod and led me back to his car. At least he knew when to keep his mouth shut.
We drove out to the beach, a barren scene save a few sandy restaurants. No promenade or even a sign of the kind of beach life that attracts tourists. A shame since I was used to any beach with a half-way romantic view already developed to generate as much money as possible. How could anyone squander the natural beauty of the landscape, even obscure spectacular sunset views with rundown shacks? Of course, even the crumbling boardwalks back home suffered under the weight of slow dereliction. At least someone slapped a coat of paint on them every few years to keep them going. I mentioned the untapped value of the beach to Fr. Jack as we sat down to a meal of fresh fish he’d selected from an old ice case missing a leg. We were the sole patrons in the restaurant, not to mention the only ones in any of the other half-dozen nearby shacks.
“Well, southern Java has a long way to go. That flight you took is not for everyone. The airport in Yogyakarta is roughly two hours away, yeah, which is where most people fly into. So, not much tourist traffic here and the locals are so used to the beach that they don’t really see its value–yet.”
“Too bad. Developers would give their right arm for a piece of a place like this back home.”
“Well, it’s all about location. We’ll get there, yeah. Businesses are starting to move in, which accounts for the hotel. By the by, where in the States are you from? Where’s home for you?” he said, taking a long swig from a bottle of local beer.
“I was born and raised in Baltimore, but I’ve been living in San Francisco for decades. Have you been?”
“To San Francisco? No, never enough time to see the places I want to see, but I seen the pictures, yeah. Beautiful pictures.”
“Yeah, you must have your hands full here.”
“Always something to do. In fact, tomorrow I’m going knocking about. Need to check up on the vocational schools and so forth to make sure everyone’s still minding the store if you know what I mean. You’re welcome to join me if that sort of thing interests you.”
“Sure, would love to. As I mentioned in my email, Patrick told me about your operations and I am interested in seeing whatever I can.”
“Some of them are quite a distance away, so I’ll come around in the morning and we can make our way up to them. After we return I’ll take you round the maritime academy here in town.” He took the last sip of many bottles of beer the both of us had before he dropped me back at my hotel to collapse for a long Benadryl-induced sleep.
Fr. Jack rolled up promptly at 7:00 a.m. and we set out to the vocational schools. After an hour of driving along a patchy paved road and past several villages, we stopped at an enormous compound surrounded on two sides by
white three-story buildings. A large administration building stood in the front, and on the other side of the main gate I noticed square-shaped pools covered with lily pads, a few small fields, and a rudimentary playground. Several people wandered about in bright blue school uniforms, and I caught sight of a few of them erecting posts for what seemed to be a volleyball net. Everything was connected by interlocking stone pathways, and much care had gone into making sure the grounds were kept tidy and clear of dirt. This seemed like a Sisyphean task given the outcroppings of vegetation that filled every available break in the concrete. Even the sides of the buildings traced streaks of mold so ubiquitous in this part of the world that it seemed futile to fight the scourge. Aside from the Shangri-La in Manila, I’d seen virtually no buildings without some blemish created by an environment determined to regain the upper hand over man-made edifices. It led me to wonder whether it might be easier to just give in and use a green-brown paint color for all exterior buildings.
We strode into the administration building and though I sensed the Catholic vibe throughout, I saw very few symbols to suggest that, save a small cross hung above a furled-up calendar on the wall next to the front desk. Everyone flashed a genuine smile to Fr. Jack, who smiled back with his twinkling eyes and garrulous bounce. His demeanor had shifted to boss mode. Nevertheless, he shot out funny quips in Javanese to each person who went by, touching them some way: on the arm, shoulder, or even pats to the head. Most of the staff looked young enough to have been recent graduates of the school, and in a way, it seemed like he treated everyone he met as a special child of his. The way of a Catholic priest, I suppose.
One of the women approached us with a graceful step in her manner, who Fr. Jack introduced as Aulia, the head of the school. She was young, and her beauty struck me down. With a graceful poise and a serious face, she gave me a magnanimous nod, though more of a long blink, but she did not offer her hand. She wore a brilliant white scarf around her head, so I could not see her hair–what I found most attractive in a woman. Yet without that distraction, her soft copper face was on full display, lips gleaming. Her eyes spread wisdom and strength and determination, and a touch of restrained sensuousness. It was as if stoical self-control had won the struggle for her soul, hinting at the possibility of a lapse into passion at any moment. How many men had fallen under her spell, I wondered. I smiled the best I could, trying to hide scandalous thoughts and reminding myself I was in my fifties and no longer nineteen.
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