“If we eat at Mace’s, she always asks why I eat so little.”

“When you meet Mace, you will always got asked, have you eaten?”

That is how caring Mace is, the owner of the campus’s canteen who considers almost all students, including myself, as her own children.

Mace loves to serve my favorite meals; warm rice, pallumara fish and vegetables, when my monthly funds run low. Likewise with other students. But all our debts were never recorded by her.

“Remember your own bills,” she says to us. She never keeps track of our debts, as she cannot read and write.

Halifah (62), affectionately known as Mace, has been selling at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (FISIP) cafeteria of Hasanuddin University in Makassar for around 30 years. Almost every day, Mace opens her cafeteria from morning until 8 in the evening, even during academic breaks.

Mace spends more time in the campus’s canteen than at home. Since her husband and eldest child passed away, she can’t remember the last time she cooked at home. According to Mace, her house is only used for sleeping at night and doing laundry on Sunday mornings. The rest of the time, she prefers to spend at her canteen.

Yes, meeting us is her solace. For us, our relationship with Mace goes beyond that of a seller and a buyer. Just like the word “Mace” which means mother, she is like a “Mother” to us who are far away from home.

Mace: a cultural greeting to older woman, used especially in Eastern of Indonesia, to show respect and courtesy.