Indonesia Research Program

Hearing the azan everyday is perhaps the biggest symbol of Islam for me here in Indonesia. Sure, Islam permeates all aspects of life but despite seeing men and women dressed in hijab and wearing Muslim head garb, I believe I hadn’t fully experienced their practices. The coming of Ramadan was one of my highly anticipated events especially since my host family is Muslim.

According to our host brother, there are sometimes various start dates for Ramadan in Indonesia: the one followed by the Muhammadiyah, which is based on the lunar cycle and patterned after practices from the Middle East; and the other is the one followed by NU and the government and is mathematically-based. My family started fasting Friday of last week, which is in accordance with the Muhammadiyah practices, while others started the next day. The night before, we went to eat Javanese noodle (I got something called magelangan, a tasty mélange of noodles, rice, chicken, and herbs). Due to absurdly large portions, my host mom and I weren’t able to finish our meals. While waiting for our di bungkus packages, the azan sounded and across the street from us, white-robed figures assembled to start the nightly rituals. The whole process grounded me and readied me for the next day, when Alex and I were woken up at 3 am to eat this feast of sweet, spicy dishes with rice. We slept again after the meal, and woke up about 3 to 4 hours later to start our day.

I did a semi-fast – I had to drink some water since Jessica, my partner, and I rode a motorbike around and interviewed people. When Jessica went to buy some water, it was a strange experience walking into and seeing food in a grocery store, thinking that I wanted to buy them because I was hungry, only to remember that I wasn’t supposed to be eating. I definitely felt weak during the day, and I can only imagine how it’s like for people who had to do this now on a daily basis. On the way home, Jessica and I passed by so many makeshift stalls, seemingly to rise from the ground only during Ramadan that sells food specifically to break the fast. I had a jolly time perusing and buying some of the various types of vegetables, fish, chicken, tofu, tempe, porridge, desserts, and drinks. That night, when we had our buka puasa, the food tasted much more delicious and powerful – as if the entire day of abstention had changed my taste buds and even perception of the food. Hanging out with the family after fasting and eating all the great food brings you so much closer together, too.

The experience made me want to fast again at some point during in the next few weeks.

This past weekend marked the start of Ramadan, and life in Jogja, which I thought I had been getting a hang of, has been upended.  The chaotic roads are calm since many of Jogja’s residents have left for the holiday. The noisy nights are even louder with the unceasing azan and drums churning from the mosques.  The city in which I had experienced the most intense and unapologetic displays of religious devotion has shown a secular and spiritually-shy American kid how much more room there is to flaunt your faith than what I had previously imagined.

Like Jacob, my (and Alia’s) host family is Muslim and observing the fasting month, puasa.  In their case that means they wake at 3:00 a.m. every day for thirty days, and stuff themselves full of food and liquids before going back to sleep at the command of the mosque’s loudspeaker by 4:30 a.m.  Once they wake up to begin their days, they must fast – no food, no water, not even any swallowed spit – until sundown, around 5:30 p.m.  I have, to a degree, been fasting alongside the family for some of these days.  On the first morning of puasa Alia and I woke with them and ate straight for an hour before heading back to bed and unsuccessfully attempting to find a position to sleep that didn’t push on our overfull stomachs.  Once I was awake and at work, despite the long sweaty bike ride to the office, the fast was not nearly as difficult as I imagined.  Though of course sitting in a shaded office for six hours doesn’t exactly count as strenuous or thirst-inducing activity.  I fasted again yesterday, not by choice, but because I overslept and had to run out the door without breakfast or water to meet up with my waiting partner Laksmi, who was taking me to work.  At work everyone else was fasting, so there was no food or drink and definitely no lunch break, so I ended up breaking my fast with everyone else here at the joglo around 5:30.

Of course for most the act of fasting is much more than a challenge of self-control or a cute way to get in touch with a foreign culture.  The tradition of fasting in Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity, stretches back for centuries and is far more of a spiritual task than a corporeal one.  The idea, I’m told, is to limit the control one’s bodily desires have over the mind, so that one can more closely commune with God.  It’s a beautiful thing, millions of people abstaining from sustenance during the sticky heat of the day.  America is a religious country, but I wonder whether, if Protestant Christianity had a similar observance, we’d be able to muster the kind of self-denial I’m witnessing here.  No one complains, no one even mentions their fast; they work through it and acknowledge their abstinence only through the act of abjuration.  My respect for Ramadan is further compounded by the delcious feast I partake in, whether I fasted or not, at sundown every night.  Ahhh food!

Laksmi and I are also well into our second week of research and work with the Youth Center of PKBI-IPPA, the local branch of Planned Parenthood.  PKBI’s services are usually quite cheap, by both American and Indonesian standards.  Pap smears are $5, HIV is only testing $0.70, and the kondoms are free and plentiful, poking out of every drawer and box.  It seems like every time I open a manila folder looking for patient data, out pop a few condoms, as if the act of filing puts one at risk for STIs.  Despite the affordability of the services – not to mention the fact that they are free if patients demonstrate an inability to pay – there are far fewer patients and customers coming to PKBI than they have the capacity to treat.  Laksmi and I are trying to figure out why this is, so for our research we are creating an outreach campaign aimed at attracting youth, ages 12 to 24, to the clinic.  We have been throwing up posters all over town, handing out stickers to teens at art shows (making the universal assumption that the spiked-hair, artsy-fartsy crowd is more likely to be sexually active), and even went on the radio last night to plug our cause.

We got to Radio Anak Jogja (Jogja Youth Radio) – housed, inexplicably, in the basement of an aquarium – right before the start of “Yulia’s Hour,” a talk and music show on weeknights from 7 – 8pm.  The first half hour of the show was devoted to the show’s host, Yulia, chatting away with two guests in the fasted Indonesian I’ve ever heard, interspersed with top 40 hits from across the archipelago.  I knew that the second half of the show was ours, and Laksmi had accordingly prepared remarks for our sales pitch to Jogja’s youth.  My role was to be the token foreign guy, maybe say a few heavily accented Indonesian words, and let Laksmi do the heavy lifting.  Even so, I was very nervous, and as we were waved into the booth I tried to distract myself from the elephant-sized butterflies in my stomach by playing the Clash’s “Capital Radio,” and R.E.M’s twin broadcast-themed classics, “Radio-Free Europe” and “Radio Song,” over and over in my head.

Once we were seated, the red light switched on, and I had mustered the best sounding “selamat malam” I had, Laksmi stole the show, breezing through her points and building a strong rapport with Yulia.  The only hiccup came when Yulia furiously motioned for me to stop nervously humming into the live microphone.  During song and commercial breaks we’d joke around in Indonesian (well, Laksmi and Yulia would) and I grew very comfortable with chilling in the booth as these two women put on a great show.  With ten minutes or so left and my mind wandering to thoughts of my mom’s apple pie, Yulia turned to me and sprang a question about the importance of our work with PKBI in perfect English that she had hitherto declined to inform me she spoke.  After what was surely the longest on-air “uhhhhh” in Jogja radio history, I (somewhat) recovered from the surprise of being so suddenly addressed and rambled on about reproductive rights as a human right with Laksmi duly translating for me.  We ended the show by answering a few questions from listeners and then, just as I was deciding that I really had the hang of this radio thing, it was all over and we were heading home.  It might not have been the most fun thing I’ve done here – that honor still goes to climbing Mount Lawu – but I feel truly lucky to have gotten the opportunity to have gone live on-air and promote cause about which I feel so strongly.  Hopefully we got some new patients for the clinic!

I meant to post about my project at Satunama on Wednesday evening, but thanks to James Dolan, I’ve been busy mourning the loss of Jeremy Lin to the Houston Rockets. Enough said on the matter. More importantly the Yankees are 9.5 games ahead of the Red Sox (#sorryimnotsorry Colin).

But my life in Indonesia revolves far less around sports than my life in America does. Britto and I have been busy at work at Satunama. We spent Tuesday reading about the history of Mount Merapi and researching the impact of sand mining on the livelihood of communities living on the slope of Merapi. The sand mining industry in Indonesia rakes in about 3 billion Rupiah a year, which is approximately $300,000. $300,000 is a lot of money in America; enough to comfortably pay for a Haverford education. But in Indonesia, it is a large fortune. In order to mine the sands of Merapi corporations must have a permit from local and regional authorities. In the past, the Indonesian government has sent the military to shut down illegal mining operations. In 2009, over 3,000 miners lost their jobs when the government shut down an illegal mining site in order to protect the environment.

On Wednesday, Britto and I went with Pimbo and Metta (another member of Satunama) to the site of a mining operation located on the banks of the Pabelan River at the base of Mount Merapi. The villages of Sengi and Kapuhan are located next to the river: Kapuhan to the North and Sengi to the South. They draw their water resources from the same reservoir, which happens to be located in the middle of the mining operation. The mining site donates sand to the two villages (and many others) to help them rebuild their homes, which were damaged by the 2010 Merapi eruptions. Satunama has helped implement irrigation programs in Sengi and Kapuhan, and is concerned about the impact of the mining operation on the villages’ water reservoirs. The sand mining operation is helping the villages rebuild their homes for free, but Satunama is worried that the miner’s will destroy the water reservoir if they continue to dig. In the upcoming months and years, the villages are going to have to make a complicated choice: rebuild their homes with free, high quality materials, or protect their water resources. Next week Britto and I will spend a few days in Sengi interviewing members of Sengi and Kapuhan about this situation, and how their lives have been effected by the Merapi eruption in 2010.

My host family official begins fasting for Ramadan tomorrow. I think I am going to try and wake up at 3am to eat breakfast with them. Or maybe I just won’t go to bed. Even though I have a propensity for staying up late when I am at Haverford, I haven’t really had to many late nights in Indonesia. The semester is coming up though, so perhaps I should start getting back in the late night groove. Anyways, tomorrow (Saturday) I have the day off. I plan to sleep late (9:30am is late here!), and then explore Jogja. Jalan Malioboro is 4km away and I hope to spend some quality time with the Batik vendors. In the afternoon Britto and I plan to visit Satunama’s youth empowerment program in the villages near the landfill. I am not really sure what to expect, but I promise to take and upload lots of pictures of the visit!

That’s all for now. It’s dinnertime in Indonesia and I have a delicious meal of tempe, rice and soto waiting for me.

My first day at Satunama was short, but successful! Britto and I met with Budi, the chairman of Satunama, Stella, one of Budi’s assistants, and Pimbo, the project manager of Merapi water pollution conflict that I will be working on over the next few weeks. Tomorrow, Britto and I will spend our day reading through Satunama’s files on the Merapi conflict and on Wednesday we plan to visit the site of the conflict at the base of Merapi. We will hopefully have some type of research framework set up by Thursday. Next week we plan to spend some more time at the base of the mountain conducting interviews with members of the villages involved in the conflict. From my conversations with Budi, Stella and Pimbo, I have realized that the conflict is much more intricate than I previously thought, so hopefully I will be able to explain it in greater depth later in the week.

Another project that Britto and I might have the opportunity to work on for a few days is a youth empowerment program in the villages that surround the landfills of Jogjakarta. Over the next ten years, the landfills are going to grow and potentially spill over into the villages. Satunama is training youth in the villages from ages eight to fifteen to feel comfortable speaking out in society. Whether it is through theater performance and writing, or music and painting, Satunama hopes that these children will use different expressive mediums to advocate for proper pollution control and waste management in Jogja. I think Satunama and many other NGOs are also working through traditional mediums of government to fight the spread of pollution, but I think that this is a really innovative way to prepare young Indonesian citizens to effectively participate in society.

After the orientation, I returned to my new home. Despite my best efforts to be productive, I fell asleep. There really is nothing better than napping from 2pm to 4pm. It is one of my favorite activities, especially during the school year. I woke up refreshed, and went for a jog around the neighborhood. When I returned, I was surprised to find a fourth member at the dinner table along with Agus, Bayu and Ratri. It was Tami, my host mother who has just returned from a trip to Bali. Tami works for an environmental advocacy NGO in Jogjakarta, and has spent the past few weeks working in Jakarta and Bali. Tami is fun to talk with, both in Bahasa Indonesia and in English, and it already feels like she has adopted me as one of her own children. She brought home some delicious wheat bread from one of the finest bakers in Bali as well as some mint flavored, multi colored marshmallows. At some point I am going to have to teach Bayu and Ratri how to make S’mores, because THEY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF S’MORES- imagine that, growing up without ever eating a S’more!

Compared to the neighborhood surrounding Sanata Dharma, which is a Catholic University, Agus, Ratri, Bayu, and Tami live in a much more Muslim neighborhood. The call to prayer is louder here, and seems to last much longer. Ramadan is coming and I am excited to experience it. This is the first time in my life that Ramadan will significantly impact my lifestyle. I do not think I am going to fast the entire time, but I might try it for a couple of days with my family. One of my friends posted a link to this article on Facebook today and I think that it provides a really interesting perspective on travelling to a foreign country. Basically the article says that we as individuals often get restless and anxious with life so we decide to travel to different places. Travel, though, is not just about being a tourist and seeing the sights. We know very little about other cultures because we have had very different life experiences compared with people of other cultures. Perhaps we do not know that much about other people in our own culture, and maybe we do not even know that much about ourselves. Travel is an opportunity to experience and explore new perspectives and different lifestyles, and learn something new about ourselves while we are at it. So when Ramadan begins next week, I am definitely going to take advantage of every opportunity I have to experience it. I do not really know what to expect, or what I am going to learn from my upcoming experience with Ramadan, but that is the beauty of traveling and trying something new.

…but let’s talk about something less gross. It seems like I operate on a two-week schedule with these blog posts, so I’ll try to limit this post to two fun things we’ve done in the past two weeks.  I’ll save you all from my research stuff because I fell asleep reading about Jacob’s research below and since his project was more interesting than mine, I doubt I’d be able to write about my own for more than twelve seconds.  Instead here are two occasions when I think we all had a great time together.  They help paint a picture of how we’ve spent our hours outside of research, time that will be in short supply in these final, research-dominated, weeks ahead.

Through the maze of its motorbike-packed streets and diverse throngs of people, Jogja seems a larger city than it is.  A quick Google search reveals that Jogja is only the 28^th most populous city proper in Indonesia.  Despite its small size – in population roughly equal to Colorado Springs – it is by common assent the most culturally influential city in Java, the island in which the majority of Indonesians live.  Djoko Pekik is Jogja’s most successful cultural export, a 75 year-old painter best known as Indonesia’s first “billion rupiah” painter, routinely selling his paintings at around the equivalent of US $100,000.

Two Tuesdays ago we got the chance to visit Pekik in his home on the southwest edge of Jogja.  In Jogja they have a saying – more snappy-sounding in Bahasa – that translates roughly to this: “if you want clever people, head to the north, if you want rich people, head to the south.”  The least I can say is that Pekik’s home was correctly situated on the southern edge of town.  As we left the university-saturated north and headed to Pekik’s house, the buildings grew larger and spread farther apart from each other.  We found ourselves heading downhill on a long dirt road hedged on either side by 80-foot high bamboo.  At last, we came to his house – really a series of buildings grouped together on 4 hectares of land – settled next to a river, the cleanest (though still nicely filled with plastic flotsam) in the city.

Djoko greeted us himself as we pulled into the driveway.  He is a frail 75, age compounded by his chain-smoking and the seven years of abuse he faced at the hands of the Suharto regime in the aftermath of the 1965 massacres.  Pekik’s fame is due not only to his skill and style – to my uneducated artistic eye, something approximating social realism – but also to his biography.  He grew up in a poor village in central Java dominated by foreign teak loggers and escaped to Jogja as soon as he was able to study art.  By this time it was the early 1960s, and socialist student movements were gaining force all over the world, from France to Latin America.  He quickly fell in with the cultural wing of the local communist party, participating in their public art works and visual publicity projects and forming relationships with some of the most influential socialist leaders in Indonesia.  Then came 1965, when Suharto ousted Sukarno and paved his way to the capital with the bodies of millions of Indonesians, many of them socialist sympathizers.  Pekik was arrested and sent to prison for the better part of a decade.  He was released, after considerable maltreatment – torture, isolation, and starvation – under the condition that he silence his voice and shelve his brush if he wished to remain free.  Pekik became a tailor and didn’t take up painting again until the mid 1980s, when the threat hanging over him had somewhat subsided.

It was not until 1998 however, with the reformasi and the ouster of Suharto, that Pekik’s fame truly started to spread.  To honor the upheaval he created a series of giant two-meter high panels depicting the various stages of a boar hunt, from the initial sighting of the beast till to its final slaughter.  The boar – cruel, violent, and absolutely haraam in Muslim Indonesia – is intended to symbolize Suharto, and the boar’s euphoric butchers, the Indonesian people.  The central piece of this series sold for the then unheralded price of one billion rupiah.  Fourteen years later, his paintings routinely sell over that threshold, mainly to domestic collectors, and he freely admits that he sometimes churns out works for no purpose other than to reap the profit, which he often gives to friends (some of them former allies from the halcyon days of Indonesian socialism) in need.

Despite the success he has wrung from the aftermath of his detainment and abuse, Pekik is still haunted by his time in the hands of the government.  As he led us through his compound, threading our way between multiple garages and studios down to his personal exhibition gallery, Pekik indicated the army green hue of all of his buildings, which, he says, he picked specifically to help rid himself of a nightmare-inducting military phobia that still keeps him up at night.   In the basement of the main house is the gallery in which many of his works – and copies of his more famous pieces housed in the homes of Jakarta’s rich – are aligned in chronological order along the oval curve of the room.  Over a spread of bean curd, coconut pastries, spring rolls with chilies and pickles, and teh manis, the favored local preparation of tea – sickly sweat and lukewarm – we were seated with Pekik and invited to discuss his work and political philosophy.

The first thing you notice about Pekik, after his long white wisp of a beard, is his chain-smoking.  He carries, clutched in his left hand, a gold cigarette case and aluminum lighter wherever he goes.  Like an inexperienced smoker unable to pace himself, he blows through each cigarette in under a minute, his right hand ready to light the next before he finishes his current one.  His voice, consequentially, is nothing more than a grim croak, and he spends a lot time waving vaguely in the air when trying to express his thoughts on a topic that neither his throat nor his memory have much of an ability to recall.  Between the beard, his bright eyes magnified by a set of never-in-fashion coke-bottle glasses, and the perpetual eddy of smoke swirling around his head, Pekik presents somewhat of a deranged and mystic figure.

Unlike many artists of his generation, Pekik has largely eschewed the moderate politics of his peers, avoiding the seemingly compulsory shift to the middle that characterizes so many former radicals and activists in their twilight years.  In our brief time with him, Pekik denounced the influence of international industrialists and their “rat money” fueling the Jakarta corruption machine while praising Indonesia’s marginalized workers, the nation’s “only hope.”  As leftist thinkers and artists tend to do, Pekik romanticizes and generalizes about the dignity of the working class in his paintings.  The paintings themselves lack any subtlety – a rat or bulldozer is intended, without any ambiguity or gradation of possible meaning, to stand in for government corruption or the corrosive clutch of foreign capital.  Government ministers are clowns and charlatans, workers are angels and saints, abused but unbroken.  There is of course nothing wrong with this perspective – it is one that largely mirrors my own political predilections – but it raises, in the case of Pekik, interesting contradictions.

Pekik is, of course, unimaginably wealthy by Indonesian standards.  His home is the one of the most luxurious I’ve seen in my six weeks here (the only competition keeping it from the top spot is the crucifix- and altar-filled home of the Catholic owner of Kompas, Indonesia’s most popular daily).  On his compound there is a building designated solely for the performance of gamelan music, he has more mountain and motor-bikes than you can count, and with the eccentric flare found almost exclusively in the wealthy or creative (in his case both), his driveway is flanked by a curious mixture of life-size Ronald McDonald statues and busts of ancient Javanese and Roman gods.  His home, taken all together, looks like it was furnished by an 18-year old with wealthy absentee parents and a blind disregard for established conventions of interior design.  In short, Pekik is living the life of anything other than a communist revolutionary.  His repeated claims that the proceeds from his paintings are required to continue his “struggle” are, I’m sure, grounded in truth.  But there’s no denying that he has also embraced the norms and ideals of a distinctly bourgeois kind of comfort, one of flat-screen TVs, all-terrain-vehicles, and well-stocked artificial fishponds.  He even has a pet eagle.

I spend a lot of time calling people out for perceived hypocrisies and contradictions.  As my sisters know all too well, I often see it as my primary job to criticize and badger them (and everyone else) on any point where I perceive a weakness or failing in logic or judgment.  Which is not to say that I’m anything but lacking in both categories.  I have nothing but respect for Pekik, and left his home lucky to have had the experience of speaking with so notable an artist.  We all thoroughly enjoyed our visit.  Rather than making me lose respect for him, the contradictions and struggles Pekik embodies make him more appealingly human than any disconnected Marxist painter living off of breadcrumbs and anti-capitalist acrimony.  He is appealing in his everyman sensibility, described by our translator as “the typical Javanese village gentleman charisma.”  The incessant stream of cigarettes and fried food disappearing into his wealthy mouth make him a more interesting and relatable.  Likewise, the plebian warmth and vigor of his paintings, not to mention their underlying humor (Pekik paints himself staring at a young woman’s cleavage in the background of many of his paintings), make his art accessible in all its unadorned charm.

Then the following weekend we got to head to the home of our program coordinator, Sari, and her husband Bram, in a village on the outskirts of Ngawi, a town far smaller than even Jogja.  Our train ride out on Friday afternoon was two uneventful hours of newly harvested rice patties rolling by our windows.  The only excitement came from some bunched-in chickens issuing loud and indignant squawks at the woman two rows over who stuffed them in a crate under her seat.  When we got to Ngawi, Bram greeted us with his van pulled alongside the tracks. We had to jump the considerable gap between the train and the rails, luggage in hand, before the train rushed off to more populous and profitable locales where, presumably, they wait for passengers to disembark before moving on.  With the light fading, Bram drove the sagging minivan – carrying nine passengers and the luggage of six Americans prone to over-packing – on the gravel roads winding back to his home.  In the last few minutes of daylight, Bram pointed me (I generally ride shotgun by virtue of whining the most about legroom) to Mt. Lawu, which at nearly 11,000 feet in an otherwise flat and featureless terrain completely dominates the local aspect.  In addition to being a holy site for Hindu pilgrims and a large tourist draw, Bram was highlighting Lawu’s presence because our weekend trip was centered on our foolish desire to climb the damn thing.  At first, being both near-sighted and altogether unused to big rocky things, I couldn’t see the mountain.  After a few moments of eye-adjustment I widened the scale of my sight line and the Lawu massif became apparent to me.  By mountain standards it’s pretty average in size, and by climbing standards absolutely tame, but for someone whose first thoughts at hearing the word “mountain” are the bunny slope Poconos of central PA, it was a monster.

Once we got to Bram and Sari’s and set our luggage down, we explored their home, a beautiful centuries-old model of the red-tile Javanese style.  We squabbled over the two beds with mosquito nets, puzzled at the traditional Javanese shower (a bucket and a ladle), marveled at the dizzying number of phallus-themed paintings on the walls (a disconcerting number including dogs), and lathered ourselves in bug repellent before we sat down to a dinner of soto ayam.  This chicken soup concoction, with self-served portions of bean sprouts, Thai basil, green chilies, blue ginger, sweet soy sauce, coconut shavings, peanuts, and sambal, is one of my favorite foods.  I’ve had it in Suriname and at home, cooked by aunts and my mom and since I’ve come to Indonesia it’s become a consistent lunch favorite.  I’ve always enjoyed it, even at the sketchier street-side stands we’ve visited, but nothing, nothing, compares soto at Sari and Bram’s house.  Imagine the a rich, clear, chicken broth, load it up with fresh organic vegetables and rice and chicken all picked or killed that day in your backyard, now add a couple heaping spoonfuls of unadulterated bliss and maybe you can get an idea of what the soto was like.  Sorry Mom, I think they’ve got you beat on this count.

Saturday Morning, 4 a.m., Bram drove us to Lawu and we began our ascent.  I don’t think I have the adjective firepower to describe the climb and its views; I’ll let the great photos in the posts below do the talking.  I can say though that the act of climbing Lawu was amazing.  I’ve rarely felt so intimately grounded (pun intended) with my environment.   Every step we took was another kick by the mountain, calves screaming, quads shaking, Jacob and I slobbering over our packs while Colin and Alia pushed hard and unfazed ahead.  But it was beautiful in so many ways.  It was clear to anyone who could see the maniacal glint in my eye that I fancied myself a young American Tenzing Norgay.  I sure acted like I had reached the summit of Everest once we reached the top, but in truth, between my whole list of physical limitations – being out of shape, sweating truly astounding amounts of fluid, recovering from elbow surgery – and the allure of food at the bottom of the trail if only I turned back, I barely made it.  Only the thought of Colin’s gloating face if I didn’t make it (he didn’t break a sweat and took half as many stops for rest as Jacob and I – Alia was similarly indefatigable, but infinitely less obnoxious) kept me going.  After we hit the summit and headed down, my shame was further compounded on our descent by the sight of a local man, aged at least 50, carrying a massive load of rice on his back while trudging barefoot up the mountain at a rate at least twice of what I did.  I’m going to add a visit to the gym, along with taking a warm shower and eating pie, to the list of things I need to do when we get home.

I’m falling asleep again, and it’s only 2 p.m.  Time for a nap.  Just got back from a meeting-shortened first day of my internship at Planned Parenthood, and I look forward to talking about that some more once it gets underway.   So long for now!

We just moved into our homestays yesterday. It’s strange to realize that we’d already been in Jogja for about six weeks now, and we only have a few more weeks left. I’m starting to think about missing this place already. Not to mention the fact that all six of us are now in separate places, except for Alex and me. We’re living in a Joglo, a traditional Javanese house, with a bunch of artists and musicians. I’m so excited to be here – it’s very peaceful. I woke up today to the sounds of birds and crickets chirping in the early morning – it’s like being in a farm in the middle of the city. Honestly, though, since last weekend, everything’s gone so fast. From our daily activities and encounters, we’ve discovered so much about Indonesia in the meantime.

We went to visit Sari’s village in Ngawi. With amazing bahasa Indonesian, we’d successfully purchased our own tickets, and got ready to leave with Sari and Rose. On the train ride, we saw the beautiful countryside and the setting sun touching the tip of Gunung Lawu, a sight forever tattooed on my mind – because the next day, we climbed it.

Gunung Lawu is one of the sacred mountains in Java. According to Bram, it’s a property of the Queen of the South Seas, just like Parangtritis beach (so, we can’t wear any green since that’s her favorite color; nor can we kill any of the brown feathered, yellow-beaked birds that inhabit its forests). Many Indonesians climb the mountain as a sort of pilgrimage. Near the top, there’s a well that, supposedly, if you bathe in its water or even just wet your hair, you will achieve high status in your career and life. When climbing it, though, this is the farthest thing from your mind. We had to wake up at 5 am to drive up to the mountain and start climbing at around 6:30.

Setting a goal of reaching the top at 10 am (Colin, you beast athlete) was probably setting the standards high, especially for Jacob and me and our first mountain-climbing experience. The first two hours were quite charming, seeing all the different kinds of flora and fauna and views on the way to the top. Despite my layers of clothing slowly getting soaked in sweat and dew, I happily snapped photos of anything interesting, and proudly took about 300 during the whole climb. To the top, there are 5 posts (Pos), and then the summit. And between Pos 2 and Pos 4, the grueling, brutal work suddenly and gleefully tortured us. In our many pauses, I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears, and my panting breaths puffed out small clouds in quick bursts. My legs weren’t burning, but I developed a weird tick on my left thigh that moved every time I raised my foot – uh oh, thanks for introducing yourself now, cramp. My photos were few and far between in this period, but once we reached Pos Empat (4), everything melted away when we saw clouds interspersed with the mountain’s body, so near that we could touch them. Cool wind soothed us, bringing with it the pungent smell of sulfur from the far reaches of the mountain. The climb was much easier after this point – and the sights were absolutely breathtaking. At the summit of 10,217 feet, we discovered this hidden path between some bushes that led to a ridge overlooking several other mountains in the distance, the valley down below, and the hills around the mountains, clouds and fog covering their bodies but the tips, the shining sun seeming so near. Needless to say, it made me wanna climb another mountain.

The next day, I witnessed the blessing of Bram and Sari’s rice fields before harvest. It’s a traditional Javanese ceremony, more pagan than related to any religion, wherein a piece of dried coconut husk is burned, an offering of flowers, herbs, leaves, and an egg are prayed/sung over and scattered around the area where a few stalks of rice are harvested and tied together to be protection in Sari’s house. A meal of tofu (the best I ever had in my whole life), chicken, tempe, rice, and spicy vegetables awaited all the men and women who will go and harvest – I was lucky enough to partake of this supremely enak meal. I loved how the tradition created a time to be thankful for family and food and to share this moment together. I felt like a part of the community, even though I knew only my hosts and the children who learned computer science from Sari. I walked among the grass and trees with the children, listening to the swish of the scythes through the rice stalks, resting under the cool shade of bamboos and trees, and listening to the water from the flowing river. My heart was in two places at once – there in Ngawi and back home in my grandfather’s fields in Libas, Tantangan, Philippines.

When we got back to Jogja, our research took over. For the past two to three weeks, Elizabeth, Shandy Jessica (one of the Indonesian participants), and I have been working on a project involving waste management and perception in the city. We began by interviewing a bunch of warung owners and students around the USD about their waste management practices and whether there’s a waste management system in Jogja. We also wanted to know whether we could find some form of environmental awareness (as defined, perhaps, by segregation and proper disposal of waste) in the city. It’s been a lot of fun, since we got to practice our bahasa, make friends with the cooks of our regular haunts, and take loads of photos of kitchens – the production processes. Most kitchens boil their water and keep their surroundings clean, no matter how unpolished they are. They also had very strict practices of isolating their clean food from their waste and other harmful materials. Field research of this type makes it feel so much more real and human than the paper research we do in university – you’re talking to actual people, learning about them, interacting with them, and seeing their reactions to your questions and responses. The best part is how open and kind our interviewees were. I especially adore the cooks at Bu Bagyo’s lotek and gado-gado place, where I still get a squeeze on the arm every time I order. Though we’re not saints, it’s gratifying to know that we’re working to know about something that might benefit them in the future.

We also interviewed a government representative for their environmental department, an academic, and the director of WALHI. Each of them detailed their own programs for reduction of trash.  The government itself has its own waste reduction program. However, we found that overall, there is little management. In addition to this, perception of trash is localized – more aesthetic. There’s a general feeling of disgust for trash but once it’s ‘out of sight, [then] out of mind’. Since we were ‘following’ the trajectory of trash, we found (and took photos of) several agents of waste. Within the city, there are small-time collectors: some who collect certain objects such as bottles, cardboard, metal, etc. to be sold to companies for recycling; some who collect trash in the streets to be taken to focal points in the city where the dump truck picks them up to be taken to the dump; some wait for the dump truck to collect their trash; while some simply burn their trash or throw it in the river. However, all trash collected is usually just brought to the dump – segregated or not, organic or not, etc.

One of the most interesting parts of the research was when we’d followed dump trucks to TPS (Tempat Pembuangan Sampah) Piyungan – the landfill. We had to go twice, since the first time we went, they would not let us in not interview any of the officials without a letter. They allowed us to go around the dump, however, and I secretly took photos. It was a sight – but far from the beauty of Lawu. When we opened the taxi window, the smell of decay was so strong I almost choked. There were houses and rice fields around the area as well, and I could not imagine even staying there for more than a few hours. There were hills and valleys of trash, and walking among them were cows and calf, eating plastic and who-knows-what-else. With the animals, people roamed here and there – scavengers or pemulung, bending down to pick up a piece of plastic or cloth or metal that may be useful and sold later. The ones leaving the landfill were bent under humungous hand-made backpacks of ‘useful’ loot. The landfill had 3 zones, but trash overflowed into the forest and houses at its sides. Determined to get out interview, we came back on motorcycles and talked with the head of the landfill’s office. We learned that clay and sand are dumped on the landfill every three days, and that approximately 150-200 trucks come from Bantul, Yogyakarta, and Sleman to dump 350-400 tons of trash daily. Significantly less than Jakarta 6000 tons of trash, this amount should still be addressed when there’s no other waste management practice.

Admittedly, I became more interested in the scavengers during this time. We learned that about 450-500 pemulung live there, and that they need to get permits from the government to be able to scavenge in the landfill. They sell the trash to their pengepul, the head of a group of scavengers. Many of them own cows, which will be sold to markets. This is quite a creepy idea. Elizabeth said, “The cows are like a symbol of the cycle.” Without proper waste management, all this trash becomes a direct and indirect health concern, and not only for environmental sustainability.

On Thursday, we presented all this with the GMU students, where the topics ranged from the family perspective of waria (males with the souls of women) to domestic violence in Indonesia to the Prabowa, one of the candidates in the upcoming elections, and his many human rights violations to the process of making art in Jogjakarta. I’m ready to start the next phase of the internship – working with my NGO. Though I’m missing Amanda, Elizabeth, and Tiwi’s little quirks that you only know once you start living with them and all the daily lunches and dinners that our group of 7 (with Jacob, Alex, and Colin) usually have, I’m excited to get to know the people in my new community in the Joglo and WALHI.

I cannot believe that it has already been over a week since my last post. Life has been very hectic. There is so much to talk about. I guess the best place to start is where I left off. Last Friday afternoon Alex, Colin, Alia, Elizabeth, Amanda and I took a two and a half hour train ride through the countryside of Central Java to Bram and Sari’s village near Ngawi. Bram and Sari have a beautiful home, surrounded by vibrant organic rice fields. Their rice fields are located right next to inorganic rice fields that are supplemented with chemicals. The difference between organic and inorganic rice fields is incredible. The rice plants in the inorganic fields lack the vibrancy and greenness of the plants in the organic fields, and the soil of the inorganic fields looks very unhealthy.

Last Saturday might have been the highlight of my experience Indonesia thus far. We woke up early, around 4am and traveled to Mount Lawu, a volcano that has a lot of significance in Javanese culture. Its elevation is 3,265 meters, or 10,712 feet, above sea level. When you are about 15 minutes away from the peak there is a special water well, which if you bathe in, according to Bram and Javanese legends, you will become a distinguished person in society. The mountain is also populated with small “Jalak” birds with golden beaks. They are the protectors of the mountain and seeing them is considered a sign that the mountain has welcomed you. We began our hike a little after 6am and reached the peak around 11am. It was my first legitimate mountain hike, and it was a tremendous experience. The beauty of the mountain was overwhelming. The trail was steep and surrounded by beautiful, simple flowers, shrubs and small trees. Naturally when we reached the well, we all bathed in it. So perhaps one day we will all become distinguished individuals in society. Regardless of whether or not the myth of the well actually comes true, I was grateful to wash myself with its cool, refreshing water. My favorite part of the hike was simply reaching the summit. There was no better feeling that day than conquering the mountain. From the peak we could see two other mountains off in the distance peaking through the clouds. I do not know which mountains they were, but it was a sight that I will never forget.

We spent Sunday mostly recuperating from our adventure, and wandering through Sari and Bram’s beautiful rice fields with young children from the local community. Sari and Bram often invite the children to play and read at their house during the day. It is amazing how energetic young children are. I spent a fair amount of my Sunday afternoon swinging children in the air and chasing them around the rice fields. Overall, our weekend in Ngawi was incredibly relaxing and refreshing.

Early Monday morning we went back to Jogja. Our research presentations were on Thursday, so Laksmi and I spent much of our time on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday organizing our research for the presentation. Here is a quick summary of what we found:

Our main research questions are outlined in a post below, but basically we wanted to know whether or not the “democratic government” of Indonesia is promoting and protecting freedom of expression in society. We also wanted to know what impact (if any) the violence committed by hard-line Islamic organizations such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (MMI) has had on pluralism and freedom of expression in Indonesian society. We conducted 18 interviews over the last four weeks, eight of which were in English. So I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday transcribing the English interviews. Our interviewees included artists, victims of religious violence, filmmakers, journalists, Indonesian academics, NGO activists, LGBT activists, devout Muslims, literary critics and college students.

We had to boil all of our research down to a ten-minute presentation. After sorting through all of our transcripts, Laksmi and I picked out some basic themes and ideas that came up constantly in our interviews. Many of the artists we spoke with referred to hard-line organizations as “thugs” who are using Islam as a “mask” to protect their criminal acts. Articles published on Insideindonesia.org, like this one, confirm that some Indonesians are trying to use religion as justification for corrupt behavior. Another theme that became apparent based on our conversations with three Indonesian academics is that a “silent majority” exists in Indonesia, which opposes the militant acts of a vocal minority. However, the majority of Indonesians who oppose this violence are divided about a number of issues, and sometimes, different sections of the majority are co-opted by the smaller hard-line organizations about moral issues, like pornography for example. One academic also suggested that the Indonesian central government is a “democracy in name only,” and that it is “toothless.” He pointed to recent events in West Java, where the mayor of a city has refused to allow the building of a church despite a ruling from the Indonesian Supreme Court that the Church is legal. The central government has yet to take action against the mayor. There are many other cases of violence or blatant disregard for the law that the Indonesian government has failed to stop or take action against.

While it appears that the Indonesian democratic government is weak, there are many signs that Indonesian society has become more free and pluralistic since the fall of Suharto. One example is the increase in “horizontal conflict” that many of our interviewees have witnessed over the past fifteen years. Conflicts in society are no longer between the government and the people, but rather the people and the people. Indonesian citizens are no longer afraid to express their beliefs and criticize the government. However, violence committed by hard-line organizations is certainly intimidating some members of society. One has to wonder why the Indonesian government has failed to stop the violence, or punish those who commit the violence. One theory I have is that the Indonesian government does not want to crackdown on violent organizations because it does not want to be compared to the Suharto regime. Other people we have interviewed suggest that many members of the hard-line organizations have infiltrated Indonesian government and are turning a blind eye towards the violence. Whatever the case may be, the Indonesian government needs to strike a balance between promoting freedom of speech and expression, and cracking down on violence.

I think that is enough about my research. There is a lot more to say, but I don’t want this post to turn into an essay about violence in the name of Islam and its relationship with pluralism in Indonesian society. Friday we had a day off to relax and pack our bags, and on Saturday we all split up and moved to different host families throughout Jogja. I am living with a Dentist named Agus and his two children: Bayu and Ratri. Bayu is an 11 year old boy and Ratri is a 13 year old girl. Earlier today Bayu had gamelan lessons with his friends, and I got to join in. Check out the Wikipedia link to learn more about gamelan, but basically it is a traditional collection of xylophones, gongs, and drums, which was first developed during the 200s AD by a God/King who coincidentally lived on Mt. Lawu and used the first gamelan to summon other Gods. Bayu also likes to play FIFA (a soccer video game). We’ve played a couple games, and I also played a few with his friend Rafi. I’d say the competition is a little stiffer back at Haverford. It has been fun so far to play and interact with my new brother and sister, especially because I have been able to practice my Bahasa Indonesia more. Bayu and Ratri are both learning English so our conversations are often an amalgamation of both Bahasa Indonesia and English.

Tomorrow I start my internship at Satunama. Laksmi has gone to work at Planned Parenthood with Alex (she is studying Medicine and Public Health), so I will be working with Britto, a history student from Sanata Dharma. He previously worked with Amanda during the research institute, studying patterns of educational discrimination against Papuan students in Jogja. Satunama is an NGO that works throughout all of Indonesia to empower marginalized members of Indonesian society. One potential project that I might be working on is a current conflict over water pollution on Mount Merapi, another volcano about 30 kilometers from Jogja. From my understanding of the conflict, it is illegal to mine the sands on the slope of Merapi, but many companies and villages choose to mine the sands anyways because the sands are very valuable. Some villages have been mining the sand near the top of Merapi, and have polluted the water supplies for villages that live at lower levels of the mountain. Despite the fact that mining is illegal, the government has refused to act because of the profit companies make off of sand mining (probably there is some lobbying from big corporations influencing the government’s behavior). Satunama is trying to give a voice to the villages whose water supply is being polluted. I do not know yet what other projects I will be working on with Satunama, but I am looking forward to my first day.

If you have made it to the end of this post, congratulations! I will try to report back more often over the next few weeks. We are starting a new stage of the program and I am very excited to begin my internship.

I’ll admit that I’ve occasionally been a little homesick (and Haversick) in Indonesia. Yesterday was the first time in my life that I was not in America for the 4^th of July. There were no fireworks; no day off from work; no delicious cheddar cheeseburgers, hotdogs, grilled bbq chicken, shrimp cocktails, corn on the cob, Caesar salad (definitely miss my Mom’s salad dressing), and watermelon. Clearly I could go for a barbeque right now. One of my favorite things about Indonesia though is the food, and even on the 4^th of July it is a great cure for homesickness. We recently discovered that the Gule and Soto restaurant we go to for lunch, which Colin detailed in his earlier post transforms into a delicious seafood restaurant at night. It has been by far my favorite restaurant here, and it is quite affordable. For my 4^th of July dinner I had a hot plate with shrimp, squid, chicken and vegetables covered in a spicy “sweet and sour sauce.” I think Colin might have to adjust his rankings based on this restaurant- move over Milas, we’ve got a new number one.

Laksmi and I have had some fascinating interviews this week. Last Friday afternoon we went to a Mosque for Friday (Jum’at) prayers. The mosque was small, so many people prayed on the street outside. The street had been barred off from other streets so that no cars or motorbikes would interrupt the prayer session. In order to participate in midday prayers on Friday, one must be a Muslim man, so Laksmi and I just watched from the back. I think my favorite part about observing the prayer session was watching two little boys goofing around while praying next to their father. It reminded me of those times in synagogue when me and my friends would sneak off to play tag while our parents were focused on services. Judaism is not a recognized religion in Indonesia. Indonesia officially recognizes only six religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Every Indonesian citizen is required to have an identification card that lists one of these six religions. While many of the Indonesians I have met recognize that I am a foreigner, I wonder if they would perceive me differently if they knew that I was Jewish? Laksmi and I have had some interesting conversations about Judaism, especially about the Holocaust, which is not discussed often in high school history classes in Indonesia. Laksmi is curious about everything. Our conversations, in addition to Judaism, range from discussions about American and Indonesian sports (especially basketball- waking up to see that Steve Nash was signing with the Lakers instead of the Knicks was devastating today), to comparisons of Indonesian and American democracy. She is also studying to be a medical student, so sometimes we talk about science and public health.

On Sunday, in addition to interviewing Dede Oetomo, who Alex detailed in his post below, Laksmi and I went to the Jogja Arts Festival to interview some artists for our research project on freedom of expression in Indonesian society. We spoke with one artist who paints with his feet because he does not have arms. He said that he does not make political statements with his artwork because he would not be able to protect himself if he angered the wrong people in society. He sticks to painting nature. Many of our other interviewees have said that the acts of violence committed by hard-line Islamic organizations over the last 14 years have intimidated advocates for pluralism, but it has also motivated many activists to respond peacefully in their struggle for freedom of expression. Laksmi and I also interviewed a book critic at the private library Indonesian Buku to discuss the recent book burnings in Jakarta. A major publishing organization in Indonesia burned its own books because members of hard-line organizations were offended that the book referred to Muhammad as “a pirate and a murderer.” It is fascinating how much power religion commands in Indonesian society.

Today Laksmi and I attended a lecture on Indonesian democracy given by Alissa Wahid, the daughter of the first democratically elected president of Indonesia following the fall of Suharto, Abdurrahman Wahid. Mrs. Wahid spoke of the complexities of uniting the diverse cultures that exist in Indonesia. Indonesia is the fourth largest nation in the world behind China, India, and the United States. Unlike the three nations ahead of it that are mostly connected by land, Indonesia is an archipelago of approximately 19,000 islands. Also the concept of Indonesia as a nation is less than 70 years old. Bahasa Indonesia, the national language, did not exist until the unification of the Indonesian archipelago. In addition to Bahasa Indonesia, there are more than 300 other native languages spoken in Indonesia. So imagine trying to unite millions of people with over 200 different cultural identities, who speak many different languages, and are spread out over 19,000 different islands behind the concept of one state and one national government: a pretty intimidating endeavor to say the least.

That’s all for now. On Friday we will be traveling to Ngawi, Sari’s (our program coordinator) village in East Java. It is about two hours away from Jogja by train and I am excited to explore the countryside of Java!