Undergraduate /
'The longhouse children' - experience shaped me / COSMOS and my brother [5]
a) How an experience shaped meCarrying our shorts, sunscreen, and mosquito repellant in our backpacks, we took a taxi from Miri to the Niah caves, crossed the Niah river, and walked two kilometers through the muggy Borneo rainforest to get to the longhouse. My family had decided to spend the summer in Borneo, and we were now hiking to a homestay in an indigenous Iban longhouse. Walking down a jungle trail littered with bright red centipedes, we looked up at the darkening sky that signaled impending showers and began to run. We gulped the thick, sticky air and shuffled our swollen feet across the earth. Suddenly, the hot moist dirt below us disappeared, replaced by a flimsy two-by-four wedged unevenly into the mud above a brown stream. Afraid of falling into the filthy water, but eager to escape the rain, we half-tiptoed, half-raced across the plank toward the longhouse.
The longhouse children crowded us, excitedly practicing their freshly-learned English. Our hosts, however, spoke only Iban. Sweaty, tired, and confused, we awkwardly introduced ourselves and followed our hosts into their apartment, taking their hot tea. Yet with the unbearable heat and terrible awkwardness of our pathetic small-talk, I needed a shower.
Our hostess led me to the toilet and handed me a sarong, a tube of exotically-decorated cloth; she stuttered, "You know?" and I foolishly nodded, afraid of the awkwardness that would ensue if I answered honestly. I hadn't seen any of these things before, and I didn't know what to do with myself. I felt uncomfortable being so obviously foreign and made it my goal to go unnoticed. I wanted desperately to blend it, to look like I knew what I was doing. After pouring several buckets of lukewarm water over my head, I picked up the sarong tentatively. I stepped into the tube and twisted it until it stayed on.
Shuffling self-consciously out of the apartment into the longhouse common space, I found my father and brother lounging on the bamboo floor. I stiffly began to sit down when, to my horror, my precariously tied sarong unraveled and fell to the floor! Letting out a yelp, I frantically gathered up the cloth and twisted it violently. My pathetic attempt to avoid awkwardness had backfired, and I realized that I would learn nothing by pretending to blend in.
Now ready to understand the unfamiliar and exotic Iban culture, I cautiously returned to our hosts' apartment, bunching the top of the sarong in my sweaty hands. When I found my host mother, I pointed to the embarrassing twists at my waist; she understood and patiently taught me how to pull, fold, twist, and tuck the cloth into a sturdy skirt.
When we left the longhouse four days later, I was a sarong master. I wore sarongs every day, playing with Iban children and peeling ginger with my Iban mother. I had become at home in the longhouse, and when we finally left after many goodbyes and photos, I crossed the wooden-plank bridge with ease.
Initially, the vast unfamiliarity of the Iban society overwhelmed me; my self-consciousness dominated, assuring me that pretending to understand their culture would be safer that admitting my ignorance. However, by realizing the pretentiousness of my behavior and by setting aside my pride to ask my Iban mother for help, I gained courage, confidence, and insight. Indeed, I came to love the Iban culture and learned to appreciate the excitement of the unfamiliar. I risked my integrity to explore the unknown, and my pride suffered little compared to the tremendous knowledge I gained. (590).
b) How my twin shaped meWhile unpacking my suitcase in an empty college dorm, I realized I was missing something. I had remembered my blue A-line skirt and pink polka-dot pajamas, but I had left at home something bigger, something more valuable: my twin. This was going to be the longest my brother and I had ever been apart, and, though I constantly affirm that I hate him, I felt incomplete without him.
During my first week at COSMOS (California State Summer School for Math and Science--the O's are just for effect), I thought a lot about this momentous separation. During icebreakers, my "fun fact" was invariably that I had a devilish, technically younger, twin brother, and I talked to my new friends every day about how happy I was to escape him. However, while I obsessed over my unfamiliar independence, I was establishing myself as Henry's twin instead of Sophie Goldman.
This all changed when I was forced to socialize on my own, without any preordained icebreakers. Sitting at the back of a stuffy school bus filled with fifty yelling math-whizzes, I was compelled to start a conversation with the strangers around me. Twisting around on the faux leather seats, I began cracking jokes and telling riddles, embarrassing myself shamelessly. I stopped relying on my twinness to entertain people and began telling my own stories. In fact, I stopped talking about my twin altogether. Instead, I made puns, solved riddles, ran excitedly to class. Essentially, I behaved like my brother: loud, social, uninhibited. Rather than observing politely and nodding where appropriate, checking my adventurous urges, I shrieked ecstatically at stories and climbed trees, always out of breath from laughing.
By channeling my brother's loud and shameless confidence, I realized that I cared about my twin, not necessarily because he gave me something to say during icebreakers, but because he had shaped me my entire life (minus that one minute of freedom at the beginning). He had helped me pull out baby teeth, eagerly offering various primitive or violent ideas and more than once trying to stick his little hands in my mouth; he had consoled me when I lost my Barbies, remorseful that he had cut their hair or ripped their heads off; and he had taught me to enjoy myself, demonstrating on a regular basis multiple techniques for not doing work. I did not hate him, as I had continually claimed, but loved him.
By the time I returned home, I appreciated and cherished my twin more than ever, despite his teenage-boy temperament. I had learned to combine who I was as an individual with who I was as a twin, and I had discovered my own quirky voice. (446).
