Today I took my very second selfie. It was especially exciting
because I got to dress up as well.
My new hostel friend and I spent the whole day walking
around the city of Kota Kinabalu. We went to the market, ate strange fruit
(Great prog rock song title, someone go write that song), and stumbled through
conversations in Malay with the excessive use of hand gestures.
We went to the fruit and Sunday markets. Street markets
always feel the same to me, in the US and every other country I’ve been. And
usually I’d write a whole blog post about something airy and profound sounding
like “Capitalism influences people to create goods that no one really needs, such
as trinkets, fried foods, and animals kept in poor conditions, avoiding more
critical issues that could improve the human condition”, but I’m tired, and you
get it.
After the market we trekked to the City Mosque. The sun was
hot, as it always is, around 5,778 Kelvin, but today, in this location it
caused the air around us to be 32 Celsius and very humid. The backs of my
calves got burned because I forgot about them. I am now constantly reminded that
they exist as they rub and chafe around the back of my knee. But I enjoyed the
weather.
I had expectations about what you could and couldn’t do in
and around the mosque. In general, in Holy places I tend to be on my best
behavior. Except in my own church of course, cuz its mine and I feel
comfortable there, so why would I put on airs?I thought I had read somewhere in
my Borneo book that non-Muslims were not allowed to enter the mosque. At first
I was like, that’s odd, wouldn’t you want to welcome as many people to your
religion as possible? And then I was like, oh well I get it, you wouldn’t want
literal busloads of Chinese, Korean, and Australian people poking their nosy
noses in your place of worship.
But this wasn’t the case at all. We peeked into the
entrance, which didn’t really require peeking, as it was just a massive
archway, and saw many people who didn’t look especially Muslim inside. I’m
quite shy about asking for/about things, but my companion was much more
comfortable inquiring. She approached a man who was welcoming people inside and
he basically said “Sure you can come in, but you have to cover your forbidden
parts”, which meant my rapidly reddening knees and her hair. He directed us
back to the entrance to the mosque grounds where we could rent clothing to
enter the mosque. Great!
A small lady quickly shuffled towards us and dressed us in
Islamic garb. I was too tall for my first… um dress? Not sure of the proper
terms here, my apologies. She laughed, because I was already practically
kneeling to have her throw another layer of fabric on me. She also gave me a
nice topi (Malay for hat… again, not sure of the terms). My friend and I were
spun back onto the grounds like in that scene in Aladdin where he gets dressed
up as a lady. You know the one? But it all happened so fast and we looked so
different and we were laughing at ourselves and what our families would think.
A very sunny day.
We went inside and took off our shoes and it was indeed a Holy place. It just felt good ya know?
