In January I was moved to write several pieces while travelling through Nusantara, or the Republic of Indonesia as it’s now called.  Indeed, it’s hard to say whether the term Nusantara was ever used throughout the entire string of islands now comprising the nation state of Indonesia.  Like all countries, the notion of Indonesia is in a sense imagined retrospectively.  Certainly the Hindu Majapahit Empire was the most extensive of all Nusantara’s great empires.

The Nusantara Archipelago during the height of Majapahit Empire in XIV century.

Today though the borders of modern Indonesia extend even beyond those of the Majapahit ‘Golden Age’.  Herein lies a problem for the land that’s girt by sea. In such a land, Australia, having control of one’s borders is both an obsession and an illusion.

The inescapable porosity of our borders
Australia’s borders have always been porous.  The very notion of Nusantara, is an implied recognition of this.  Ten thousand years ago it would have been possible to walk from the present site of Darwin to the present site of Merauke, in about three weeks. In February 1803 Matthew Flinders met a fleet of what he called Malay fishers off the coast of Arnhemland. We now know that they were part of the trepang industry, working with Aboriginal people along the northern coast and trading trepang back into China through the port of Makassar (Ujung Pandang). Biogeographically and historically speaking Australia’s borders have been open to the world, particularly Nusantara and New Guinea.

For some the notion of porous borders is a difficult concept.  Former Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock, for example, is so apparently distressed by the situation that he said recently that we have “clearly lost control of our borders“. Much of this type of rhetoric is for domestic political consumption and it strikes a chord of fear amongst some in the land that’s girt by sea.  Fear is part of the political armoury of conservative politicians.  Unfortunately fear also sells newspaper and draws media audience attention.  It works for some journalists across the board, from Radio National to Sydney’s notorious radio station 2GB. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems that the purveyors of such myths come to believe them.  This is a matter that’s troubled me for some time, not so much because of the great prominence given to the small number of refugees coming by boat, but because of the diplomatic challenges that it presents to us.

The question of borders
Indonesia has it tough enough being an archipelagic state. Defining the borders and exclusive economic zone of an archepelagic state is difficult, notwithstanding the definitions provided in Convention on the Law of the Sea.  In quoting that law it’s clear that the “sovereignty of an archipelagic State extends to the waters enclosed by the archipelagic baselines drawn in accordance with article 47, described as archipelagic waters, regardless of their depth or distance from the coast.”  If only it were that simple. Traditional fishers have been using the waters to Australia’s north since long before there were such things as sea borders and exclusive economic zones.

Australia's Sea Bed Border with Indonesia has an impact on the Extent of our EEZ

Today traditional fishing continues along our northern border with Indonesia.  Some traditional fishing is permitted inside Australia’s borders, this adds complexity to the question of borders but reflects this traditional movement of people. In particular traditional fishers are allowed to fish at Ashmore, Seringpatam and Scott Reefs as well as Cartier and Browse island

The Attorney General Department of the Australian Government is clear on Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). “Australia’s exclusive economic zone extends from the outer edge of the territorial sea up to 200 nautical miles from the territorial sea baseline. The outer limit is less than 200 nautical miles in some areas, in accordance with agreements with neighbouring countries.” The maritime border is a constant source of tension between the two countries. Some of the issues that arise were explored in Ruth Balint’s book and her 2001 award winning documentary ‘Troubled Waters’.

Indonesian Fishers and People Smuggling
Indonesian fishermen are often drawn into the smuggling of people into Australian waters. Dimishing fish stocks and high interest loans on fishing boats, are often behind their  low level involvement, at the end of the process.

In October of 2009, Sue Hoffman of Murdoch University, observed that Indonesian fishermen are at the centre of a flashpoint in the bilateral relationship. She noted that “Australia’s practice of impounding and burning the boats of illegal fishers has also been criticised as too severe.  She also made the point that “People smuggling is not a crime in Indonesia . . . and sentencing in Australia is not adjusted for the role a person plays in the process.”

It’s an awkward situation and its implications have a significant impact on the perception of Australia inside Indonesia.  Just as Australians are concerned about what they perceive as the harsh treatment of Schapelle Corby and the Bali Nine, convicted in Indonesia of crimes that are far less serious in Australia, so many Indonesians are concerned about the harsh treatment of their national in Australia.

Increasing Popular Knowledge of Asia in Australia
The point of this post isn’t to enter into a detailed discussion about the Law of The Sea or Australia’s borders, EEZs, refugeees, borders or the role of Indonesian fishermen in illegal fishing or people smuggling.  My point is merely to draw attention to the need for awareness and for study of such matters and their historical context.  In the broader sense, there’s a great need for more study of Asia in Australia, particularly Indonesia.

Recently, after publishing my critique of Howard era Australian policy towards Indonesia, I came across a copy of the 2005 Indonesia Update Conference proceedings.  In it was an excellent address by David Reeve analysing common Australian understandings of Indonesia and common Indonesian understandings of Australia.  He drew heavily on the letters columns of newspapers in both countries and, to our shame I fear, some comments from notable Australian radio ’shock jocks’.

In conclusion David offered the then Howard government some recommendations for increasing popular knowledge of Asia, in Australia.   Two of them were particularly interesting and in part read

• Exchange Schapelle Corby and perhaps others for the traditional Indonesian fisherman in detention. New policy is needed on fishermen; and tensions over the issue are escalating on both sides.
• Australian film-makers make good documentaries that could increase Indonesians’ knowledge of Australia.  The rights to them should be purchased and they should be subtitlees and dubbed into Indonesian, and they should be given free to Indonesian television channels.

Finally, I just came across this comment on Webdiary titled “Double-barrelled shot marks start for Chris Evans“. It’s very brief but addresses some of the issues I’ve mentioned in this Blog.

The Ubud Experience
Ubud Writers’ Feastival is for many the comtemporarty face of Ubud.  In successfully nurturing this event from infancy to it’s present global standing Janet De Neefe has added another layer to way Ubud is understood. In former times Ubud was known as a special place set on a broad ridge above the campuan, confluence, of two rivers the East and the West Wos.  Back in the 10th century the area was known as Ubadi, a special place where many healing herbs grew.  Campuan was also a spiritually important place, one of Bali’s Hindu sages, Rsi Markandeya, travelled up the Wos Valley, some say he  founded  Pura Gunung Lebah.

This temple stands above the confluence and remains important in the affairs of Puri Ubud, Subak in the area and a number of villages to the north, all of which bring their Barongs to the temple during an Odalan. These convergences of barong from surrounding Desa Adat are always a colourful peagent and for me remain one of the great grounding Ubud experiences.

Western Wos River above Campuan. The edge of Ubud is just visible in the distance.

The Dutch Conquest
With the Dutch conquest of Bali in the early 20th century, the island soon developed as an elite tourist destination.  Wealthy visitors disemrbarked from cruise ships at the northern port of Singaraja and motored south to Kintamani, Ubud and Sanur, the only places where accommodation was available.  In his book  Bali Cultural Tourism and Touristic Cultures” Michel Picard says that Bali’s hotel capacity before WWII was 70 double rooms, 48 at the Bali Hotel, 16 at the Satrya Hotel and 6 at the Koninklijke Pakketvaart Maatschappij (KPM) Bungalow Hotel in Kintamani and 32 additional rooms in 8 guesthouses.  In Ubud guests were taken in at Puri Saren Agung, the palace of Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati (1910-1978).

As many as 213 visitors a month, in 1924 arrived, expecting to see the last paradise on earth, the island of the gods replete with beautiful  bare breasted women.  The Dutch painter W.O.J Nieuwenkamp was first to chronicle the island visually, at the turn of the century, then the  German photographer Gregor Krause took great care to emphasise the physical beauty of Balinese bodies and in particular, balinese women bathing. This is an enduring theme and I can still recall, one commercial film crew that I worked with in the 1990s being similarly enchanted.

The famous expatriate German painter, Walter Spies and painter, illustrator and self styled anthropoligist Miguel Covarrubias became part of a community of expatriates living in places such as Ubud, Sanur and Kuta who supplemented images of the island paradise through the 1930s. The golden age of elite Balinese tourism ended with the Japanese invasion and occupation.

Rediscovering Bali
The world rediscovered Bali, first in the 1960s when it formed part of the ‘brown rice trail, between Australia and Europe, then in the late 1970s with the emergence of cheap wide bodied jet transport. My earliest encounter with Bali was in 1968. A friend introduced me a record called “Music from the Morning of the World”.  It’s title was drawn from Pandit Nehru’s description of the small island of Bali as, the ‘morning of the world’ and its music was undeniably engaging. Already familiar with the Sitar and the musical form of the Raga, this was raw and energetic but in a way grounded and cooperative. It came from a place called Ubud, somewhere in the mountains of Bali invoking images of sarong clad musicians in a verdant blur of  lush tropical vegetation.

“I’ll go there some day I thought.”

For 18 years, from 1984, Ubud was my second home. For the last 10 of those my company maintained a permanent place of work and residence in the town.  This was also a time of intense learning since, whatever a person’s background, one cannot fail to notice the creativity and devotion inherent in the uniquely Balinese form of Hinduism.  Anyone showing the slightest interest in the underlying meanings is always rewarded with generous explanations and, since Bali’s Hinduism is based on Bhakti, opportunities to observe and be part of countless ceremonies.  As a teacher and manager of an inter-cultural field study project I was received with immense generosity and, over time, offered opportunities for learning and study that the casual visitor seldom encounters.

Traffic and Tranquility
Bali’s physical structure has a distinct impact on the way traffic flows.  Radiating valleys form a spoke like array of ridges offering easy access to the island’s interior.  Settlement has developed in a linear form strung out along ridges.  Some broader ridges and the lowland areas have developed more clustered and nucleated patterns.

Ubud, sitting astride a broad ridge has also been a crossing, a place where a vehicular bridge spans the valley of the Wos river.  Since Dutch times, this has allowed the village to develop along an east west axis as well as the north south axis, typical of linear ridge development in southern Bali. Today Ubud is a confluence of traffic  flows.  On second thoughts confluence implies a seamless merging, like the branches of the Wos just above the bridge at Campuan.  In Ubud the merging is often more like a jamming of traffic flows.

Returning to Bali for the first time in eight years I was a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of traffic on the island these days.  As with most other parts of Asia, motor bikes have been the major contribution to this growth. Seldom does one escape their noisy passing, anywhere near a main road. Just as in Jakarta they appear suddenly and unexpectedly.  Most alarming is the inclination for some motorcyclists to suddenly assume command of footpaths as well. Despite these alarming features in Ubud relative tranquility is often just a few steps away.  A network of village lanes, overshadowed by trees, adorned with beautiful shrubbery and baffled from street noises by the imposing red brick walls of Balinese family compounds, provides an almost instant retreat.  At first I was inclined to stick to the main roads, like all the other visitors, but it didn’t take long before the memory of these shady byways returned.  Memory has been the key to re-experiencing Ubud.  After such a long break I found that some old friends had passed on, one in particular had forgotten me altogether as dementia set in, other were now adults where once they had been school children and most welcomed me enthusiastically. A few are now very rich and a few have lost their wealth victimes of easy credit, the Bali Bombing and tightened economic conditions.

A small lane off Jalan Bisma

Impacts of development
Development in Ubud has been extraordinarily rapid.  People now in their 50s grew up in a village without electricity or sealed roads.  They now manage a globalised village extending its presence into cyberspace, Nis Kala now has a digital mantle.  Internet Cafes are on every block and high quality consumer goods in many shops.

Some things are working very well in Ubud.  Water management is a significant success story.  Signs of litter on the streets and the rice fields are largely absent, regular garbage collection and recycling are long established. Art, Music and Dance are as strong and exuberant as ever.  Tourism and development have permitted embelishment of ceremonial and religious life with cash flows enabling detail and lavishness in the material aspects of Bhakti, never before so extensive and flamboyant. The recent cremation of  Tjokorda Gde Agung Suyasa, of Puri Saren Kauh, was possibly the largest and most elaborate yet.

At a more mundane level, some aspects of life in Ubud are challenged by the rapidity of development. Looking out across the sawah from a beautiful the family hotel, my gaze was drawn immediately to the  black spaghetti tangle of telephone cables that ran beside a line of elegant young coconut palms. Major telecommunications links are below ground but household connections are a little haphazard breaking the extraordinary views of Mt Agung and Batukau with a discordant clutter.

“I want to have them buried”, said the young hotel proprietor as he showed me to my first floor room.

I simply thought, “He’s right, it needs to be done, and no doubt it will be”.

I didn’t say a thing, realising that when I had a house nearby, I was one of the early adopters.  When my phone was connected it ran in front of a nearby losmen.  I was embarassed, but had little control.  When the land owner later removed one of the supporting polls and didn’t replace it, the situations became even uglier.  One unexpected bonus, I later discovered, was that the cables have become tupai super highways.  I was entertained every morning by an aerial show of acrobatics and chasings, that seemed to be part of an elaborate patrolling of tupai territories.  I wasn’t complaining, nor was I in a position to do so, having an Internet Cafe just meters away gave the place great amenity, besides the mountain views are still excellent.

There’s no doubt that in time, despite the rapid development and the discordance that can sometimes stand out to challenge the traditions, change will be tempered and adjusted according to the old Balinese adage “Desa, Kala, Patra”, allowing the strength of the traditions to infuse the new and to tie it back into the principles of balance and harmony that have characterised much of Balinese culture.

I was heartened by Rio Helmi’s description of his recent late night stroll in Ubud posted on Facebook, he wrote:

“At the open wantilan the gamelan was accompanying dancers training, I recognized a few of them who I have known since they were kids.  A couple of old friends were hanging out.  The best dancers looked great even wearing ordinary clothes. Late in the evening, Ubud can still be a village.”

Rio also wrote an interesting piece on his Blog entitled Piece of Mind: Conde Nast Names Ubud Top Asian City.

A Prologue
Violence and extremism are no more a recent phenomenon in Indonesia than in countries like the UK and the USA.  Both Indonesia and the USA fought wars of national liberation against colonial powers.  Both have constitutions and a sense of nationhood, grounded in such violent struggles. Many countries have their own uniquely violent histories and their own particular forms of extremism.  Attempting to make some historical sense of violence, extremism and associated acts of war and terror, requires some consideration of their context.  This is often a useful exercise because it helps to resolve a sense of perspective and scale.

The Bali Bombing was an horrific event that touched me personally, yet for me it’s difficult to distinguish between the madness of the suicide bomber and the madness that suffuses the actions of a nation state that, while understanding the imprecision of its technology, still persists with actions that euphemistically result in collateral damage, the death of innocents and destruction of their homes and infrastructure.  When I see images of white phosphorous raining down as people scatter in terror, I’m reminded that we live in a world where love for our fellow humans is held in scant regard by many.

Writing about the Bali Bombing of 12 October 2002 is a theme that recurs for me, but I’ve published only a small part of what I could say on this tragic event. Some of my work is far too graphic for accessible online publication, such material best lends itself to the print medium not the openness of the Internet. More is yet to be written but I’ve waited for a greater maturity of insight, which I hope might come, before writing further on this subject.  Part of the process has been a re-visiting of the places where I lived and worked before and during those tragic days.

The Journey Back
Australians often regard Indonesia as a dangerous and unstable place where violence is common and where, since it’s the world’s largest Islamic country, terroristic groups abound.  Still others have a sense that Indonesia is a threat to our national security, such people are fundamentally wrong. Despite events like Moslem Christian conflict in Maluku leading to the massacre of Christians by the Javanese Laskar Jihad; the beheading of Madurese Muslim transmigrants in West Kalimantan; the destruction of churches; and, the bombing of Borobudur in 1985,  tolerance has deep foundations in Indonesia.  My journey was coloured by countless reminders of this.

On my last visit to Bali Saturday 12 October, the day before my planned departure for Australia, was a relaxing day spent with an old friend exploring some of the eastern coastline. Driving back to Ubud we fell into a discussion about capital punishment.  Nita and I never avoid the controversial.  If we disagreed, we agreed to disagree, this is the nature of our discourses.  The one thing we offer one another is a thorough hearing, although perhaps sometimes I interrupt too much. On this day we simply agreed to disagree, having no sense that within a very short while we’d be overtaken by an act of mass murder and find ourselves working in the macabre setting of the morgue at Sanglah Hospital, Denpasar.  Here my role was the inexact task of identification of the dead using ante mortem materials and hers was one of interpreting and translating communications, ultimately  between Interpol and the Indonesian and Australian forensic police teams that eventually snapped into action.

Preparing to re-visit Denpasar’s Sanglah Hospital and making a first visit to Kuta’s former Sari Club was a challenge. Feelings of matters unfinished, of being wrenched away from a place where much healing was still to be done, of the separation from Indonesian friends who shared this uniquely disturbing journey, still haunted me.  I also felt a particular need to pray for the souls of those who met such an untimely end in this act of mass murder, yet I wasn’t ready to jump on a plane and immediately confront the places where I’d worked eight years earlier.  Travelling along an indirect path via Jakarta, Solo and Ubud was the best way for me to approach this challenge.  Apart from anything else it was necessary to acclimatise and to begin to resonate more sympathetically with Indonesian cultures before I confronted the central purpose of my visit.  Much was to happen on the way that helped my preparation for this final encounter, none the least of which were my planned visits to two Orthodox Christian communities.

Gus Dur’s Departure
Gus Dur’s passing was a surprise.  I knew he’d been ailing and was recently discharged from hospital.  His passing when it came was yet another opportunity to reflect on what he brought to Indonesia.  I was reminded that he was a man of the centre, a man of tolerance imbued with rich Javanese syncretism, tempered by his years as a student in Cairo and matured through his long years in opposition to Suharto’s New Order regime and his exposure to the world.  He was a quiet man of action.  I wrote about him and I thought about him a lot on my journey.  Everywhere I went I met inclusive tolerant Indonesians acting in his tradition and grieved by his passing.

As I travelled I became more focused on that deep root of tolerance that has grown along the archipelago, a foundation of respect for the religion of others, enduring years of assault from the extremist fringes of Indonesian society and continuing to flourish.  Shortly after Gus Dur’s death a chance encounter with a  young man working at Kopi Tiam Oey, a coffee shop on Jl Agus Salim, re-affirmed the power of this syncretistic tolerance.  Chatting about recent developments in Indonesia and the purpose of my visit he expressed interest in my journey.  When I explained my intention to visit the Holy Trinity Orthodox church in Solo for the Feast of the Nativity, his response was typically Javanese.

“That’s really interesting. I’d love to come as well. When do you leave?”

It was clear from the beginning that he couldn’t come, as he was far too busy in Jakarta, but this way of expressing interest and approval is commonly encountered in Indonesia.  This was such a refreshing break from the stereotypical representations of Indonesians, too commonly portrayed in the Australian press. In reality the core of Javanese culture, in particular, is kejawen a syncretistic merging of Hinduism, Buddhism and Sufism. A visit to the Sultan’s Palace in Yogyakarta reveals this blending in decorative symbolic form.

Everywhere I went I continued to encounter deep respect for Gus Dur.

“Dia Bapak Negara”, said one old friend, a Balinese Hindu.

Another wrote to me of Gus Dur facing down mobs in Bekasi who were opposed to churches operating there.

The City of Surakarta – Solo
Arriving in Solo, the tolerance was still most pronounced.  This is a city of great religious diversity.  Initially staying at the imposing Sunan Hotel, I again fell into conversations with Javanese syncretists.  Such is Solo’s tolerance that even Abu Bakar Bashir and his Pesantren al-Mukmin of Ngruki are to be found here.

The Feast of the Nativity when it came was a Blessed event.  About 50 worshippers including representatives of the Protestant, Hindu and Buddhist communities attended the Liturgy.  A Nativity feast in the nearby church hall saw the invitation of a children’s choir from the Pantasuhan Wisma Kasih Kudus – the Holy Gift Orphanage.  These children weren’t Orthodox, yet they were welcomed and enthusiastically participated in the festivities. Their common bond is that almost all lost parents in the inter-religious violence that ripped through Maluku in 1997, in the dying days of the New Order regime. In all there are 71 children in the Protestant orphanage and a further 26 have moved on the tertiary education in various parts of Indonesia. The children radiated a natural beauty, in the festive moment,, apparently unencumbered by the tragedies that had overtaken their families.  Their presence was a true reminder of the gift of Christmas, the gift of a clear path to the development of goodwill and love amongst all humans.

Finally in Bali
Moving on to Bali, I started to feel apprehensive about visiting Sanglah Hospital and the site of the bombing in Kuta.  A fall into a deep drain one dark night slowed me down and gave me pause for thought. Finally it was time to visit Sanglah and Kuta.

Sanglah seemed almost as crowded as 13 October, 2002, but this was merely ramai, as the Indonesians say.  An orderly buzz made all the more interesting by the many people in traditional Balinese dress.  I approached the reception desk.  The last time it was staffed by a volunteer from Perth, now two traditionally clad Balinese women happily answered my questions.

“We don’t have a church where you can pray.  We have a Musollah or a Pura.”  I thought for a moment.

“I’d like to pray in the Pura if I may, but it seems as though you’re having a traditional ceremony.”

“No it’s fine”, said the elegant young woman. ” Just follow me, I’ll take you to the Pura.”

A persistent droning background resolved  into prayers chanted in the ancient language of Kawi as I approached the temple. Inside it was very busy.  Musicians sat together in a pavilion, the faithful sat praying before the shrines for the Tri Merthi and the Padma Sana.  I was led off to the side. A Pemangku approached me.

“Excuse me Bapak Pemangku do you speak Indonesian.”

Almost as soon as I’d said this I regretted it, but I was thinking of the village Priests I knew from Ubud and Penestanan where priestly fluency in Indonesian was not to be taken for granted.  He looked at me sincerely without the slightest sense of surprise.

“Yes, I do”, he answered.

“I’m a Christian, but with your permission I’d like to pray here.”

“Of course”, he said, encouraging me to step towards the place where others were praying.

“Would you like incense”.

“No thanks, it won’t be necessary. I’d like to stand and pray if I may”.

“You may”, he said.

So I stood before the Padma Sana, the Seat of the Supreme God and I prayed with the priest standing next to me.  First I read the standard opening to an Orthodox Christian passage of prayer, finishing with the Lord’s Prayer then I read the Prayers for the Dead.  When I’d finished the priest reached out and held my arm.

“That’s all I said. Thank you for letting me read Christian prayers”.

“As long as you prayed for world peace it’s fine”

“In particular I prayed for the souls of the dead”, I said somewhat apprehensively.  “I know this isn’t the Pura Dalem, but it’s the only one.”

“That’s fine”, he said, “They’re the purified holy spirits.”

I left feeling overwhelmed by the priests acceptance of my need to pray, there was no sense of any barrier merely inclusiveness.

Moving on to the site of the Sari Club in Kuta, I was struck by the size of Kuta’s new developments.  I still remembered much of it as ladang, as open spaces with small huts, coconut palms, grassy fields with Banteng cattle and water buffalo grazing. Landmarks were difficult to spot. The road was overshadowed by multistorey buildings now. Finally the unmistakable monument to the victims of the bombing.

Ignoring the sign that said entry forbidden, I walked up to the stones panels displaying all the victims’ names.  I read the Indonesian names, moving on to the Australian names then systematically all the other names.  Once completed I came back and read some of the names that were of particular importance to me.

Joshua Kevin Deegan son of the Magistrate from South Australia, Brian Deegan

Jonathon Ellwood who’s body I helped identify from his hotel room key

Kathy Sarvatori nee Hackett who’s father Noel coached me in Rugby on Coogee oval, many years ago.

Dimitra and Elizabeth Kotronakis, the friends of a colleague

I read the same prayers then stood in contemplation, stepping back so that I could view the monument from the opposite corner.  I was in a state of walking meditation.

“Transport, transport, boss?”

The silence was broken.  It was time to go and have breakfast.

Chatting with a friend yesterday the conversation drifted to the rapid adoption of Facebook here in Indonesia. In 12 months to November 2009 the number of Facebook users reached 11.76 million, a 700% increase over the preceding 12 months to November 2008. These figures are based on a Nielsen ‘Online Global Customer Study’ published in the Dec09 – Jan10 edition of the Indonesian magazine Warta Ekonomi .

Observing this development herself, my friend suggested that a lot of people had started using the Internet merely because of Facebook and the desire to communicate with friends who were already using it.  Certainly this confirms my own observations over the past 9 months.  Suddenly, many people that I know from Indonesia started using Facebook, some even leapt straight into using it for business related purposes.

They don’t use it the same way we do. We’re early adopters.  From the beginning we used it for researching, writing, communicate about important issues, collaboration and so on.

That she was right, was very clear to me.

Yes, it seems this most recent wave is more likely to be consumers that producers on line.  I know with the so called digital natives, there’s often that tendancy.  If they want to know something they go straight to Wikipedia.

What’s wrong with that?, asked her 16 year old son.

Having consistently tried to encourage a more adventurously investigative attitude amongst Australian students I had an answer.

Wikipedia is a snapshot of varying reliability.  It depends on the quality and accuracy of the contributors.  At best it’s a jumping off place to other resources.  The point is to learn how to construct searches that take you deeper into the Web, that get you closer to primary sources of information.

He looked interested. Can you do that?, he enquired

Yes, by using key words or grouping words in the exact combination you want to find and just enclosing them in inverted commas, is a good place to start.  This is about the simplest approach we can use, but it’s really a matter of experimenting, in the end you’ll become quite skilled.

I was playing with my iPhone, absently mindedly at first, then  opening Tweetie for a quick check on Twitter.

Sorry folks, I’m multitasking, I said apologetically

Ironically there was an interesting Tweet from Lyndon Sharp.

“Blogs: 95% of stories came from traditional media & 83% stories were repetitive, conveying no new information. http://bit.ly/5xCzq5”, he wrote.

I made a mental note to go back and read the article which is titled “Study Claims that Newspapers NOT Blogs, Still Dominate the News”.  When I did go back I found there was a path back through two levels of blogging to original research published by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism

The fundamental question posed in the research was “Where does the news come from in today’s changing media?”  I didn’t need to read far before I encountered the following statement:

The study, which examined all the outlets that produced local news in Baltimore, Md., for one week, surveyed their output and then did a closer examination of six major narratives during the week, finds that much of the “news” people receive contains no original reporting. Fully eight out of ten stories studied simply repeated or repackaged previously published information.

And of the stories that did contain new information nearly all, 95%, came from traditional media—most of them newspapers. These stories then tended to set the narrative agenda for most other media outlets.

The findings don’t allow attribution of much significance for real news dissemination to the new media.  Indeed the expanding universe of new media, including blogs, Twitter and local websites—at least in Baltimore, the report says, played only a limited role: mainly an alert system and a way to disseminate stories from other places.

The report went on to make some vital points about attribution of sources.

In the growing echo chamber online, formal procedures for citing and crediting can get lost. We found numerous examples of websites carrying sections of other people’s work without attribution and often suggesting original reporting was added when none was.

This is something I’ve noticed with original material from this Blog.

The conversation resumed but we drifted onto other subjects like projects we were planning for the future.

What I wanted to discuss but didn’t, and what was unfolding in my mind as we chatted, were the implications of Web2.0 adoption in Indonesia.  The Warta Ekonomi article mentioned the role of Web2.0 in supporting print media.  In particular they referred to CNN‘s reliance on Twitter during the bomb blast at Kuningan, in Jakarta.  I wasn’t certain exactly what this referred to but a quick search under “Kuningan Bomb Blast” brought me straight to the CNN iReport site at the head of the Google search list.  Floating above the relevant page was a pop-up that read:

Welcome to iReport, where people take part in the news with CNN. Your voice, together with other iReporters, helps shape how and what CNN covers everyday.

So you know: iReport is the way people like you report the news. The stories in this section are not edited, fact-checked or screened before they post. Only ones marked ‘CNN iReport’ have been vetted by CNN.

A further comment explained that “iReport is a user-generated section of CNN.com. The stories here come from users.”

The reports referred to another tragic bomb blast in July 2009.

That’s explains it I thought, as I read the date,  I was in Scotland.  I do have a hazy recollection now that I think about it.

The blast was again at a JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta.  Fortunately, this time the death toll was small, only six fatalities, with about 50 people were injured, according to CNN.

My recent visit to Jakarta confirmed that this is a city intent on avoiding repetition of such incidents.  Now any major centres servicing the international community or local elites, has tight security.  Car boot (trunk) searches are mandatory, so too are scans under vehicles, using mirrors.  My attempt to photograph one such operation, at the entrance to a Five star hotel, on Jl Thamrin, was quickly warned off.

Indonesia isn’t a wealthy country.  Elsewhere on this blog there are some figures on the minimum wages in Jakarta and the rate of inflation.  Any casual observations will confirm that there is a clear presence of poverty in the city.  So in this context, how are people adopting  Web2.0 tools like Facebook and Twitter?  The answer is simple, mobile phones.

Smart is a phone company in the Kebon Sirih area of Jakarta. The following shot was taken just outside the entrance to the Smart factory.

Entrance to the Smart Factory, Jl H Agus Salim, Jakarta.

The sign reads Free Facebook, chatting and browsing 100 days unlimited only Rp399,000 (about AUD47).  I assume it’s a monthly rate. Certainly, in places like Indonesia, far more than in the developed world, mobile phones are the way into Web2.0.  The rate and extent of uptake depends principally on general economic conditions and, in particular, the economic strength of the middle class.

This morning I woke early. The usual dawn chorus of roosters was underscored by intense and sudden explosions of sound. Rice farmers were already at work clapping short lengths of bamboo, disturbing opportunistic flocks of birds settling for a morning feed in the sawah. It rained heavily the night before, a welcome event in an El Nino year. The air was saturated. Mist hung above the sawah. All of Gunung Agung’s 3142 metres, save for a cap of cloud, was stark and clear above the palms. Once staying in a similar location I became complacent about this early morning unveiling, then one afternoon it appeared from masses of convectional cumulus in a blaze of afternoon light. Now I’m more finely attuned to it’s shades and moods. Fortunately I’ve never been on the island when it’s erupted.

Contemporary Australians are most unaccustomed to volcanic events. There’s the occasional earthquake but, with the exception of the Newcastle earthquake, these are usually gentle shakes.  Throughout much of the time mainland Australia (including Tasmania) has been inhabited, our volcanos haven’t been so benign.  When I read Neil’s Blog on Australian volcanos, this morning, I was delighted that someone else has been enticed to comment on this little known aspect of Australia. Having said this, there’s often comment on the Heard Island strato volcano, Big Ben (2745 metres) which last erupted in 2001.

Some years ago I managed a team of writers and designed a book on the Geography of Australia, I even wrote one chapter myself. The book was ultimately published in Indonesia, on behalf of the Australia Indonesia Institute. It went by the unassuming name of Geografi Australia and it addressed the junior secondary Social Science curriculum in Indonesia. It also had a supplement to each chapter that addressed possible teacher interests.  Since it was published in 1999, much of the Human Geography is now out of date, but the Physical Geography is still quite relevant.

An important element of the book was to expose and discuss geographic links between Australia and Indonesia. While at first there might seem to be few, the book addressed such links from cyanobacteria in our common waters to more complex geopolitical issues. Of course tectonically speaking, we are sliding slowly towards Indonesia at a rate of around 7cms a year.  Ultimately the sediments on Australia’s continental shelf will form the magmas extruded from some of Indonesia’s volcanos.  Of course that a long way of in the future, but it can still provoke an intriguing discussion amongst some of my more nationalistic Indonesian friends.

Back in Australia there are many signs of our ancient volcanos.  In Geografi Australia one of the teacher supplements covered Australian volcanos. It had a map of Australian volcanos based on research from Dr Lin Sutherland Senior fellow in Geosciences at The Australian Museum. Below is an updated version of Dr Sutherland’s map.

Australia's Volcanos

For the observant traveller there are still many signs of the periods of vulcanism in Australia.  Interestingly, unlike Big Ben, these were Hot-spot volcanos, similar to those found in the Hawaiian island chain.  With such volcanos an intensely hot spot in the mantle occasionally burns through the overlying crust, causing flows of non-viscous to spreads out over vast areas.  Such volcanos are associated with the explosive nature of strato volcanos like Mt Agung and Big Ben, any one who has watched the lava action on Kilauea will have a good sense of the nature of Australia’s ancient volcanos.

For the general observer the remains of Australia’s volcanos can be hard to detect.  Certainly there are outstanding examples, like Queensland’s Glass House Mountains, or the Warrumbungles in NSW.

For me one of the most subtle, yet the most interesting volcanic landscapes in Australia, is the Monaro (pronounced mon-air-o).  Here at least 630 cubic km of lava and pyroclasts were erupted during the 20 million-year long history, just 57.5 – 34.0 million years ago.

This is a shot of the Monaro after rain.  It’s often in a rainsdow.

Monaro between Cooma and the Bungarby. The flat hills are lava flows. Panorama of 6 iPhone images

There’s a full sized version of this at Twitpics. For a more extensive photo treatment see Dr Ian Roach’s excellent photos.

It’s interesting to observe just how Australia’s slow northerly movement as a continent has resulted in the  lines of former volcanos above the hotspots.  I often wonder when things are going to heat up a little more in Bass Strait and north western Tasmania.

(A note on spelling – I can’t see any reason for using the spelling volcanoes.)

In the last decade of the 20th and the first few years of the 21st centuries there were unseen and unspoken realities that formed part of daily political life in Australia. This unseen domain was not necessarily the etheric world of spirit but a world driven by triumphalism and the politics of fear in which Australians were offered an increasingly monochromatic world view. Concerns about such simplistic constructions were often dismissed as the preoccupation of elites, or inherently unAustralian and liable to extend comfort to terrorists.

I found this most troubling, given more than a decade of careful work on cultural relations between Australia and Indonesia. Suddenly there was a suggestion that the people I was working with were inherently unjust and some even prone to move towards extreme Islamic views. I’d adopted a diplomatic approach in my dealings with Indonesia, both as a style and also as an aspect of my work when for a time my company was as a consultant to the Australia Indonesia Institute so I certainly didn’t accept such notions.

To me such a way of working seemed obvious since diplomacy, in theory at least, is an approach to foreign relations that seeks to minimize conflict between nations or between nations and those who would be nations. Increasingly, after the bombing of the World Trade Centre I observed a tendency, on the part of the Australian government of the day , to abandon this approach to diplomacy, emphasizing such strategies as pre-emptive strikes rather than cultural exchange and aid. It was a strategy that drew on fear, cultivating it with manifest lies of omission that frequently tripped over into lies of commission.

An early manifestation of this approach was the attempt to reduce the impact of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). In the face of proposed budget cuts the Mansfield Review of the ABC concluded that if economic necessity meant something had to be cut then international broadcasting would be the best choice. So in June 1997, there was a marked reduction of Radio Australia’s footprint when its transmitters on the Cox Peninsula were shut down. Suddenly our capacity to broadcast the daily narrative of our lives, and those of our regional neighbours in the languages of our region either disappeared or was barely discernible in many places. Nowhere was this more important than Indonesia, long dependent on shortwave even for local broadcasts and on the verge of a tumultuous period that would see economic crisis; the fall of Suharto’s New Order Regime; widespread civil unrest, often directed at Chinese and Christian citizens; a new democratically elected government; and, the resurgence of the fanatical Islamic fringe group Jemaah Islamia, with the return of its exiled leadership from Malaysia in 1999.

1999 was also the year of appalling violence in East Timor following the 78.5 per cent vote for independence in a the UN controlled referendum. It was the time of UN Security Council Resolution 1264 enabling formation of the International Force For East Timor (INTERFET). Under Australia’s leadership INTERFET was formed to restore security in the crisis-ravaged territory. Logistically the response was extremely well managed, efficiently led, temperate and effective in its actions, but not so the foreign policy context.

On September 29, 1999, several weeks after President Habibie agreed to admit INTERFET forces to East Timor, the Bulletin published an interpretation of comments on foreign policy in which Prime Minister Howard is alleged to have expressed sentiments consistent with Australia becoming the USA’s ‘Deputy Sheriff’. Throughout the Asia Pacific region, particularly in Indonesia, this vulgar affirmation of the “Howard Doctrine”, initially welcomed by his office, confirmed existing suspicions. Many saw him as having unhealthy Eurocentric, if not racist, leanings following his relative silence on the anti-Asian sentiments expressed by Pauline Hanson the then leader of the Australia First Party.

There was an air of political nationalism cultivated around Australia’s participation in INTERFET. One Australian commentator observed, “It was as if Australia, rather than partnering others in a regional police action, was again sending off troops to Gallipoli as the band played ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Military triumphalism was the prime ministerial style of the day. Indonesians who were humiliated by the collapse of their economy, by the secession of East Timor and by the need to have foreigners to keep order there, were now subject to further humiliation by the Australian Prime Minister.” (1)

In a short time relations with Indonesia had been transformed. There was a growing concern in Indonesia that Australia had a covert commitment to break up the archipelagic state, to surgically remove its eastern portion. Such sentiments were sometimes encountered in Australia. On the left was a view that with the freeing of East Timor the next step was to deliver West Papua from Javanese colonialism. On the fringes of the nationalist right some even envisaged a greater Australia inclusive of Timor and West Papua. It was the triumphalism and culturally superior tone now inherent in the Australian approach that had the most impact in Indonesia.

Amongst ordinary Indonesians some were susceptible to the suggestion that, in supporting the embryonic democracy of East Timor, Australia was merely expanding its long held colonial interest principally because it wanted to monopolise the Timor gap oil and gas fields. With Radio Australia’s Bahasa Indonesia broadcasts greatly restricted, countering this view was rendered more difficult. Many Indonesians were forced to find alternate sources of news not all of them particularly favourable to Australia. The net impact of the Howard government’s response was one of grave political mismanagement and incompetence.

During 2000 Foreign Minister Alexander Downer addressed the new doctrine at the Asian Leaders’ Forum in Beijing. He explained that Australia could not so much view regionalism as cultural but rather practical, not something built on common ties but only mutually agreed goals. What he was thinking about Australia’s significant Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Khmer Diasporas, not to mention the large numbers of Melanesians and Polynesians playing such a prominent role in sporting codes like Rugby? One can only wonder precisely what Downer meant or exactly to whom his words were really directed. Even the most casual observation of urban Australia confirmed the ethnic and cultural transformations that rendered our regional connections far broader than mere strategic interests.

Alexander Downer’s diminution of culture as a basis for regionalism coincided almost exactly with the Pentecost in 2000. A significant date, it marked the beginning of a new role for the Cox Peninsula transmitters. For the first time the crusading zeal of Bob Edmiston’s Christian Voice replaced the exuberance of RA’s Kookaburra call sign beaming an evangelical message across the old footprint.

Finally wiser heads in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) prevailed and in August 2000 there was a significant increase in the ABC’s budget for overseas broadcasting, directly from DFAT, but sadly, too little too late.
In this world we were given scant detail of the tragic sinking of SIEV X (2) with the loss of 353 people yet asked to believe that parents on SIEV 4 (3) would willingly throw their children into the ocean just to pressure the Australian government. Then we were asked to view the 433 Afghan asylum seekers on board the Norwegian vessel Tampa, plucked from a sinking Indonesian fishing boat, as unworthy of assistance, despite Australian Search and Rescue broadcasting a call for assistance and the Royal Flying Doctor Service concluding that medical attention was urgently required. We were asked to acknowledge that it was fine for SAS to intercept and board the Tampa as its captain attempted to discharge his duty and drop the survivors on Australian Territory. In case we were in any doubt about reality, coastal islands were then excised from our migration zone placing them within yet without our borders.

Support for John Howard’s government peaked every time he managed to inoculate the minds of electors with fear and insecurity and then proffered his own particular brand of political snake oil to remedy the problem. Even before the mass murders in Bali the politics of fear was nurturing levels of extremism that in my experience were uncommon in everyday parlance. After the terrorist act that destroyed the World Trade Centre, an associate commented vindictively, “we ought to just go and bomb that black thing they all walk around in Mecca.” He was steeped in the new-speak of the era. In this new doctrine asylum seekers were queue jumpers and illegal, perhaps even terrorists, their collective efforts to get here merely people smuggling. None of this was making much sense, there was the official version and then there was the reality.

About this time a respected colleague, a Javanese Muslim and part of the democratically oriented Islamic Scholars group, sadly remarked on a sharpening of attitudes amongst her otherwise moderate friends. Their responses were in part a reaction such careless words as “. . . this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile.” uttered by George Bush just a week after the destruction of the World Trade Centre.

In 3 November, 2001 Osama Bin Laden was moved to observe that: “In this fighting between Islam and the Crusaders, we will continue our jihad. We will incite the nation for jihad until we meet God and get his blessing. Any country that supports the Jews can only blame itself … what do Japan or Australia or Germany have to do with this war? They just support the infidels and the Crusaders.” Later in May 2002 he posed the question: “What has Australia in the extreme south got to do with the oppression of our brothers in Afghanistan and Palestine?” During all of these utterances the voice of RA was significantly muffled.

Gone were the days when I could reasonably expect to have an informed discussion about regional or even global affairs with ordinary Indonesians. These conversations, wherever they occurred, were common and with people who were quite candid about sourcing a significant part of their knowledge of current affairs from RA. Ordinary Indonesians on the streets were now deprived of easy access to this rich regional discourse, the space was taken, not just by the fundamentalism of Christian Voice but also by shadowy organizations of the Islamic fringe as well.

After October 12, 2002, and the first Bali bombings, I often reflected on just what an effective voice a full throated RA might have been as the two nations struggled to make sense of the tragedy. Sadly we only had a limited capacity to talk to the average Indonesian now and our government’s interests remained strategic rather than cultural. Ironically, for many Australians, and for many Indonesians, more than 20 years of growing tourism as well as increasing educational and cultural contact had created a special cultural space, neither Australian nor Indonesian, a shared space, a third space. Not a place that Alexander Downer was likely to visit, much less John Howard, clearly they didn’t have a road map. (4)

Fortunately things have changed John Howard is now a retired politician and Alexander Downer also retired to take up the post of United Nations special envoy to Cyprus.

(1) Ricklefs, M.C. Australia and Indonesia in The Howard Years. pp. 275. Edited by Robert Mann. Black Inc. Melbourne 2004. ISBN 0 9750769 1 4.

(2) SIEV X – Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel – (un-numbered) On 19 October 2001, a day after departing Indonesia a vessel with nearly 400 people, sank. Two Indonesian fishing boats picked up 44 survivors and 352 people drowned.

(3) SIEV 4 – Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel – (number four) On 7 October 2001, the Minister for Immigration, Mr Philip Ruddock, announced that ‘a number of children had been thrown overboard’ from a vessel suspected of being an ‘illegal entry vessel’. This false story was repeated by the Minister for Defence, Peter Reith, and Prime Minister, John Howard.

(4) The absence of a road map wasn’t merely confined to Indonesia. Although John Howard often visited the USA it’s clear he was unable to discern much of it’s political landscape. These comments coinciding with the northern winter of 2007 demonstrate that he suffered from a form of political snow blindness.

“I think he’s wrong. I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory,”

“If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.” AAP February 11, 2007 10:59am Quoting PM Howard from Channel 9

Today is the Feast of the Nativity in the old Orthodox Christian calendar and last night I attended an Orthodox Liturgy celebrating Christmas at the Holy Trinity Orthodox church in Solo, Central Java.  For me this has been a very special journey because I’ve returned to Indonesia, for the first time since the Bali Bombings of October 2002. This time I’ve come to celebrate with Indonesian brothers and sisters in Christ.

So far this hasn’t been a difficult journey for me, far from it.  I’m already accustomed to the sensational black and white representations of Indonesia in the mass media, particularly in Australia.  Now I have a much deeper sense of the true character of this country and it’s people. Although a country with the world’s largest Islamic population, Indonesia shares little with the versions of Islam so frequently represented in the Western media.

Nusantara
The nature of the contemporary nation state, Indonesia, seeking to assert its statehood in an archipelagic setting, draws from both geographic and cultural influences. It has developed a diverse and syncretic set of cultural practices. The porosity of its borders has allowed frequent influences from abroad beginning with the earliest Melanesian settlement of Nusantara, at the dawn of human civilisation , and has continued until the present era of globalization and the emergence of rapid economic growth and development in the Asia Pacific region.

Modern Indonesia was born on 17 August 1945 after more than 350 years of Dutch colonialism. Early on it’s essentially syncretic nature encouraged the assumption of a set of principles known as the Pacasila, as the basis for the Indonesian Constitution. These can be translated accordingly

Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa
Belief in the one and only God

Kemanusiaan Yang Adil dan Beradab
Just and civilized humanity

Persatuan Indonesia
The unity of Indonesia

Kerakyatan Yang Dipimpin oleh Hikmat  Kebijaksanaan, Dalam Permusyawaratan Perwakilan
Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives

Keadilan Sosial bagi seluruh Rakyat Indonesia
Social justice for the whole of the people of Indonesia

Such a set of guiding principles are both a secular recognition and an expression of Indonesia’s long history of syncretism and tolerance.  For the most part, bearing in mind that Indonesia’s population is more than 230 million spread through at least 900 are permanently inhabited islands, divided into 33 Provinces and Special Regions with hundreds of regional languages Indonesia’s ethos is one to inclusiveness and cooperation.  Perhaps nowhere is this better expressed than in the tradition of Gotong Royong, the notion of a society based on mutual cooperation.  Certainly, despite the existence of corruption, collusion and nepotism, processes that are widely critiqued in modern Indonesia, it’s a remarkably harmonious society, given it’s diversity.

One of the clearest expressions of tolerance in Indonesia is in the area of religious tolerance. Belief in the one and only God is widely accepted, although as in any society there are groups that are inclined to reject common wisdom and insist that they worship the one and only true God.  Such groups have long been present in Indonesia and are by no means a new phenomenon. Such unfortunate elements have brought much suffering to Indonesia.

Indonesia is not perfect and just as other countries like the United Kingdom and the USA have suffered from forms of extremism perpetrated by vocal and at times cruel minorities, so Indonesia faces similar challenges, but the core of Indonesian society is pluralistic and accepting of the other.  Seeing the overwhelming scenes of love and compassion that followed the Bali Bombings of October 2002, left me with no doubt about this.

The Origins of Indic Religions in Indonesia
It’s been said that in Indonesia God comes from the mountain and religion comes from the sea.  The primal religions of Indonesia were all well established when those of a more modern form began to percolate through Nusantara.  The Indic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism were the first to win converts and begin developing Empires along the archipelago.  They often existed side by side and sometimes they fought, at times one vanquishing the other.  Finally they reached a reapproachment and this is chronicled in the remarkable work from the 14th century, the Sutasoma.  It is from this work that Indonesia’s national slogan Binneka Tunggal Ika has been taken.  Translated in means the two are one, Shiva and Buddha.  It’s modern translation of Unity in Diversity reapplies the basic principle in the context of the modern nation state.

The Spread of Orthodox Christianity
The following is directly quoted from The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in Indonesia an Orthodox Facebook site.

During the 7th century and during the greater parts of the Sriwijaya-Majapahit periods (9th-14th centuries), Eastern Church of the Assyrian tradition arrived, followed later by the Non-Chalcedonian (Armenian). Christianity was in Indonesia before Islam came to the Archipelago. However, the Christians disappeared from the Indonesian landscape and its historical record.

From that early period until today, not one written record of Christianity survives, yet oral tradition preserved the names of three local bishops: Mar Yaballah, Mar Abdisho and Mar Denha. Most Indonesians do not know of these tenuous but deep Christian roots, and it should be stressed that it was Eastern Christianity that arrived to the island first.

There are now two jurisdictions of Eastern Orthodox in Indonesia, under Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and Moscow Patriarchate.

It’s not surprising that Orthodoxy leaves no written record.  These early forms of Orthodox Christianity were introduced by Monks and were not spread, as Islam later was, in the context of trade. There is scant record of the Sriwijaya empire either.  For a long time it was almost completely forgotten, and was only brought to light in 1918 by Çoedès.

Much has been written about the manner in which Islam, frequently from the Sufi tradition, subsequently entered Indonesia. It’s spread was largely through ports and initially quite separate from the established Hindu-Buddhist traditions.  Often it’s spread was under the patronage of a Shah Bandar, rather than the patronage of traditional rulers.

In Indonesia the earliest historical periods are more difficult to study.  The historian Hasanuddin cites white ants and water as one of the historian’s greatest enemies in attempting to unravel the history of the archipelago.

Today Orthodoxy is again becoming more prominent in Indonesia.

Last night I attended the Feast of the Nativity at the Holy Trinity Orthodox church, here in Solo. It was a wonderful event, much singing and rejoicing and of great pleasure was the participation of people from other Christian communities as well as members of the Buddhist and Hindus communities. All attended both the liturgy and the feast that followed.

One thing that really impressed me was the presence of the Choir from the Pantasuhan Wisma Kasih Kudus – the Holy Gift Orphanage. These children weren’t Orthodox, yet they were welcomed and happily participated in the festivities. There common bond is that almost all lost parents in the sectional violence that ripped through Maluku in 1997 in the dying days of the New Order regime. There are 71 children in the Protestant orphanage and a further 26 have moved on the tertiary education in various parts of Indonesia. Their presence was a true reminder of the gift of Christmas, the gift of a clear path to the development of goodwill and love amongst all humans.

Indonesia’s Coat of Arms displays the Pancasila on its shield

The choir performing after liturgy

Jalan Thamrin on a clear day

Yesterday I noticed high alto cumulus and cirrus clouds in Jakarta. I wondered what this meant. I know what these clouds mean in my own city but here in wet season Jakarta I was puzzled by their significance. Today dawned clear and bright, the air beautifully clear a stiff consistent monsoon breeze from the west-north-west driving away much of the city’s usual haze. Fair weather cumulus clouds began rolling in around mid morning under a few remaining wisps of high cirrus. Such days are ideal for walking in Jakarta, the three day New Year break and reduced traffic also boosting the air quality. I noticed that even the security guard outside the Spanish Embassy, near my hotel, had taken of his face mask.

Plaza Indonesia and Grand Hyatt

Sitting over coffee this morning and reading the Jakarta Globe, I came across an ad for Periplus bookshops and was pleased to find there was one at the exclusive Plaza Indonesia. Here in this spacious retail precinct incorporating Jakarta’s Grand Hyatt hotel, names like Valentino, Versace, Gucci, Armani and Ermenegildo Zegna are common place.

I remembered Periplus as an excellent source of cultural and historical resources on Indonesia and since I’m going on to Solo then Bali shortly, I thought it would be a good idea to see what sort of maps and other information they had.

Periplus is the creation of an American known as Eric Oey. In the 1970s Oey was studying Indonesian and Chinese at UC Berkley when he picked up a years work with Singapore’s Apa Insight Guides. This seems to have wetted his appetite for publishing on Asia. He started out in 1988 publishing travel books and post cards. Now the Periplus Publishing Group claims to be the world’s largest publishers of English language books on Asia, it’s probably right although I suspect that some Indian publishers of English language books wouldn’t be far behind them. This morning I learned that India has a middle class amounting to 300 million people, that’s 60 million more than the population of Indonesia so that a large potential level of effective demand for books and other resources in English.

Here in Jakarta the Periplus bookshop is well stocked and well organized. It was with great pleasure and with some friendly help from a shop assistant that I acquired, yet another map of Bali and an interesting book by I Gusti Made Sutjaja, “ Everyday Balinese – Your Guide to Speaking Balinese Quickly and Effortlessly in a Few Hours”, something I’ve always wanted to do. Unfortunately 18 years intensively traveling to and from Bali has left me with little Balinese language. “Here’s my chance to learn”, I thought.

Making my way to the cashier I was greeted with a studied indifference that was reminiscent of Garuda flight attendants during the New Order period. There seemed to be a clear message, I’m not really meant for service, you’ll just have to wait until the mood comes upon me.

Of course, I was probably sending out the wrong dress signals as well, but I wasn’t wearing T-Shirt, Shorts and sandals, although only my trousers were tailor made, I changed out of my multi-pocketed cotton travelling pants before going to the Plaza because I didn’t want to stand out too much. Unfortunately I think I must have miscalculated, I didn’t wear my good shirt, only one of those travel shirts made in China and bought off the rack at Khatmandu.

I prefer those sorts of travel shirts because they’re so easy to keep clean. I don’t wear one everyday, but I could. At night washing them only involves a quick scrub in the wash basin using that cheap shampoo hotels always seem to supply in such abundance, then it’s just a matter of hanging the shirt on the air conditioning grill. This serves the dual purpose of drying the shirt quickly and humidifying the air. It’s the perfect solution. Yes, I’m definitely not a Plaza Indonesia fashion statement.

My friend Henky and I perfected this clothes washing and drying technique back in the 1980s when we were involved in an extended survey of tourism possibilities in Indonesia. Walking back to my hotel was a pleasure, what a clear beautiful day; I was reminded of the clear skies of the 1980s.

Jakarta continues to surprise me. Commercial buildings, city apartments and gated communities of various types seem to be growing, all over the city.  Unsettling is the clear sense of the gap between rich and poor widening. Post New Order Indonesia opens up a huge range of possibilities for anyone who has the money, for starters there’s absolutely no shortage of consumer goods, at a price.

Supermarkets
Several days ago I visited Makro Kelapa Gading, a huge supermarket with stock stacked several metres high on vast shelves.  It was teaming with shoppers.  Electronic goods, stationery, office equipment, fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, groceries, groceries, clothing and hardware,

Jakartans have taken to this style of retailing with an appetite for a bargain and amazing energy as consumers.  Prices are excellent, the check out system is fast and efficient employing the latest bar code scanning, a great aid to stock control and purchasing. Not till we were through the check-out was I reminded that we were still in Jakarta and that there’s a vast gap between the middle class who frequent shops like the Makro and the poor. Before we could leave another level of security snapped into place, every item on the bill was physically checked against the bill, even when it was just a 25kg sack of rice and two packets of bread rolls.

Floods
I’ve been staying in East Jakarta with friends, for the last five days.  The house stay almost didn’t happen, my friend H was embarrased by the state of his house.  Twice since 2007 his house has been flooded, waters reaching heights of 70cms inside.  Sadly he’s between a river and an open sewer, so the waters were quite fetid and unpleasant.  To make matters worse, his own toilet simply didn’t with the entire drainage syatem under water. He and his family used a neighbours place that had a second floor toilet, of course this meant his neighbour’s downstarirs toilet simply overflowed with fresh waste.

My stay was a little like being in something midway between a building project and a hardware store.  Embarrased that his tukang (tradespeople) simply hadn’t been turning up my friend was careful to explain that this was all a matter of economics.  Unless tukang lived locally, their travel costs and travel time were significant, yet the hourly rate for tradespeople was modest, so if there’s a job closer to home, they’ll go for it.  He’s currently caught between a rock and a hard place.

The Cost of Living
The level of wages in Jakarta is lagging behind the cost of living.

The Indonesian Trade Union Confederation has embarked on a campaign to bring minimum wages into accord with living costs across the country .

Jakarta has set its minimum wage at Rp 1.118 million ($118) a month.  This is a 4.5% increase but still below the 5.5% inflation rate expected in 2010.

Throughout the later part of 2009 there were signs of workers becoming increasingly unsettled about their prospects.  In Semarang, thousands of workers stages street demonstrations in Semarang, the capital of Central Java, to higher wages.

Reality or Urban Myth
I guess this is all cold comfort for my friend who is struggling with the knowledge that flooding in Jakarta is widespread event. He felt that the last flood was avoidable.  He claimed that a flood mitigation gate had been opened when it should have been kept closed because keeping it closed would have flooded a Toyota storage yard destroying many new cars, so it was opened and his neighbourhood innundated.  I couldn’t establish the veracity of this claim and don’t know whether or not it’s an urban myth.  Certainly the area where he lives is low lying, former sawah.  On the positive side though there are some major flood mitigation projects, currently underway.

Even the area around Makro Kelapa Gading store floods.  The following YouTube clip was shot on 1 February, 2008.

In my last post I wrote about the tolerance inherent in the distinctly syncretic form of Islam found within Indonesia. Yesterday one of the pillars of this movement left us. Former President Abdurrahman Wahid or “Gus Dur” as he is affectionately known to Indonesians, and people all over the world, died “from complications of diabetes, kidney failure, and stroke,” at 6.45 p.m. yesterday.

Gus Dur will long be remembered as a tolerant and inclusive man who placed the health of his country and its people well before his own. A global citizen with deep attachments to his land, his locality and his religion he was sustained by Indonesia’s rich syncretic culture. Already ailing when he assumed the Presidency of Indonesia he tackled the difficult task of clearing the way towards a fuller expression of democracy in Indonesia by challenging the power of the military.

Before becoming President, Gus Dur was head of the largest Islamic organisation in the world, Nahdlatul Ulama, with at least 34 million followers. I first became more intimately aware of Gus Dur in 1995, through the work of his friend, Australian film maker, Curtis Levy.

Curtis made a film called Invitation to a Wedding. I think the film was meant to focus on Gus Dur and on Islam in Indonesia. Events conspired to frustrate the filmmaker, yet with sheer brilliance Curtis turned this into a subtle but highly relevant exploration of the final stages of New Order Indonesia. He also foreshadowed a President in waiting. We owe him a debt, certainly not as great as the one we owe Gus Dur, but he did much to bring Gus Dur to the world.

In 1999 I was fortunate enough to arrive in Jakarta on the day of the election rally (kampanye) held by the four major Muslim parties, the National Awakening Party (PKB – Abdurrahman Wahid), the National Mandate Party (PAN – Amien Rais), the Crescent Star Party (PBB – Yusril Ihza Mahendra) and the United Development Party (PPP – Hamzah Haz). I didn’t know what to expect, in fact the road from the airport seemed clear and it seemed an early arrival might allow us to avoid the campaign rallies, we were quite wrong . The usual 40 minute journey from the airport became a 2 hour event. Our driver was at first a little unsettled.

Travelling with an Australian Indonesian teacher Paul Arbon it wasn’t long before, at Paul’s insistence, we threw open the taxi windows so we could collect campaign materials. These were like gold for a language teacher.

Our driver skillfully negotiated streets choked by slowly moving, very restrained and smiling supporters of the Muslim parties. Despite political differences they were all traveling together without any apparent animosity. The overwhelming impression was one of the youthfulness and friendliness of the participants. It was contagious and contrary to anything that we might have expected given the negative impressions created in the Australian media. This was a celebration of the right to occupy the streets and to openly and publicly express a political sentiment.

Kampanye in Jakarta tend to converge at the roundabout on Jalan Thamrin, in front of Hotel Indonesia. Here floats and mobile stages narrowed the way bringing things to a standstill. Our scheduled lunchtime meeting became irrelevant as slow moving traffic was wedged to a stop by motorbikes that drew into every available space.

Someone on a microphone called out the names of lost children and then called the crowd to prayer. There was a focusing of attention, an appeal for God’s help in bringing about a safe, orderly and honest election, then at the closing of prayers a call for people to clean-up the area. This certainly wasn’t the chaos I feared we might encounter. Here was a most orderly process.

I still recall the long hiatus that followed the 1999 elections. Curtis was quietly confident that Gus Dur would become the first democratically elected President of Indonesia. He was right.

Curtis Levy has made five films in Indonesia, apart from Invitation to a Wedding; he made Riding the Tiger, a 3-part series examining the origin of authoritarian rule in Indonesia, which won the Atom Award for Best Television Series. His most significant film was Jakarta at High Noon.

Jakarta at High Noon covers the time Gus Dur was taking on the power of the military in a tactical battle over who would run Indonesia. For part of this struggle he was out of the country.  Some suspected a military coup, but through his political mastery Gus Dur won the day.  Levy allows us to observe Gus Dur in this intense struggle with General Wiranto, Suharto’s strongman, who had been in charge of the Indonesian army during the sacking of East Timor after the referendum.

Gus Dur captured my imagination and support as his character emerged in this film. I realized that we shared common interests in Beethoven, Janis Joplin and the films of Francois Truffaut. I realized how important and humanizing a figure he was on the world stage.

Although of a different faith to me, I’m quietly confident that God will smile on this son of His. May he rest with God until the end of time.