BANGARANG!
Had to get that out of my system. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m sorry. Hopefully you’ll catch on. I’m not sure if this is going to be just a story or trying to formulate a thought or what, so bear with me.
Saturday I went back to the train station our squad was dropped off at to begin our work in Bandung, and the coolest thing happened: I met the Lost Boys! You know, the ones from Peter Pan (more specifically the from the 1991 movie rendition: Hook) Yeah, it was awesome.
Let me explain:
We arrive at the train station: My idea of working with kids “at the train station” was that we would be hanging out on the tracks, playing around and trying to communicate with each other via broken English/Bahasa Indonesia.
Nope.
We walk across the street from the train station into a slum-like area with a few restaurants, car repair spots and a hotel where prostitutes and drug dealers take their customers. I have no idea where we’re heading in this place until I round a corner and see my teammates beginning to walk up a caged-in spiral staircase up to the roof of some random buildings.
“Guys, I’m not sure this is the right direction. The train station is the other way” says confused Justin to himself.
Then we reach the top. Atop the roofs of about 5 or 6 small buildings is an interconnected slab of concrete. Surrounding the roofline are hundreds of green plants all shapes and sizes. There are all types of chairs, benches, sleeping mats, etc littered across the surface. There is a large leather sectional couch under a canopy of netting and some material used for shade. There is a glass-encased room with more couches and a computer and three teens are chilling in there listening to music it seems. And the oddest yet coolest part of this rooftop oasis was that there were a few concave sections in the roof, full of water and koi fish. The teens and a few little children who had just arrived come up to greet us.
We are in Neverland, and these are the Lost Boys.
Part II coming soon.
