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Published: January 25th 2008
Hotel Bali
View of hotel using 'colour isolation' feature on digital camera - just showing off my newly (expensively) digital camera skills acquired through a course on digital cameras I attended in Oxford before leaving on this tripDear All
Long time with no blogging but lots of travelling - now we are settled in New Zealand for a few weeks I’ll bring the blog up to date starting with our time in Indonesia,
After leaving the children’s home in Thailand at the end of November I flew to Indonesia (Bali) to meet Colin where we lived for two days in a luxury beach side hotel - a bit of a contrast to the cockroach farm passing itself off as a hotel which we moved to two days later in Kupang, West Timor.
Bali and West Timor are just two of the 17,500 island of Indonesia that make up the archipelago which straddles the so called ‘ring of fire’ along the Pacific’s colliding tectonic plates. Indonesia is a zone of geophysical violence; earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and resulting tsunamis. Even as we slept in our Bali hotel paradise there was an earthquake in Kalimintan which woke some of the guests - so I can now officially say ‘I slept through an earthquake’!!!
Colin had to return to Kupang, the capital of West Timor, to give a presentation of his study to a meeting of hospital managers
Overdressed
Wearing the lovely gifts given to us by Colins' colleagues. Colin has a traditional Timor jacket, mine is a sarong that has been handpainted with gold. from across Indonesia. Once business was completed we were requested to attend a farewell dinner in Colin’s honour at which I was presented with a number of gifts - the sort of dinners I like!!!
West Timor is on the far Eastern end of the Indonesian island chain that curves down from the Malay Peninsula to Australia. It is a lot nearer Darwin than Jakarta and accidents of geography and history have put it last in the line for practically everything - water, natural resources, education, health and tourist attractions. In spite of this they are the most charming and seemingly happy people and those with whom Colin had worked for the previous 5 months were obviously were very fond of ‘The Big Friendly Giant (BFG)’ from the UK. It seems that they have persuaded him to return in June 2008 for 3-6 months to follow up on the project.
Colin's assignment was arranged via the government funded NGO 'Voluntary Service Overseas' (VSO) in co-operation with GTZ which is the German Overseas Development Agency so any further work will be co-ordinated through them. It looks like there is a need for IT training on the project so I
BFG
..with work colleagues may go with him this time if ‘mother care share’ arrangements permit. I would love a stint there with Colin; it is a fascinating place particularly given my current interest in world religions.
There is an Indonesian motto ‘Unity in Diversity’ which is so suited to a land of 300 ethnic groups and more than 700 languages and dialects. The government officially recognises six religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism but mysticism riddles all the faiths and the animistic roots of the people are evident everywhere.
Bali is a Hindu enclave (which suited the El Queada bombers as they could make their point killing westerners without Muslims at the same time). With a 1000 year history, much of it as an independent state with its own empire, it has the most wonderful, living artistic heritage - painting, sculpture, music and dance - the last with the funny eye movements and subtle hand gestures (see picture below)
To say Balinese are religious, would be an enormous understatement. Religious ritual dominates their lives. The day and every meal started with offerings in the shrine (a woman’s duty!) of dried flowers and food in beautifully woven baskets, and prayers. On
Balinese dancer
This graceful beauty is a young man festivals, of which there are many on the special 200 day Balinese calendar, families visit several major temples taking offerings of food where they prayer and go through cleansing rituals. Every house and even businesses and hotels have a shrine somewhere, however small and a “guardian” statue at the entrance. Every other building seems to be a temple of some kind and statues and trees are dressed in cloth, which is cleaned and replaced frequently, as they are deemed to have a spirit. For Westerners this is all a bit overwhelming, but this religious dimension is what undoubtedly makes Bali a safe and friendly place to be. Incidence of muggings even in the tourist area is very low and there was nowhere in Denpassar that was unsafe to go, even alone and at night. Public show of anger is frowned upon and altercations even in the markets seem rare.
Outside of the tourist areas even educated people do not speak more than a few words of English. In the independence struggle the communist party chose a development of Malaysian as the unifying language among the 250 million inhabitants, although it is only the native language of 75 million of them.
Hindu God
Hinduism with Animism is the religion of Bali. Evidence of their beliefs are not confined to temples but are everywhere in the form of statues, offerings and symbolic dressings of trees, rocks, statues etc. Many of the statues are stunningly beautiful as works of art as well as being symbolic As English is increasingly the lingua franca of international affairs and business communication this is a real barrier for the country to overcome.
To complete his assignment in Kupang, West Timor Colin quickly acquired the services of a translator - trusty Karla without whom life would have been a lot more difficult. A lovely girl in her late twenties married to a lecturer in a local college. She has a one-year old and when she was not translating for Colin was running a playgroup for local poor families.
Colin’s daily routine in Kupang was simple and slimming (he lost a stone) and cheap (he lived on less than a pound a day). Each day started at 4:30 am with a few press-ups before the wake up bucket of water over the head. Breakfast was usually something brought the day before from a stall - fried bananas or some other fried concoction - he quickly learnt not to inquire too closely as to what he was eating, if it tasted ok and didn’t make him ill that was fine. Bananas, which came in any number of different varieties, were a good fall back. Also papaya, snake fruit, apples and mangoes in
Misery
One of the many dressed statues but I've no idea the significance of this arrangement. abundance from roadside stalls just across from the Hospital.
In the evening just before it got dark at 6pm Colin used to stroll down to the street food vendor, to get his fish head soup he was greeted everywhere by cries of “hello Mister” ke mana? bagaimana? Dari mana, Where are you going, how are you, where are you from. The attention attracted by white faces is extraordinary and seemingly inexhaustible, if at times very wearing. The only other Europeans they see are from the occasional visiting yachts. There was an interesting interlude the weekend of Colin’s birthday when the “sail Indonesia” fleet arrived from Darwin, 150 yachts filled with noisy Australians and for a time the Kupang waterfront was almost like a western port, before lapsing back into its normal torpor. In his excitement at meeting English speaking skippers Colin got very, very drunk and I had the pleasure of a two drunken sailors serenading me on my mobile - not a memorable moment in my travels.
Incidentally Kupang's only claim to fame is that Captain Blythe navigated 4000 miles across the Pacific to the Dutch settlement here after the crew of the Bounty mutinied and put him and
Guardian
Oversized teeth is the main feature of the most scary and fearsome beasts - explained why children ran crying to mum at my friendly smiles. few others into a 23 foot open boat. Made of sterner stuff then. Evidence of the Dutch era is fading rapidly - just a few gravestones in an overgrown cemetery overlooking the harbour, and a lot of very fair skinned people with straight hair.
You can go anywhere at any time in Kupang in perfect safety, the children play all the games we used to play, marbles, tag, hide and seek. They bowl old tyres around and dig in the sand, while the teenagers kick around airless footballs or play volleyball. No obesity, drug or violence problems here - just happy fit and healthy kids enjoying themselves in the sunshine. So while they may want what we've got in terms of material things, we certainly need some things they still have. Not sure you can have both.
There is a remarkable lack of aggression about these people and in spite of the general conditions Colin became quite fond of the place. It has a lack of pretension and honesty about it, just a noisy dirty working town with people trying to get by, beset with problems of corruption and poor economy, but like the rest of us doing their best
Timotei
Is this to be the new face of Timotei? I think it could be!!! to get their children up the ladder. And the children are just gorgeous, so beautiful with wonderful smiles, that make you want just to scoop up a handful and take them home - and there are lots of them around so goodness knows what the demographics is like.
On our last day in Kupang some of Colin’s colleagues were given the day off to take us around the island to see rural life before waving us off at the little airfield to get our flight back to Bali and our beachside luxury. What a contrast but that is how best to describe Indonesia - a land of contrasts.
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Ali C
non-member comment
Thanks for the wonderful photos and commentaries... I look at and read these at work, sometimes bursting out laughing, sometimes eyes filling up (no wonder I'm being made redundant!) .... Thank you for the insights xx xx xx