Later Liz brought me a meal at one of the small Turkish restaurants in Islington where Tony Blair and Gordon Brown used to hang out. I wonder where they are now. The next morning after a quick coffee and croissant in Cafe Deux Amis Liz headed North to see an ivory dealer in Manchester and I went back to my room to read Malam Tanpa Akhir, that frightfully exciting book by Agatha Christie. Who, by strange coincidence, was one of the people who first dug up the Nimurd Ivories
And there it is a jar full of moles. Just in case you are ever in Central London and overcome by the urge for a pickled mole. They have them to spare in the Grant Museum. One of the several University of London collections that I am planning to visit over the next few weeks and certainly one to put on your list of places to visit if you have a taste for bones and pickled animals. Liz came down on Monday and we spent most of the day in the British Museum - she is a Friend, you know - and in the evening we attended a frightfully interestinglecture on the priceless Nimurd Ivories that have recently bee acquired by the museum. You can see the shadow of Liz's hand on the photo above as she tried to snatch one and put in her pocket. The event was just for members so there was no riff-raff and no one under the age of 75. except me of course. - And Liz, he added gallantly. She is a Friend, you know. - The talk was fascinating. Apparently when they were discovered the ivories were huge wall panels, perfectly in tact after thousands of years. The archeologist had to employ local fellahs to hit them with hammers, jump up and down on them and break them into small pieces - or shards as Archeologists and their Friends call them. Liz is a Friend, you know.- and rub soot and dirt into them to make them look properly old. This process of sharding makes the pieces far more interesting and easier to share between museums, as well a creating a lifte time's work for dozens of archeologists piecing them all back together again.
Later Liz brought me a meal at one of the small Turkish restaurants in Islington where Tony Blair and Gordon Brown used to hang out. I wonder where they are now. The next morning after a quick coffee and croissant in Cafe Deux Amis Liz headed North to see an ivory dealer in Manchester and I went back to my room to read Malam Tanpa Akhir, that frightfully exciting book by Agatha Christie. Who, by strange coincidence, was one of the people who first dug up the Nimurd Ivories
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There will be a special prize for anyone who can set these words to music. Oh, we drank gin and soda1 and we ate Cheezy Cheese2 and passed the long evenings with parties like these. There's a djin down the toilet3 there's a ghost in the tree4 If you don't believe it is true, come out to Jogja and see. We drink the blood of our parents,5 we drink down the stars,6 then we ride home on bikes7 'cos we can't afford cars We'll all smoke kretek8 'til our throats are all sore and we'll laugh and we'll sing 'til our tonsils are raw chorus. People say there are classes but we don't know where. People say there are classes but we just don't care. People say there's a uni they call UGM9 Well, if they want to go there then that's up to them We play games like 'areshole'10 'til late into the night, then we watch all the old movies until it starts to get light We go to bed at daybreak to keep out of the sun. It's bloody hard work here; but hell, it is fun! There's mad Madi Richardson11 From Oklahoma. She was sent off to Jogja when her family disowned her. There's Adam who's been to every island out here; hunting wild shirts, and in search of free beer Lisa's dragged off our Postman12 and now she's locked her door. If she doesn't let him out we won't get our mail no more. There's Jimmy or Dimmy. Sometimes called James He may speak Bahasa Jawa, but he's crap at games. Then there's King Agus who looks down from his roof. He thought bules13 were crazy and now he has proof. And we can't forget Tom because he wrote this stuff, and could go on forever... But enough is enough!14 chorus. People say there are classes but we don't know where People say there are classes but we just don't care People say there's a uni they call UGM Well, if they want to go there then that's up to them 1Soda because tonic water was harder to find 2Cheezy Cheese. A rather nasty cheese flavoured processed cheese found in Indonesian supermarkets 3Toilet djins are not uncommon in Indonesia. The first we met lived at Madison's kos (boarding house) 4A Kuntilanak ghost that lived in the kapok tree opposite my house. 5This refers to the cheap sweet red wine Orang Tua, which may be translated as 'parents' or simply 'old man'. 6The common Indonesian beer is Bintang (star) beer. 7Most people had motorbikes. Nobody had a car. 8Kretek, the aromatic clove flavoured cigarettes that go so well with Bintang. 9Pronounced Ooo Gay Em 10Lisa amd Madi's favourite card game, otherwise known as Shithead. If it has I polite name I don't know it. 11All the following facts about ACICIS students are true. 12Friend of Agus, real name Posman. 13White people. 14Yes it is. After seeing Kit and Claire off at Kuala Lumpur Viv and I flew directly to Siem Reap, the town that serves as the gateway to Angkor.
Though I had heard lectures on Angkor and had written essays about it I was stiil unprepared for the vast scale of the whole temple complex. We hired a tuk-tuk (motorbike rickshaw) and spent four full days exploring the main sites but even then there were many that we had to miss out. There is plenty of information online about Angkor so I will not bore you with history and description except to say that the name Angkor Wat applies only to the iconic mountain temple itself; the famous temple with the huge stone faces is The Bayon which is found in the nearby walled palace/temple/city of Angkor Thom. The other temples are scattered around the plain beyond. The town of Siem Reap was curious as it was full of huge new hotels had a seemingly unpolluted river and a tidy riverside park, the streets were clean and all was extraordinarily ordered after Indonesia. As Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in South East Asia this was all the more curious and slightly disturbing. After the civil war was finally over a vast amount of aid and investment money must have poured into the country and Angkor, a one of the modern Wonders of the World, will have been seen to be a prime site for investment in tourism. Indeed, Geoff Ryman in his novel about Angkor The King's Last Song says many of the hotels in Siem Riap are owned by the military seeking to make fortunes from the tourist industry. Later we saw that the tidiness only extended to the edge of the outlying slums where a barrage prevented the rubbish and filth thrown into the river from drifting downstream to the centre of town. I found the whole place very interesting and also very unsettling. One feels war is always there in the background; the war crime trials continue and most families have lost someone in the killing fields. Even men still in their late thirties are old enough have been recruited by the Khmer Rouge and small bands of musicians made up of land mine victims play outside all the main monuments at Angkor. The temple of Angkor Wat itself appears on the modern Cambodian flag, as it did on the flag of the Khmer Rouge and almost every other Cambodian political grouping; such is its power as a symbol of Cambodian nationalism. Our guest house in Siem Reap, the MotherHome Guest House, was as good as many a three star hotel and all the staff delightfully friendly and helpful and yet despite the smiles and the cheerful banter I could not forget that this was the site of one of the most viscious civil wars of the twentieth century. I mentioned my ambivalent feelings about Angkor in an email to Brooke, who remains in Malang to finish her studies, and she sent me this poem by Brecht. I also tried rather inadequately to express my own feeling on seeing the monument to the Siem Reap killing fields after visiting Angkor and put that in too as I cannot do it in simple prose. Bertolt Brecht 1935 Questions From a Worker Who Reads Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ? In the books you will read the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ? And Babylon, many times demolished, Who raised it up so many times ? In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ? Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go? Great Rome is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them ? Over whom did the Caesars triumph ? Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ? Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it, The drowning still cried out for their slaves. The young Alexander conquered India. Was he alone ? Caesar defeated the Gauls. Did he not even have a cook with him ? Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down. Was he the only one to weep ? Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War. Who else won it ? Every page a victory. Who cooked the feast for the victors ? Every 10 years a great man. Who paid the bill ? So many reports. So many questions. a tower of bones we walked among the mountains built of stone carved with bas-reliefs of parades battles, ceremonies gods kings and dignitaries and finally we came across the tower of bones. here no vast impassive faces gazed down on crowds that stood amazed before taking photographs a small square tower painted white with walls of glass a simple structure, the minimum of fuss no carving, elaborate design or expectation the bones and skulls became the decoration and framed the words, 'remember us.' and the crowd not knowing what to say looked down and slowly moved away and there were photographs as if the bones had not the power of a picture would not last. the simple inexpressive faces of those about to die as though there was nothing left no tears no pleas no words, no fear not even a last despairing sigh what was there to be said these were not carvings of the dead oh yes there were photographs on the board beneath the tower we saw them briefly as we past. the woman with a drill placed behind her head the calm accepting look in her eyes still disturbs unsettles terrifies. she had stolen a cucumber a tour guide said it was such a trivial theft and such a very ingenious death Someone took a photograph and now her final hour is for ever fixed set fast. Later on the balcony of my hotel I swirled the ice around the glass And thought, oh well, All that is history; Ancient and contemporary. But this is now, that was the past. Though I had not intended to continue with this blog after leaving Java I find it has been hijacked by Kit so feel obliged to return. The attempted murder by faking an accidental fall into the crater of Mount Bromo obviously failed. I suspected Kit would not waste such an opportunity so chose the place where I leaned over to view the crater very carefully. There was a large flat ledge some six feet below and I arranged for a soft mattress to be placed upon it. I knew once I had been pushed Kit would flee the scene as quickly as possible and is far to slapdash and lazy to think about making sure his scheme had achieved its dastardly aim. A convincing scream was enough. Since Bromo I have revisited Sabah and toured the ancient city of Angkor with Viv. No I am back in England where I write this in between drinking tea and eating toast for the first time in over a year. *King Lear Act 1, scene 4 We are now in Sandakan after having an exciting time at Danum Valley Field Station deep in the Borneo rainforest. I am eternally grateful that my dear Father trained me in tracking and trailing. I still remember when I was four years old and we went for a walk in the Lake District’s Grizedale Forest. When we reached the dark centre of the forest my Father disappeared into the undergrowth muttering something about having spotted a pine-martin. I was left with a copy of Jim Corbett’s Jungle Lore, my penknife and a piece of string. Using the string and penknife I fashioned myself a more than adequate shelter after night fell and my father still had not returned. When I awoke I made my own way back over the fifty miles to Lancaster. When I arrived home my Father was so overjoyed to see me he burst into tears and clasped his head in his hands.. He was so inconsolable he hardly spoke for days after. The lesson was well learned though, and on the trails around Danum I was able to point out Orang Utan, gibbon, macaques, sambar deer, moon rat, mouse deer and a host of smaller animals and exotic insects. I cannot really believe my Father has gone, his presence is still so strong, like a kindly benevolent spirit, and when we visited the orange utan sanctuary at Sepilok as the crowds were leaving later after having watched the afternoon feeding of the orange utans an extraordinary incident took place. I had noticed in the background a tall, tanned and debonair man who looked extraordinarily like my late Father. Suddenly an orangutan rushed up and embraced him, whispered something in his ear and pointed at me, whereupon the both burst out laughing and ran off into the forest. The incident left me feeling strangely unnerved. On the Kinabatangan River. We are now staying in the home of Mariati, and Orang Sungai woman, who is our host while we explore the lower reaches of the Kinabatangan River. Over the course of three days we roamed the meanders, back waters and ox-bow lakes of the mighty Kinabatangan. Form our boat I spotted numerous proboscis monkeys, pig-tailed macaques, crocodile and orangutan as well as birds almost too numerous to mention, including several species of brightly coloured kingfisher and hornbill including the rare helmeted hornbill, the largest of all the hornbills. An impressive sight as it flew slow above us across the wide brown river. Claire and Viv, my travelling companions were most impressed with my knowledge and skill at spotting and photographing wild life. That night while trying to photograph an enormous crocodile, at least six meters in length, from the riverbank I received a sudden push from behind and was sent sprawling and sliding down the muddy bank towards the open jaws of the beast below. Luckily I was able to grasp a liana and haul myself to safety. I was furious at losing the shot and now only have a photo of a croc some 30 centimeters in length. I find it hard to believe someone could have deliberately pushed me. Surely it was an accident? The bank was deserted when I gained my former position. Later that night coming back from a walk around the kampung I shone my torch into the bushes looking for the red reflection of the eyes of tarsier, potto or musang when the beam fell upon the figure of a man standing in the shadows. It was none other than the mysterious man from Sepilok who had looked so like my father. He stepped forward, dashed the torch from my hand - why are torches so fragile? I seem to get through at least six on every holiday - and ran off into the darkness. Back to the UK. After the Kinabatanganan it was time to return home with Claire while Viv went on to seen the temple of Angkor Wat. Another strange incident took palace just after I had climbed the steps of the plane at Sandakan airport and had turned to have one last look at beloved Sabah when I saw the mysterious figure once more. This time he was just outside the departure lounge, standing on the edge of the runway, dancing in a bizarre fashion and shouting something like, I cannot be certain of this, ‘Free! Free at last! Cambodia here I come! I find myself in charge of this blog after its previous custodian, my father Tom Flemons, succumbed to a severe (and geographically anomolous) bout of sleeping sickness, although doctors have had some success in rousing him briefly from this state with carefully administered Bintang beer and kreteks.
I arrived in Indonesia to deal with the legal wranglings that accompany his falling into such a state, the lawyers needing my personal attendance to decide what to do with his belongings (three more kreteks, a quater-litre of parma-violet flavoured vodka, a green fake-pith helmet and various unlabelled products from the local apotek) - the words 'Argh! Burn it! Who knows what I might catch?!?' apparently not clear enough over e-mail. So, I found myself braving malaria, bone-crack fever and snails that crawl up one's nose and lay eggs, to arrive at Yogyakarta (pronounced and often spelled Jogjakarta, to my great confusion) airport approximately two weeks ago. Although a lot has happened, I shall have to be brief, as darkness is falling and the light of my computer screen attracts biting flies, larger biting flies and what appear to be a type of fly that bites - it is time to retreat into darkness and a mosquito net. I shall mention only the key events. After arriving at the airport, Claire (my girlfriend) and myself made our way to a delightful hotel, that, in what seems to be mandatory in nice hotels across Asia, offered wonderful banana pancakes and coffee for breakfast. Very handy when one has to then step out into the chaos and heat that makes Indonesia so terrifying and exciting all at once. Yogyakarta seemed remarkably invertebrate-free, which I have heard is due to insecticide being pumped into the atmosphere in a bid to control the bone-crack fever. Whilst somewhat reassuring, I can't help but wonder if this policy is why there seemed to be so little wildlife - only the odd gecko sitting forlornly, wondering where its lunch was and why, when a solitary mosquito did buzz by, it tasted so strongly of chemicals. Anyway, from here we visited the temples at Prambanan and Borobudur, both exquisite, both huge, both carved with great detail and care and, I assume, both written about in great detail elsewhere on this blog. I recommend that anybody with a large enough computer screen look them up on Google images, press their noses to their screen and pretend to be there. After a few days in Yogyakarta, spent (apart from the temples) haggling for sunglasses - 'No! We agreed that was for TWO pairs of sunglasses, give me that money back!' -and haggling for sandals - 'No! We agreed that was for TWO sandals, give me that money back!' - we headed to my father's house in Malang. Here we saw (after a becak ride and more haggling - 'No! We agreed that was for TWO people!...) one of Malang's great cultural institutions, a macaque on a toy motorbike, with a chain around its neck held by a man beating a drum. Occasionally, the macaque would get bored, at which point the chain would be yanked and it would try to liven up again, by wearing (a very loose term - read 'biting, throwing and sometimes balancing on its head) a fabric mask. I hear David Cameron, in a bid to make Britain great again, is planning on making those on the dole dance in a similar way to attract the tourist dollars. Judging from the collection bucket this monkey's owner held, he will surely succeed. By this point, Viv had joined us and we set about planning a trip to Mount Bromo, the perpetually smoking volcano, to dispose of my father once and for all, followed by a grand party to celebrate. The trip to Bromo started with watching the sun rise - which consisted of watching a gradually redenning spot of the horizon for two hours before turning around and seeing the sun somewhere completely different - followed by stunning views of the mountain and the other nearby volcanoes rising up out of endless clouds below us. After confirming that this volcano was indeed suphurous enough to match my father's legacy, we headed down from our vantage point in a jeep to get their. To get to Bromo, one has to travel through an expanse of sandy plains, surrounded by hills on all sides (the crater of an enormous, long-dead volcano) to reach the point where you are close enough to walk. Or sit on a horse to do the walking if your are lazy (we, of course, are not). The end of this walk consists of a flight of two-hundred and fourty nine steps to the rim of the volcano, whereupon we threw my father into the steaming crater hundreds of feet below, to much applause and endless photos from the Indonesians there. Unfortunately, even the bubbling maw of Bromo was horrified by his presence and he was promptly spat out, back to us, in disgust. Viv noted that, on our way back down, there were ten more steps than on the way up, suggesting that the great mountain had shuddered at the thought of swallowing him, rising higher to prevent any future parties from disposing of him in the same way. After angering the gods of the volcano, we made a swift departure and headed towards a nearby temple as means of penance. Perhaps it was only this that prevented Bromo erupting that day more fiercely than Krakatoa could ever manage. Back at my father's home at 'Jlmbmndlagi', as he was fond of pronouncing the road it sat on, we held a party a few days later, although the burden sat heavy on us that the eternally-sleeping one still needed disposing of. It was attended by many of his acquaintances, who wanted to ensure he was truly leaving (and of course those who were unfortunate enough to share the house with him), but to have to describe the party and each of those people who I have been thoroughly pleased to meet would take my writing far into the night - and it must be late already, as the clock on my father's computer reads '16.34', which I know he would somehow interpret to be close to, if not after, midnight. If he had ever bothered to work it out, anyway. From Malang, we travelled to Tawau, where we are planning our expedition into the deepest, darkest jungle of Danum Valley, where we are hoping to release my father back into the wild, should he rise from his slumber. Here, in Tawau, we have been able to see the Indonesian food chain in something like its natural, organic glory and it goes something like this (although I am fully aware that 'food chains' are frowned upon as being far to simplistic in the lights of new trends such as 'food webs' and 'menus'.): Cockroach<Larger cockroach<HUGE Cockroach<rat<ENORMOUS rat<Scrawny, blind kitten<Larger Cat<Four-foot-long Monitor Lizard<Local restaurant<Unaware vegetarian<Biting fly. Bear in mind that this food chain may at any moment be changed in the light of new, or correct, science and that the place of cats in it is highly disputed due to their tendency to ignore the rats and share the seafood with them instead. At risk of becoming part of this food chain myself, I must now leave this blogging for another day, when the sunlight, in its creeping illumination of my father, scares all that is slimy, crawly and spindly back to the crevices from which they are now emerging. To all who have read this far, if it's toothy and scaly: don't stroke it. Kit The day after tomorrow I leave Java forever and there will not be time to write another entry. I have written about my mixed feelings about returning to the UK and it seems appropriate to close with some thoughts on the blog itself.
It originally started out as an easy way for me to keep in contact with friends and diary at the same time. It did not really work out like that and in retrospect I think it would have been easier to have used Facebook to keep in touch and have kept a private blog for myself thus avoiding boring anyone but myself. However once started I wanted to see it through until I reached this point when I am relieved to be rid of it. Writing online in a country like this with fragile internet access means writing very quickly with no chance of revision and often no time to correct the spelling and grammar. There are other problems too, even though there is a good internet connection I can barely see the keyboard in this dark cybercafe where I write this. Thus for quick, easy communication in short sentences Facebook would have been a far better choice. There is also the fact that in an internet world there is very little left to say, if anyone wants to know about life here in Java there are tens of thousands of better places to visit than my blog. So this blog is something of a mistaken concept, as indeed the whole year in Java was. But isn't all our futures based on mistaken concepts? It seems to me that actually I had very little, or even no choice at all, in what I did here, where I went and who I met, I was simply carried along by the currents of happenstance, washed up from time to time on tiny crowded islands where people spoke in strange tongues and whose lives were bounded by bizarre inexplicable rituals. The indescribable beauty and sadness of chaos, the Abyss of Birds, can only be experinced, imagination cannot give the slow crawl over rough ground, the thorns and the heat of the sun or the sudden unexpected lightening flash. Thanks to all of you who have read these pages and kept in touch through them. Your messages were often a delight to read and savour, first thing in the morning and late at night, especially those that told me what you had been doing and what was happening back in Britain. Now I close, pay at the desk, and head off for one my last few ice-lemon teas in Malang. Goodbye. Sitting in Java Dancer, the best coffee house in Malang, after retrieving my passport from Imigrasi, I realise how few days I have left now and that I will never climb Gunung Semeru, visit the Karimunjawa islands or see the ruins of the ancient Majapahit capital at Trowulan. Viv came back from Ache late last night and I expect Kit, Claire and Viv to turn up here any moment for cake and coffee. I mentioned that Maddy and Lisa let them selves get swept away – their chosen lifestyle – while swimming and could have vanished forever into the vast Indian Ocean, well, it seems there was another minor skirmish with Death while on the plane coming back to Java. According to Maddy she woke up when the engines stopped and she supposed they were coming in to land... until she realised they still had at least another hour to go. Then the plane plummeted, passengers and aircrew screamed bersama-sama to Allah, Christ and the Lord of Profanity. Death took a closer look at his catch and on seeing they were mostly minnows, and sniggish ones at that, he threw them back in disgust. The engines coughed and started, the plane levelled out and carried on towards Jakarta and the cabin crew gibbered, unable to speak a single word of Indonesian or English. Viv's account was somewhat more minimalist, 'I think the plane juddered, or something.'. Death having taken pity on he as he threw back the tiddlers pressed upon Viv his consoling gift of amnesia. Yesterday I wrote about things I will miss in a general sort of way, today I am writing about more specific, more personal things; the silence just before dawn and the calls from the mosques that start the day at first light; the chattering and bickering of the little munias as they squabble for berries outside my window; the thousand overpowering smells and tastes in a busy market; the loneliness and the press of the crowd. Java attracts more than its share fugitives, frotteurs, foundlings, flaneurs, fools, fakes and frauds from the West and often the quiet hour before dawn was spent wondering into which category I fell; the first I hope, but probably one of the others. There is always the thought of redemption when one travels later in life into remoter areas and other cultures; and it is always an imaginary place one travels to, so that in effect there is no arrival and no departure. As Italo Calvino wrote of Venice, there is no need to even rise from your chair, Venice is always present in the mind, countless invisible cities in countless forms. So it is with this Java I have created, there is no clear line, no horizon or boundary fence that delineates the real from the imaginary. The crackle and sweet taste of smoke from a kretek, the coldest possible Bintang at the end of the days; sweat that pour in streams down your back until you think that, like the Squonk, you will soon dissolve into nothing more than a pool of salt water and bubbles. There are people I will miss, but also the creatures that seem to be barely clinging on to existence in an island so packed with humanity there is room for little else; the spider in my garden in Jogja, Tokay the gecko, the Respectable Skinks, the innumerable ants, the munias – yang tersebut – the bulbuls, always on the look out for an opportunityy of some kind and even the small flies, the invisble noseeums that feed on feet. All these will be missed. The silent smoking volcanoes that appear and disappear through the mist like Basho's Fuji, First you see a mountain Then no mountain.... Gunung Merapi, Gunung Bromo, Gunung Arjuna, Gunung Semeru, Gunung Merabu and all the rest. The rectangular brown pools of water that become bright green fields of rice, the impossibly steep hillsides carved into terraces that grow cabbages, onions, beans and tobacco. These will be missed. The sudden smiles and laughter, the absurd good natured haggling over prices and the ability to fix or find another use for anything broken. These too. It seems I am only just beginning to get used to this country; I have just taken the last step down off the aeroplane and have not yet even shown my passport and its time to turn and climb the steps again. But no matter, Java is , where it always has been, in my imagination and I travel on to more remote, more difficult areas in search of that damned elusive something, the Snark, the Boojum the Squonk – yang tersebut –or just that simple thing what Jim was looking for. I have surrendered my passport and temporary residence visa, KITAS, and in just over a week my year in Java will be over and this blog will close. What is there to be said that I have not said already? I suppose there the news: Claire seems to have recovered from a mixture of sakit perut and exhaustion and she and Kit taking it easy today. Tomorrow I will take them into Malang town centre. Not Malang Town Centre, because MATOS as it is known is the biggest, modernest shopping mall in Mallang and despite its name is not the to centre, that is the small park which is the alun-alun, with its by mosque church and Post Office. I have been thinking about my impressions of Indonesia, or rather Java as I have not been to anywhere else in Indonesia except for a brief trip to atypical Bali. I have visited Vietnam and Thailand because thanks to Air Asia it is much cheaper to visit other countries than to fly between the islands. Among my enduring memories of Indonesia will be the friendliness of the people and their relaxed attitude to deadlines, meetings, exams and so many other things contrasted with what is still a rigid hierarchical system where the position itself demands respect rather than the actions of the person holding the position. The crowds and streaming traffic of one of the most densely populated islands on earth will be be hard to forget and the marvel of cooperation that allows transport to operate at all – most of the time- is still impressive even after being here a whole year. 'In the West you have rules, here we share the road.' The rickety buses of Logjam often with only a steering wheel and accelerator left for the driver to concentrate on. Which is probably just as well, because the distraction of dials, brakes, gears and such like would interfere with conversations on the hp (hand phone/mobile) with the passengers and the enjoyment of a cigarette or two: the nippy little blue angkots of Malang, too tiny for clumsy Western bodies, 'You are too big. Why don't you take a taxi?' The answer to that question is that unlike Jogja Malang taxis are hard to find and expensive too, so we have squeeze our bulky bodies into the little angkots, treading on toes, tripping over bags and pressing our selves in to a space between two tiny Indonesians. And as I said before no one 'budges up'. On my way back from the Kantor Imigrasi this morning I took an angkot even more packed than usual, there was a hugely fat -for an Indonesian – woman, a pregnant woman who looked as if she was about to give birth at any moment. I rehearsed the phrase, 'Air panas! Banyak air panas!' with various stresses and tones so that it would sound as it does in the Western movies, though where we would get lots of hot water from was another matter. There were the girls loaded down with shopping and a new printer in a huge box a frail and friable old mad and all the other passengers. Barely room for me to et on and for the first time I heard the the passengers cry 'Budge up!' in Indonesia – I did not catch the phrase, it may have been Javanese – to a portly middle-aged lady who sat clutching her shopping bag. She dug her heels in and refused to move. 'I get off soon.' was her excuse. So I handed over my bag to a helpful passenger and scrambled over bodies and baggage to the tiny gap between two people that had opened up at the back of the bus, then wriggled down between them. No sooner had I finished wriggling and was firmly jammed in position when the angkot stopped and took on two more passengers. It is a rare even when they can't squeeze in one more. But that is a good thing because if you don't mind a squeeze you never have to wait long for a bus to come along and for a flat rate you can go anywhere along the route; the only disadvantages are the lack of route maps and late night buses. Though late at night you can always find someone to take you home on the back of their motorbike if you get stuck. The people on Java, perhaps because it is such a crowded place, are intensely sociable; having a somewhat solitary nature I found this both attractive and frustrating, the continual requests for group photographs, the formal and semi-formal events with endless speeches and convoluted tributes and thanks and the rare opportunity just to enjoy being alone without looking like some kind of pitiful and friendless social pariah. I remember walking around the ruins of the hill top palace of Ratu Boko when a group of students from the Islamic University who were having their group photo taken saw me. 'Look at that lonely bule! Let's ask him to join our photo!' So I was dragged into the group and now there are Indonesians looking at the pictures of their outing to Ratu Boko and asking, 'And who is that strange looking bule at the back?' Everyone will have forgotten so I will probably be elevated to some visiting Professor of Archaeology from Oxford or Yale. From the sociability comes the intricate system of networking without which nothing seems to work. To get things done you have to know someone who knows someone, or is related to someone who knows someone and owes them a favour. And people always do know someone who knows someone who knows someone, and if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who owes you a favour then what is the point in doing things like an internet search, looking at adverts and brochures or reading the small ads in the papers when you can simply pick up your hp and talk to the first person in the chain? This personal approach is fine but it does mean you have to the first link and that can take a lot of cups of coffee. At the end of a year I was still finding it frustrating that small businesses did not have web sites and that tourist information offices were almost devoid of printed information and the primacy of the hp as the chosen means of communication if one cannot chat face-to-face over a snack and a drink. Letters – unless 'official documents' when they become essential – and emails are scorned and even texts are sometimes answered reluctantly, conversation is the thing. Is this why there seems to be a lack of interest in putting up useful signs? Advertising abounds. If roads, stations and places of public interest had signs, why, nobody would have to ask any questions and get into a friendly conversation that would lead to the discovery that your new found friend knew someone, who knew someone who was related to someone who could repair that leaky sink that you had been trying to get fixed for the last six months. As a bule one may be attracted, frustrated or amused by life here but it is always at a distance;we can never escape our wealthy and privileged position that simply being born in the West has given us. The other night Agus summed it up when talking about being picked up by the police for singing satirical and political songs with his band – censorship is less than it was but is still here, especially the religious kind -, if the police pick up a bule most things can be smoothed over with a smile and the payment of a small 'fee', but for an Indonesian not from a wealthy or privileged background there are no smiles, just a beating and a night in the cells if they are lucky. We rarely see the darker side to Indonesia beneath the smiles and hospitality but if we do it is often in the form of inadvertent, and sometimes blatant, racism towards Africans, Chinese and the tribes people of other islands and it serves as a reminder that sometimes the friendliness can evaporate and old hatreds surface as it did in the massacre of the Communists in the 1960s when up to a million -maybe more, maybe less no one knows exactly -were killed or imprisoned for life, all with complicity and tacit approval of the West – the dreadful persecution of the Chinese in the 1980s and the continuing Islamic/Christian violence. Despite the recent bombings in Bali and Jakarta we are in a time of comparative peace and stability and Vivien and the girls have been able to travel to the most Muslim part of Indonesia, Ache, without running into any difficulties of hostilities, although I have wait until they return in a day or two to hear the full story. In my time here I have only seen the best side of Indonesia and hope that the treatment I received as a bule will eventually spread to all levels of society here and all ethnic groups. I hinted at bribery earlier when talking of paying off the police and in all fairness should say that although I know from the news that corruption is rife among government officials and people in high office I have no personal experience of it. Airport taxis excluded! I was told to offer the newspaper reporters some 'travel expenses' to ensure the show got a write up, they refused to accept anything saying the hospitality and show itself was more than enough. All the low ranking officials I have met have done their jobs efficiently without any hint of extra payment. The man at the ticket office at Candi Mendut when I gave a 10,000 note for three 3,000 tickets cheerfully asked, 'And a thousand for me?' I could have said no and given him a lecture on the responsibilities of the public servant, but who would be so churlish to answer such a polite request in that way? I hope the billions and millions that are skimmed from the top get returned to the public purse and used for welfare, education of transport before the odd thousand to the people right at the bottom is condemned. There is a lot I will miss when I return but not the inequalities of life here, the lack of social services for the poorest and most needy and the intermittent bouts of sakit perut. The thing I look forward most of all is to walking alone on the heather covered fells and in green woods and meadows that are filled with birdsong and wild flowers, and a cool wind blowing. The title of this blog comes from a subtitle translation of 'God looks after his own.'. It seems to me something of an improvement on the original. The creator God having cooked up the universe and everything in it goes back to cleaning the oven rather than worrying about the fate of all the pasties, puddings and pies that came out of it. I urge my readers -both of them - to use this phrase as often as possible in the hope of making it common parlance. While God was cleaning his oven we, Kit, Claire and myself, made a long overnight bus ride from Jogja to Malang. The minibus, The Travel as it's known here, was supposed to arrive at 7pm but came at about 9.30. They put the blame on heavy traffic but as Germany was playing Argentina in the World Cup that night I suspect football. After a long and tiring ride we are now in Jalan Mandalawangi. Actually KIt and I are in Confetti using the internet while Claire is in the house recovering from sakit perut. Kit's green hair and torn clothes have earned me sympathy from most Indonesians, especially when I explain that the poor boy is gila. |
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