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Hannah Brooks: Oh man, I can't even remember! The only word I seemed to learn from the Waria was beautiful, which is cantik. They also taught me how to sort of sing a traditional Javanese love song.What was the song?
Just a very famous and popular song about love. The Waria are really into ballads. Heaps of them told me how much they like Celine Dion and they serenaded me a few times with the song from Titanic.Lovely. What else did you get up to?
Well, the first time I met them properly and hung out with them was at the funeral. I was really sick with food poisoning at that stage and was trying not to throw up all day. Some diplomat at the hotel gave me all of his emergency drugs and they sorted me out, but Santiago and the team were trying to make me stay home and rest. There was NO WAY I was going to miss a Waria funeral. So that was my intro.Jesus.
Other than that I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor of the school with them, smoking Marlboro reds and talking shit in a very broken English/Javanese/gestures kind of way. They LOVED having their photo taken. I think it was later that first night that the cameras came out and they all wanted photos with the boys on my team. They were obsessed with the camera guy, Danilo. When he wasn't there for a day or so all they did was ask me "Where's Danilo?" They're boy crazy!I also hung out with Maryani's adopted daughter, Rizky, a lot. She's nine and super, super cute. All the Waria take care of her and obviously love her a lot. Because most of them will never have children of their own, little Rizky is like a blessing. We played lots of silly games together, high fiving all the time, teasing each other about the boys, and just being girls.
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Things turned pretty serious at the boob job and when we hung out with the prostitutes. The boob job was really intense to watch. Jamila, who was getting it done, barely blinked. But to me, a Westerner, the big thing was how unsanitary and unsafe it was. They just jammed fat syringes of silicone straight into her chest.What about the prostitutes?
We hung out with them in their small room and saw all their posters of hot guys and Britney Spears and shit on their walls. They had little snapshots, makeup, heels, etc. It was all very normal and girly to me in a strange way. Although the room was awful and about the size of a matchbox, the way it was decorated reminded me of my room (minus Britney) or any girl's room. Whoa, too much. Ask me more questions!It must have been interesting to get a non-western, gender-skewed view of femininity. Did you forget at any point that the Waria were born male and weren't just women from a different culture?
Totally. They were definitely more feminine to me than masculine. It was a very girly experience. But then I'd get moments and be almost shocked when things would happen to remind me that the Waria were born men.Like what?
Watching Maryani eat dinner. I was sitting next to her one night and she ate like a truck driver—ferociously. Another time, before a party, I was getting my makeup done in the salon and I asked, "Where's Maryani gone?" Very subtly one of our crew pointed to the person in the chair next to me. It was Maryani with no headscarf, no wig, no makeup, and wrapped in a sarong. I had been sitting right next to her for ten minutes or so and had absolutely no idea it was her.Watch The Warias here.Or if you're the literary type, give this a look.@RoyceAkers