My name is Elfie Goliat.
I am from Dobo.
Dobo is in the Aru islands in Maluku.
Dobo is the capital of Aru regency,
Ambon is the capital of the province.
When I was young I lived in Ambon -
I lived in Dobo.
Then I moved to Surabaya to go to high school.
There I would speak Dobo dialect every day,
But even though I lived in Surabaya,
I never learnt Javanese.
I could still use Dobo dialect.
Sometimes I call Dobo dialect Ambonese,
because Dobo is not very well known.
If I say I'm from Dobo, people don't understand,
they say "where's that?",
so I just say I'm from Ambon.
But the language I speak is a
little different from the language in Ambon
It's the language of Dobo, Southeast Maluku.
I came to America to go to university.
Then I got married, and had a child here.
I got engaged while I was living here.
So that's why I'm staying here,
because now I'm married.
I got married.
To a Javanese man.
In Aru, there are lots of small islands.
The islands are small and primitive.
There are no lights, no phones.
So people use candles.
They use candles or oil lamps.
And they speak different languages
in the different islands.
So even within Aru itself,
the different small islands
have different dialects,
but they can more or less understand one another.
So, when I was little, I used to live in Dobo.
My childhood was very happy,
because there was no...
I would play with friends every day,
run around in the street,
play with the animals.
There was no television, no lights.
So life was good in Dobo
because we spent every day by the sea.
I played on the beach every day.
Every day I would swim, paddle in canoes,
in and around the different islands.
And like I say, in Aru,
There are lots of small islands.
The smaller islands each have dialects,
like Dobo or Tual or Ambon,
these each have different dialects.
For example, if I was in Dobo
I would say "terimakasih" ("thank you")
Someone from Ambon would say "dangke".
"Dangke" is Dutch for "thank you".
And an Ambonese person might say
"se, sepi mana?" ("hey, where are you going?")
But I would say "kopi mana?"
And if I was talking to someone older than me
I would say "kakak", differences like that.