The Lucretius Plan

In-flight entertainment

In which Beth continues on her trans-Papua adventure

My heightened anxiety at flying is not helped by the number of people who insist on using their mobile phones during the flight. I doubt there is enough electronic equipment on the aircraft for it to be a problem but it is disconcerting nonetheless. This seems to be endemic in Indonesia (though for all I know this happens everywhere now), the announcement 'raise your tables to their upright position' is accompanied by a series of chimes and Nokia polyphonia as all the SMS messages start pinging the newly activated mobile phones.

For all I know, mobile phones do not actually interfere with the navigation equipment (in those few planes here that are so equipped), but I am fairly sure that naked flames are a bad idea. A few days ago while on route to Nabire again I could suddenly smell smoke. I checked all the passengers to see who was smoking and to my pleasant surprise none were. I then thought that it must be the aircraft itself that was on fire somewhere but to my relief although at the same time my slight horror; I saw that it was in fact the pilot who was enjoying a kretek (clove cigarette).

As usual with traveling alone in Indonesia, you are never really alone. There is always someone sitting next to you who takes a keen interest in your life story. This is almost an exact record of the exchange between myself and my neighbour my last flight from Nabire to Biak:

We introduced ourselves and chatted about where I live and what kind of work I am doing. I am asked if I am married and then where my husband is from. This is followed by what the conversation is really about (it usually comes down to this) - children. I am asked if I have any, followed by how long I have been married. This gives them context, as ideally you should aim to have children within the first year of marriage so the longer you are married without children the more worrying it is to locals. Genuine concern is shown about what this must be doing to the marriage. I am told it is in God's hands. There is a break in the conversation and I go back to reading my book. A few minutes later, he asks if we are properly trying, by that he means having sex. It is very common for complete strangers to ask such personal questions so I am used to it, but it still makes me chuckle. I go back to my book for a few moments more. “Have you been checked out by a doctor to make sure everything is working?” Again, a little personal, but I find myself answering honestly that no we haven’t been to a doctor and he along with a number of other passengers who have been eavesdropping start to become more concerned and suggest we go see a doctor immediately. I go back to reading my book; “you are always apart, that is why it isn’t working.” The passengers nod in approval at this latest suggestion and I tell them that yes we are away with work a lot but that they shouldn’t worry themselves about it anymore. A few more paragraphs are read before, “you need to tell your boss that you need to ‘make baby’ and he will give you time off work.” He informs me that is what he did and his boss agreed about the importance of making babies and so he got the time off and it worked, he now has two children.

I thank the passengers for their useful advice, and everyone returns to separate conversations, speculating on the fecundity of westerners and the irony of all these childless white women flying around Indonesia to oversee family planning projects.

The Jungle Commute

In which Beth attempts to work in one of the remotest areas of the planet

Traveling to Papua is always good for anecdotes. The journey is never straightforward and you always feel that you might not make it this time. Then from the moment you arrive the tense process begins to try and get a ticket to get back out again. Its not that you want to leave immediately, only that it takes so long to secure a ticket and then hours of waiting. Even then being in possession of a ticket is no guarantee of actually taking off. If you pay enough of a bribe anyone can be bumped off the flight in order that you can take their place. It is also an exhausting place to travel to leaving one feeling like you are suffering from jet lag having traveled halfway across the world. This all begins with the odd scheduling of flights to Papua. You leave Jakarta at 10pm (normally my bed time) and land in Makassar 2 hours later to pick more passengers up. This stop interrupts any attempt at sleep that may have been working and then you sit uncomfortably for the next 2.5 hrs before landing at Biak at the convenient time of 5.30am. (Papua is 2 hours ahead of Jakarta so it is on fact the middle of the night). For some reason there are two planes scheduled to land at this bizarre time of the morning, with lots of bleary eyed passengers struggling to locate their luggage in the morning darkness. There are a few things that I always find strange about this part of the journey. Firstly, why do planes arrive at this time of the morning when there are no onward flights for hours and secondly, where are all the people going? Biak is a tiny island on the fringe of the most sparsely populated part of Indonesia, why do so many people get off the plane?

On my second trip to Papua I was savvy about what to do during my layover in Biak. I went to the check-in desk to check my onward flight to Nabire and was told that nothing would happen before 12pm with a provisional take off time of 1pm. So I walked to a nearby hotel and checked in for some much needed sleep. It should have been more relaxing other than the drilling and general building work that was going on, but still who was I to complain, the last time I had thought it best to wait in the airport. With each hour that went by I regretted this decision but it seemed futile to move as I was told each hour that the plane would be arriving at any moment. The waiting room was deeply uncomfortable but as luck would have it I had a Garuda blanket with me that I had taken from the plane on the advice of the old woman next to me. For some reason I believed her when she said how cold it would be in Biak. It certainly wasn’t cold but it went some way to cushioning the metal ridged chair that was digging in my back so I was grateful to her.

Back at the airport as instructed at 12pm sharp I waited a further 3 hours for the plane to takeoff. By now you start to feel that you have been traveling for days, and surely you must soon end up back where you started (the Piglet paradox, for you 100 acre wood fans). Since the almost constant news of transport disasters befalling Indonesia I have become a little less enthusiastic about flying. So as I sat in the overloaded 15-seater crate on the 1hour flight to Nabire I was planning my escape should the worst occur and was trying to work out which shore was closest, should I need to swim for it.

As usual I landed safely in Nabire and wondered what I was making such a fuss about.

Once in Nabire I can finally get on with some work although this is usually interrupted by the frantic efforts to secure a ticket back home. Constant updates are passed on suggesting various days that one might arrive back in Jakarta. I have learnt to not let these get to me as somehow things seem to sort themselves out.

The schedule for flights leaving Nabire is as idiosyncratic as the journey there. I got up at 4.30am to check in for the first flight out to Biak in order to meet the Jakarta flight that will leave Biak at 10am. After a hour of inactivity the airport staff told us that nothing would happen until at least 10 am so we may as well go back to bed. This was in some ways a relief as we could rest but it was clear that we would miss our connection and would have to get tickets on the following day’s flight to Jakarta. On arriving back at the hotel I had only checked out of I was a little distressed to discover that in my keenness to pack in the early hours I had somehow locked my bag and in the process changed the combination lock to an unknown code. My despair was short-lived; as luck would have it the combination lock on my fake Polo Ralph Lauren case was of sufficient poor quality to allow me to snap it open using the hotel door key. In Indonesia this is not a given - it could just has easily been the room key that snapped...

Eventually I returned to Jakarta, reflecting on the fact that in order to spend two whole days in the field in Papua, I had spent a total of five days traveling, most of it scrunched up on airport furniture in my Garuda blanket.

Degrees of separation

I was waiting to board a Garuda flight to Surabaya when Beth sent me a text telling me that a Garuda jet had just burst into flame upon landing in Yogyakarta. I am ashamed to say that I gave this little thought. Three years in this country has induced a kind of fatalism that borders on insouciance in the face of the seemingly incessant disasters.

Some of these disasters, such as last week's landslides in Flores and earthquake in Sumatra, are natural (though arguably the landslide was exacerbated by illegal logging), while others are either man-made or simply the sorts of accidents that could happen anywhere.

However, this particular disaster could not just be pushed to the back of my mind, lest my knuckles become even whiter as they grip the armrests of the ancient Boeing 737 as it slews and judders its way down the runway. Sadly, this disaster involved people I knew, either directly or indirectly. The person I was going to see in Surabaya told me that one of his management team was missing (he was later confirmed dead).

Two weeks ago I was at AusAid's offices for a meeting (they are the main donor of the program I am working on). The highly respected director of the AusAid mission in Jakarta, Allison Sudradjat, was also one of those killed in the Yogyakarta crash.

Most tragically, and closest to home, my friend and colleague's wife perished on the plane. She was the Australian Embassy spokesperson. My friend waited all day for news, increasingly baffled and traumatized by the conflicting stories reaching him from various sources. Official confirmation of Liz's demise did not arrive until Friday. She leaves a 10 month old baby girl behind.

Both these women were very high profile in Indonesia. As The Australian newspaper reports:

Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has expressed his "sympathy and sorrow". In a letter to Prime Minister John Howard, Dr Yudhoyono said some of the victims had become "our friends at the presidential office".

"Elizabeth O'Neill OAM is known as a warm, kind person who smiles at everybody and we all like her. She was at my office the day before the accident," he wrote.

"Allison Sudradjat is well- known as a dedicated and creative AusAID officer and we will forever appreciate her compassion and her good work for Australian-Indonesian relations.

In some sense one has to marvel that so many people survived the crash, and give thanks for that, but when these events visit those close to us, or even those separated from us by one or two degrees, it naturally triggers a more narrowly focused empathy than may well up in us after more remote disasters.

I would like to think that the past week has just been one of those thankfully rare periods of trauma that test all of us from time to time, serving to remind us of our own fragility. All that we have is contingent, it can be snatched away from us in an instant, and however many people may offer condolences or sympathy, even the President himself, as the evening draws to a close those left behind will be alone in the darkness.

Adam Dare (again)

An Adam Air plane sits at Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, East Java after a hard landing on Wednesday. All 148 passengers were reportedly safe. The airport was temporarily shut after the stricken Boeing 737-300 arriving from Jakarta landed and stopped suddenly in the middle of the runway, and its rear section appeared to snap off just behind the wing.

Apparently this was caused partly by bad weather, something called a 'downdraft', and what the pilot described as 'landing harder than usual'. Yeah, that seems to describe what went on here.

The only injury, miraculously, was a woman struck by falling luggage.

Another Flores photo gallery

Follow this link to view the photos that our chum Mark Hunter took when in Flores last year. He seemed to take more (and better) pictures in two weeks than I took in two years!

Mark's NTA photos.

I will be returning to Flores next week to do some research and also to catch up with Pak Sirilus and the gang. These photos remind me of how much I miss the place.

Swamp thing

(Pic: AP)

You will be relieved to hear that so far we have stayed dry during this week's flooding, unlike 75% of the city which is now underwater in the city's worst flooding in living memory.

25 people had died from incidents such as electrocution, as the power sub-stations get submerged. Over 340,000 have been forced to abandon their homes. A colleague of mine was able to go fishing from his bedroom window yesterday, and caught quite a large fish, apparently, which his family then had for supper. In places the floods have been 7 metres deep and key bridges have almost been swept away as rubbish collects against their pillars.

The problem is that Jakarta is basically a shallow bowl with steep hills on one side and the sea on the other. Most of the city sits below sea level, and when the Dutch had the great idea of building their colonial capital here, Batavia (as it then was) was basically a mosquito-infested swamp. The redoubtable Captain Bligh, having survived the mutiny on the Bounty and an intrepid 3,400 mile trip in an open boat across turbulent seas dotted with treacherous reefs, almost died of malaria in Batavia and described the place as a pestilential hell-hole. Little has changed, and as flood water engulfed the State Palace on Friday, there is serious talk of reviving former President Sukarno's plan of moving the capital to Kalimantan or Sulawesi.

Although the rains have eased off in the city today, it continues to fall on the hills, adding pressure to the main sluice-gate that holds back the Ciliwung river. The water has nowhere else to go but through Jakarta to get to the sea, so later today it is anticipated that, literally, the floodgates will be opened, adding more misery to the damp citizens of the city.

The Mouse that turned off the lights

So, at long last anthropogenic climate change makes the front pages of every newspaper. The first authoritative report on the subject came out in 1990, yet since then the world has largely managed to avoid making any hard choices to tackle the subject. It is tempting to see us now as the inveterate smoker who waited till he was diagnosed with lung cancer before giving up the weed, by which time the gesture was irrelevant.

It is at times like this that I turn to The Daily Telegraph newspaper for amusement. For years the Telegraph has 'exposed' climate change as a myth perpetrated by Guardian-reading killjoys, intent on slapping taxes on anything enjoyable. The Kyoto agreement was characterised as an attempt by Europeans to hobble the world's economic stallion, the USA, through taxes and levies. Any scientist or economist (such as the bonkers and widely discredited Bjorn Lomborg) that questioned the consensus on global warming was held up as 'the voice of reason'. It seems that being a contrarian is enough to get endorsement by the Telegraph (and, sadly, by The Economist, which is a great newspaper that often finds itself on the wrong side of any argument in which the editors express an opinion).

In the light of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the skeptics have to find a new line of argument lest they be abandoned floating on a diminishing iceburg with the creationists, MMR vaccine protesters, Donald Rumsfeld and a very hungry polar bear. The Economist has, to its credit, issued a mea culpa and started reporting about the ways international businesses have stopped waiting for politicians to catch up and are already getting on the right side of the debate.

In contrast, The Telegraph's new theme is the Private Frazer approach to crisis management: 'we're all doomed laddie, doomed I tell you!' Today's leader, 'carbon emissions', suggests that as the UK represents such a small proportion of global emissions that,

'Unless the Americans, Chinese and Indians curb their own CO2 emissions, our own efforts will be doomed to costly and pathetic failure.'

Whatever happened to the blitz spirit and Churchill's defiant stand of 'alone, then' in the face of the Nazi menace and America (ever the Jonny-come-lately to a global crisis) refusing to enter the war until a specific invitation was received from Hitler? I hope that the doughty Telegraph reader, port-ridden and bilious after his Sunday beef roast, will not allow his organ to so readily shrivel in the face of a global threat, however alarming.

The fact is that there is much that Britain can do, and indeed is already doing to face the threat of climate change. Although even a 20% cut in UK emissions will not save Greenland if other countries do not follow our lead, we have certain strategic advantages that we could use as leverage:

1) Heathrow airport is the largest passenger hub in Europe and third largest in the world. By lobbying for a Europe-wide aviation tax on all aircraft entering European airspace, the UK could show that narrow economic self-interest should not stymie collective action (hopefully the French will take note).

2) The UK is a net importer of manufactured goods out of all proportion to its size and population (the arrival of the supership Emma Maersk just before Christmas confirmed this). All UK consumers can send a message to developing economies such as China that sustainability must be built into every product. Thoughtlessly buying plastic toys without considering their provenance is a poisoned gift for the child in question, as each pointless extrusion of polyethylene represents a step towards a precarious future for our offspring.

3) One of the few government departments that has improved beyond recognition under this government (OK, the only one), is the Department for International Development (DfID). In development circles, DfID is now regarded as the gold standard of 'good' development practice. It can now use this credibility to encourage other aid agencies to explicitly intervene to stimulate sustainable development. Again, the French could do with some help in this area, along with the Italians, Greeks and Irish. Oh, and of course USAID (not that they listen to anybody).

4) Contrary to doom-laden predictions in 1997, London has advanced and entrenched its position as one of the world's leading financial centres. Any fiendishly clever financial instruments that deal in emissions trading are likely to be designed here. As soon as the speculators see some prospect of lucre in it, they will be head first into the trough. Cap and trade schemes, securitization of natural resources, exotic derivatives and the like will weave the financial markets into a system that at last accounts for environmental consumption along with capital and labour.

So, shall we sob in our bunker with the Daily Telegraph, defeated before we have even fired a shot? Or shall we accept that Britain has a crucial role to play in preserving this wonderful planet for future generations?

Banjir di mana mana

(Pic from Jakarta Post)

As if to prove my point about impending disasters, this week Jakarta is flooded. Several days of rain, with a particularly heavy storm last night, have overwhelmed the shaky infrastructure. The sluices on the storm canals have been breached, and turbid muddy water occupies all low-lying areas. As Jakarta is several metres below sea-level, most of the city is vulnerable.

Unlike most city-dwellers, we have the good fortune to live in one of the (more expensive) drier areas, but coming to work today was slightly pointless as everyone else is stuck at home. I have just received a message from one colleague who is unable to leave her house because the water level is now at over 2 metres.

The rain is due to continue until Tuesday, so I may be swimming back home tonight.

Sapiens qui prospicit

I used to think that our old school motto - Sapiens qui prospicit (wise is he who looks ahead) - was a truism, until I learned that looking ahead is neither desirable nor strictly necessary. In fact, too much looking ahead can lead to procrastination and paralysis. Reconfigure the quote to 'wise is the rabbit who looks ahead' and you will see what I mean, as you envisage the headlights of the approaching SUV.

This week we have been given our 'disaster and emergency preparedness' training, designed to deal with the plethora of calamaties likely to befall us in Indonesia. Apart from the usual dangers: earthquake, tsunami, landslide, flood, civil commotion and of course the ubiquitous terrorism; can be added the new dread of bird flu. In the event of a city-wide pandemic we have been advised to 'stay at home and await instructions'.

I always feel that too much forward planning really takes the fun out of a crisis, and so when the bird flu virus strikes I plan to be downstairs looting Carrefour with everyone ese. My alma mater would be so proud...

Zero Tolerance

Visiting the cinema in Jakarta, like so many experiences in this city, is liable to encourage one's inner misanthrope to emerge bawling and weeping with impotent rage at all that is so deeply disappointing about our fellow humans. The cinema itself is the best I have ever fulminated in, furnished with plush lay-z-boy recliners that stretch out to a lie flat, waiter service for drinks and nibbles and a complementary wool blanket to keep out the icy blast of the air conditioning. All this for just $10, and a cold beer only another $1.40, what's not too like?

Alas, the cinema management sees fit to allow other people into the auditorium. I have always been fabulously intolerant of my fellow viewers in the UK, believing that films should be enjoyed in a respectful, cloistral hush. We all recognise those petty annoyances found in the average out-of-town multiplex: late arrivers, sweet wrapper rustlers, expectoraters, smug plot explainers ("don't you see, he was only pretending to be a baddie, but now he wants to impress the girl...") and their dim counterparts the terminally obtuse questioners ("So is he the same guy as the one who shot the Mexican drug-dealer?"). Worst of all, and sadly some of my friends are guilty of this (you know who you are) , the dialogue anticipators ("These are not the 'droids we are looking for, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses, Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.").

In Jakarta, audience interference gets to a whole new level. Ringtones are of course common, as is texting, but it does not end there; I have sat next to a guy who was on the phone, loudly, for a full twenty minutes. Talking through the film is not just tolerated, it is basically compulsory. The cinema management compensate for this by turning up the volume to ear-bleed levels. The first thirty minutes of the film are regarded as inessential to the general plot, so many of the audience will shamble in long after the opening credits. I used to spend most of the film telling people to shut up, sit down, turn their phone off, but I no longer bother because it makes no difference. Back in the UK you can generally guilt-trip an offender, most of whom will silently blush with shame in the dark (along with all my friends, mortified by my behaviour or afraid that I am going to get thumped by the ox in row D). In Jakarta you will be met with indifference, amusement and mild surprise that someone is trying to tick them off. In Indonesia (huge generalisation) no one EVER ticks anyone off, because that would lead to loss of face for all parties involved. An angry bule (westerner) giving someone a bit of stick in the cinema for letting their mobile phone ring incessantly is basically just another dimension of a fun night out, the other components of which are fizzy drinks, conversation, texting friends, and oh yeah, of course the movie.

Ever a glutton for punishment, last night we went to see 'Blood Diamond' (Guardian review can be found here). This is a very visceral movie, with some very upsetting scenes of violence in Sierra Leone. In the UK it has a 15 certificate, and in Indonesia it is rated 'Adult'. So imagine our surprise that so many children were in the cinema, some as young as five or six. This is fairly usual in Jakarta, but this is the first time we have seen it happen in quite such a violent film. There is a scene in the film where some child soldiers are being brainwashed and de-sensitized to violence by the rebel army. This is one of the most intense parts of the film, where children are brutally corrupted and turned against all that is good or admirable in the world. Watching it was made even more uncomfortable by the awareness that several children in the cinema could not yet possibly be emotionally equipped to process what was happening on screen.

From my limited experience of the strange little people, kids deal with situations that exclude them by getting restless, and the noise they make can ruin a decent night at the movies. I could take no more, so I got out of my seat and approached one particularly vexing family, explaining to the father that this was no place for his young kids, and in any case other people are being distracted by his children's behaviour. I reminded the man that this was an 'adults only' film. Of course this was a pointless exercise that just got me even more discombobulated, so why did I bother?

I bothered because one of the things I find most frustrating about this country is that bad behavior is so rarely confronted. Be it appalling driving, corruption, religious bigotry, de-forestation or domestic abuse, the offenders generally escape the censure they deserve. Years of living under that most brutal personification of anti-social corruption, Bapak Suharto, seems to have conditioned the people of this great country to keep their heads down even while their wealth is being snatched from under their noses and stashed away in numbered accounts in Zurich or Guernsey.

One of the cameo roles in 'Blood Diamond' is Winston Ntshona, one of Africa's greatest actors, as a village elder and the only survivor of a massacre. He philosophizes that it would be better if Sierra Leone did not have diamonds to fight over, and then adds 'let's hope they never find oil, or else we are really finished!" Indonesia has oil, gas, massive forests and abundant fertile soils, and yet it is poor. Isn't it time to start tapping some of the 'big men' of this country on the shoulder and asking them to behave?