To Be Loved

“We’re heading to the bus!” I announced excitedly.

“Yayyy!” the children cheered.

Two fifth-graders walked beside me. “We’re Ms. Lastri’s bodyguards,” Jeje said with a laugh to his friend, Bob. I laughed too, secretly flattered by their little knightly gesture.

After everyone settled into the bus, I offered, “Would you like to listen to music, or enjoy the scenery first?”

“The scenery!” answered a third-grade girl who was squeezed between her younger sister and her sister’s friend — the same two children she had been looking after before we set off, while waiting for all the students to gather and get ready to go.

They started blurting out whatever came to mind as they watched the road go by. Almost every passing car, she claimed, looked like her neighbor’s car.

“L! They’re from Surabaya!” she shouted whenever she spotted a passing license plate.

“Taman Sari! I want to go to Taman Sari!” Rena suddenly exclaimed after seeing a road sign pointing toward it.

She poked me from behind. I was sitting in the front seat right next to the driver.

“Miss, let’s go to Taman Sari!”

“We’re going to Batik Soendari this time. Have you ever been to Taman Sari?” I asked, twisting halfway around in my seat — a position my back did not appreciate.

Suddenly, Doni, who would only be starting first grade next year, joined the conversation.

“When I was little, I went to Taman Safari.”

“When I was little…” I repeated silently to myself, trying not to laugh at the fact that he was still very much little. 😭

“What’s good there?”

“There’s a tiger eating meat. You can’t get too close.”

“Ooh… scary,” I replied as though I had just received a very important safety warning.

I turned back around to face the front.

I took in the scenery on both sides of the road and found myself captivated by a vast stretch of wild grass swaying beneath a backdrop of mountains and a bright blue sky.

“Look to the right!” I called out to the children.

“Whoaa!” they exclaimed in amazement.

A moment later, Kinta, Rena’s younger sister, said something in Mandarin that I couldn’t understand. Rena replied in the same language.

Then Nico, who had been quietly sitting beside the three of them, suddenly asked, “Can you speak Javanese?”

“A little,” Rena answered. “What about you?”

“Of course I can,” he replied proudly.

Then he turned to the driver beside me.

“Can you?”

“Yes,” the driver answered, his accent sounding slightly different from the Surabayan accent I heard every day.

“Are you originally from Surabaya?” I asked.

“I’m from Kediri,” he explained.

“Oooh,” I nodded, finally understanding the reason behind his accent.

The children’s random conversations continued. At one point, they turned the word Sidoarjo into some silly joke that I can no longer remember, but for some reason it sent them into fits of laughter. I laughed too — not because I understood the joke, but because their laughter was contagious. 😆

Then they moved on to other equally random topics, discussing them with the seriousness of old men at a coffee stall.

Meanwhile, my colleague and I began commenting on the children’s antics in Bataknese, our ethnic language. It wouldn’t have been very nice to talk about them right in front of them, so we chose a language they wouldn’t understand. Hahaha.

Then a child called out from the back, “Miss, can we listen to #$%@^%?”

“Huh?” I asked.

His friend immediately helped clarify. It turned out to be the title of a Japanese song, which explained why I couldn’t catch it.

The song started playing, and another child quickly joined the queue.

“After this, it’s my turn, Miss.”

“What song do you want?”

“Project Pop — Super Star.”

I was surprised. I never expected a seven-year-old to choose a song that had accompanied my own middle-school years.

I listened carefully as the upbeat, disco-like melody filled the bus, carrying lyrics that were both playful and strangely poetic.

Then I found myself lingering on the chorus:

“I’m no wealthy merchant, rich and famous. Not a nobleman, not an aristocrat. I’m just a person who wants to be loved.”

Indonesia is incredibly diverse — its languages, cultures, ethnicities, ages, and backgrounds.

Yet perhaps what unites us is not only Indonesia, but humanity itself. Across all our differences, people everywhere seem to be bound together by one simple desire:

to be loved.