Breaking Glass Bowls

I've been in the business of debating since I was 14. I've done the rounds of debating, adjudicating, and coaching.

When real life finally required that I give up all the "Madam Speaker"-ing and take up the responsibilities of my career, I was happy to part with debate.

I've done my part, I said. I've proven that the bright kid born withOUT the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth can hold her own amongst her more affluent colleagues. I don't need a privileged background to be a great debater. I won a national championship, I've been ranked amongst the best, I've coached many teams to many victories. I've spread it not only in the city where I grew up, amongst universities that didn't have a clue about it - but also in parts which were remote and which no one except my university's debate society wanted to go to. We went to Baguio, La Union, Bicol, Tacloban, Iloilo, Cebu, Marawi City, Zamboanga and Davao City.

I was proudest when a university from Mindanao reached the televised national finals of a nationwide debate we organised and run. (That was a good 15 years ago, and most of those societies we helped set up are still going strong.)

I told myself, I've paid my dues to debate. I've made a difference. All the lessons I learned, the experiences I lived through because I was part of that rich tradition - I've put right back in, a few folds more.

When I found myself in Indonesia - a stranger in a new country... home to my husband but a silent (I could not speak the language) hostile new place to me - I looked for something to do to while the time between finishing up my LL.M, learning the rudiments of the language, and easing my way into living in this country, where the customs are somewhat similar but also significantly divergent from the ones I'm used to.

I quietly signed in to adjudicate an English debate tournament where to my surprise I was classified as a 'C' adjudicator without the benefit of a written accreditation test. I found this all vaguely amusing - but when I mentioned it to my friends, they were seriously flustered. My former trainees were up in arms.

"Don't they know who you are?!?"
"Don't they know you sent the very first parliamentary booklet to Indonesia when debate was beginning there?"
"The 'A' adjudicators, how many international competitions have they been to?"

The rants went on and on. But I told them, let's all settle down. I told them, I'm enjoying the anonymity. I told them, I did not come to be recognised but to adjudicate and observe.

There's a universal dislike for newcomers dashing to the scene like they know how to run the show, telling the ... well, settled authorities that this or that is the right thing to do. I am prone to myself dislike newcomers who are like this, and therefore try not to be that newcomer everyone loves to hate.

Even now, almost two and a half years on the scene, I still feel like an outsider looking into the glass bowl that is the Indonesian debate community. If any, the pressure not to upset ways which seem set in stone is amplified more. Like some giant thumb forcing you to comply and not change what people are used to. To respect people's take on debate despite the fact that their 'years' of experience are probably a fraction of mine. And to veer away from the path of the trailblazer.

And it gets frustrating, knowing how a simple shift in a team's point of view could do them a lot of good but also knowing that the minute you say this piece of unsolicited advice, you would've dug the wedge between 'the settled ones' and the 'newcomer' even more deeply, with more enmity. So you're forced to keep your thoughts to yourself.

Sometimes I wonder how long before the status quo breaks, and gives way to a breath of fresh air? It's one thing to plant one's self securely in a bowl when you're just a sapling, but time will come when that bowl will be your prison and the only thing to do to ensure your blossoming is to break it.