The first night in Indonesia, I was woken up a little after four by the first call for prayer for the Muslims. I have been to other muslim countries before, so that was not a surprise. Coming from a country, where everyone says that is religious, but almost no one goes to church if it is not Easter or they’re not over 60, I assume that surely, a lot of them don’t wake up at 4. I mean, even if they do, as they seem to be more openly devoted than my fellas, they go back to sleep. Because who wakes up at four? I mostly go to sleep at four.
Then the first night I spend in the same house with Indonesians in Indonesia, I experienced the biggest culture shock of my life. I was sleeping, heard the morning prayer and went to sleep right away. After a while I was woken up again by talks and I noticed that everyone was outside eating and chating. Great, I overslept, they will think I am a sloth for sleeping that much. I immediately looked at my phone, cause as a proud millennial or gen z-er ( not quite sure), it is the first thing I do in the morning and it was actually six in the morning! Six in the morning! My grandma, who goes to take care of her garden, sleeps at 11 pm and doesn’t need more than seven hours of sleep is not always up at six. I couldn’t and still can’t believe that people were up from so early.
Now, being with Indonesians for the whole duration of days, I don’t really know when they sleep. You text them at 2am, they reply, you want to stay out until midnight, they do too, but they are always up at four. Four is so early, that not even the sun is up. I once saw the sunrise, because I was up that early and it was such an achievement that I narrated it to my classmates as a story. They were equally amazed.
Naturally, the annoying part it is not that they are up, before the light of the day begins to exist (although wtf?), the annoying part is that some will judge you if you are not. Nine in the morning is a perfectly respectable hour to wake up, but here it is too late. When I tried to explain that in Greece most people are waking up after seven, I was met with gazes of disbelief. I mean they wake up for prayers and zumba at 5, how can they believe that at that time, the only thing I can do is change sides in the bed?
And now for the educational part of the essay: You don’t choose your bedtime, your DNA does. Yes, you can’t train yourself to sleep and wake up in certain hours. I mean you can, but there will be some hours for sleep that fit you better and that can’t change. Our evolution made sure that some people would be up at night, to protect the rest of the pack, those people are nowadays the lovely night-owls. And anyway, you loose the day, you gain the night. So stop trying to wake me up, because «that’s how it should be» if there is nothing to do (or if there is zumba), cause I will snooze you, like I do my five alarms.
The Indonesian Chronicles 