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.