TWO DAYS WITH TINA

Tina was a young girl around 15 or 16 years old. At least that's what we heard from her mouth and from how she looks I believe her. Her mother told us that she does not know exactly the age of this daughter of her, but as long as she remembers she's not yet 20.

We decided to keep her for two days with us for some reasons:
1. Happy saved her from some men on the street.
2. It seems she was either in depression or mental dissorder situation, or simply a victim of domestic violence.
3. We didn't get clear information from her about her family, when she has left home, and where she was going.

So what you are going to read here is our experience two-day with Tina: Saturday-Sunday (4-5October 2008).
We took her along with us on our weekend trip. It was a combination of duty trip and week end for us.
At first we had so much fun with her singing along the trip. But it slowly turned to become stressfull situation for us. First, she peed with her pants. She had tied her pants too tight (dengan simpul mati) that nether she nor we can untie it. Second, she was just tirelessly and unstoppably singing with her loud and unmelodious voice (hahaha)along the way. When we asked her to stop, she would say yes, but would start singing again in less than 10s....

We were on our trip to GOMO, sending off our students for their three-months field study (PPL). I made some observations about her.
1. I noticed that Tina always tried to attract the male students by singing louder and dancing "goyang dangdut" whenever there is male student around. I can tell that she knows and have experienced sex and is sexually active... Poor Tina!

(Guess what, Tina had dangdut performance in teh village; down at the river. We decided to go swimming while waiting for the late lunch to be served. And while were swimming, Tina made a dangdut performance in the SUSUA river. The people got free entertainment, and Tina too was happy to be the centre of attention.)

We stayed over night in Teluk Dalam, at HARUS DAMAI hotel. A simple hotel facing the lagundri beach. uffff dear, Tina kept us awake that night! Especially Happy and I.Putri. She was shouting, crying, and wanted to run away at one point and kill herself at other point, and then threatening happy for unclear reasons, calling happy with different name.

The depression was back!
I understood only a litle because she was speaking in bahasa Nias. From I. Putri I understood that she wanted to run away or kill herself because she was afraid that we were planning bad against her, planning to sell her to some men... (ohh dear, another story needs to be discovered! I am really sorry Tina, you must have gone through some traumatic experiences. I am really sorry that we couldn't do much for you).

the next day, we lost her! At least, we thought we have lost her. I saw her walking along the beach while I had my morning swimming. The wave was too rough for her to be able to hear me calling her. When i turned my head, she was already gone!
But she came back just in time, when we had our breakfast, ready to move. So we came back to gunungsitoli with her.

On our way back, we discovered that Tina has stolen one hotel's cap!! (Haha..... you can imagine what the hotel must have thought of us. i often stay at that hotel, so the hotel staff know me personally). But of course you cannot get angry. Instead, I tried to speak with soft voice to her, telling that what she did was not right, and asked her to promise not to do it again. (she said yes,yes, yes, but only in half day, we discovered that everytime we did not watch her, she tried to steal something from our bags, or at least Happy's bag).

By that time,we already had some info about her and a number of people claimed to know her personally and promised to bring us to her home. So by the end of the second day for me, or third day for Happy, we brought Tina back to her family, to her parents.

A small hut with soil ground. There her parents and younger brother and sisters
live. We brought Tina home. We left Tina some money, and asked her mother to take care of her. There we learned that Tina is married with one sone, a two-year old little boy who is now being taken care of by his father, Tinas husband.

The house was suddenly so crowded with people. Tina's return has become a big story in the village. From the whispering and their eyes, I understand that the people were curious and wanted to see whether we were just normal people like them or not. It was just hard to believe that we brought home in good shape a gilr considered caezy or mentally sick by the people.

That part is really sad!

So we left Tina's house half relieved and half feeling lost!
But honestly, it was just another experience for us!
Thanks Tina for the opportunity to experience that.