The Lucretius Plan

Adam Dare

The search for the missing Adam Air flight from Jakarta to Manado continues:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6247133.stm

Adam Air has some previous form.  I am reminded of the Adam Air pilot who landed his aircraft in Tambolaka, East Nusa Tenggara in February 2006. Tri Nusyigo was supposed to take flight 782 from Jakarta to Makassar, but lost all communication and navigation systems and had to make an emergency landing on an unsuitable airstrip on Sumba, an island over 400 miles due south of his intended destination.  The impressive thing is that he found the island by dead reckoning and looking out of the window.   In the circumstances, and bearing in mind that he was flying a Boeing 737, he did well to be only 400 miles off course!

Questions were of course asked after the event about how the aircraft got a certificate if it was clearly so unsuitable for flight.  It so happened that the pilot was also an official at the transportation ministry's air worthiness certification directorate...

There are now moves afoot to makes the connection between airlines and safety regulators a little more arm's length.  This may help to restore some public confidence in the low-budget airlines, but for now I think I will give them a wide berth.

The Saffron Way

Why does the festive break always have to be so fraught with danger? This year we decided to get away from Jakarta and spend a peaceful Christmas in Thailand, and see in the New Year in Bangkok.  We were unconcerned by the bomb threats in Jakarta, as every year a warning is issued that Christians will be targets, but we did not expect Bangkok to be a riskier place than Jakarta.  But then we thought about it...

Bombs are almost unheard of in Bangkok, but it is ironic that just a couple of hours before the bombs Beth and I were discussing how complacent the city seems compared to Jakarta, despite the insurgency in the south of the country.  Statistically, Thailand is a more dangerous place to be than Indonesia at the moment (in terms of terrorism), yet in Jakarta one cannot go anywhere without being scanned or wanded.  In Bangkok there seems to be no security checks whatsoever, strange in a country currently under martial law.

It appears that the bombs were the work of pro-democracy (or pro-ancien regime) activists opposed to the military coup (See BBC article).  Seems a strange way to protest as presumably it gives the military an even better reason to retain control, but in this day and age I guess anything is possible.

The interesting thing is that today the Thais are all out and about enjoying the holiday, all wearing their yellow shirts in honour of the King.  The temples and parks are full, and no one seems paranoid or suspicious.  This is not the same as the famous 'Blitz spirit' of London (which is a dimension of the grin and bear it mentality that helps Brits endure the weather), but is a more a sort of smiling acquiescence to whatever fate delivers.

Land of extremes

This is the view of Beth's project in Aceh.  In contrast, this is a picture of my World Bank 'power breakfast':

Those are fresh strawberries.  Couldn't get those in Flores, in fact in Flores this breakfast we would be just the banana, or maybe some ubi tatas (sweet potato). 

Deathrace 2006

The traffic in this city is legendary, almost iconic, and no conversation here is complete without reference to it.  There is no rush hour as such, the place is simply clogged up all day and sometimes late at night.  The common explanation is that Jakarta is a rapidly growing city in an emerging economy, so the infrastructure cannot keep up.  There is some truth in this: there is a very limited public transport system and no mass transit system such as a metro. There is plan for a monorail but so far this has stalled leaving random concrete pillars dotted around the city, remeniscant of that episode in the Simpsons when a charlaton persuades Springfield to build a monorail that then collapses due to bribery and corruption.

So perhaps the bad traffic is simply inevitable. However, our theory is that the main reason the traffic is so awful is that the road system is illogical and most of the drivers do not know how to drive.  It is astonishing that a country that prides itself on its community values should tolerate the most selfish driving seen anywhere on the planet.  Once in their cars (the ubiquitous Toyota Kijang prevails, a sort of pointless SUV) wealthy Jakartans choose to ignore their fellow man and the whole thing becomes a free-for-all.  I did a straw poll recently with some work colleagues and only one of them had passed a driving test, the rest had simply paid the bribe and received their license.  Ironically the one who had passed her test never drove. 

The road system is full of loops, off-ramps, u-turns and sudden bottlenecks.  A taxi ride costs twice as much returning home than it does going to work, simply because of the way the roads are laid out.  Every morning we have to run across five lanes of traffic to catch a taxi, to do otherwise would add 20 minutes to our journey.  There are no zebra crossings or pelican crossings, and even if they were they would be ignored by the growling traffic. 

The strategy to cross the road is to wait until there is a group of people who need to get across, so as to achieve some safety in numbers.  Then one person will be brave enough to step out into the road holding a hand up to the oncoming traffic, and the group advances as cars swerve, honk their horns and generally give no impression that they would be alarmed by the prospect of flattening a defenceless pedestrian.  Occasionally a policeman will be at one side of the street, limply waving an arm at the oncoming traffic, though it is unclear if this signal means ‘speed up’, ‘slow down’ or ‘where’s my bribe’.  Once I was almost run over by a speeding black sedan that ignored the group of pedestrians half way across the road.  Sitting at the wheel was a senior police officer resplendent in his uniform.  There is no pretence that the police here protect and serve, they are opposed to the public interest and one of the key impediments to progress in Indonesia.  The chaos on the roads is partly bad planning, partly inept and selfish driving, but largely the fault of a self-important police force that avoids all political censure.  When drivers know that they simply need to pay a bribe to escape penalty for even the most egregious violation, they are unlikely to take road regulations very seriously.

In many ways the Jakarta traffic system is a metaphor for the whole country.  Vibrant, thriving and energetic yet teetering on the brink of chaos and disaster, overseen by corrupt, bloated guys in uniform.

New Labour, New Muffin

Upon returning to the UK after such a long absence (2 years and 3 months), many people have asked us what our impressions were of the old country, and also how we adjusted to western society.  We were indeed apprehensive about how we would cope once we were exposed to the modern world.  Would we, as some posters to this blog suggested, be shocked by the shallow materialism? Or would we be relieved to be back in a 'developed' modern society?  Would we struggle to know which was worse: shock or attraction?

To give some background to this it is worth reminding ourselves as to why we volunteered in the first place, and what this blog was all about.  We came out to Flores so we could stop standing on the sidelines and get stuck into trying to make the world a better place.  We felt uncomfortable about our own affluence and aware that the contradiction between our world view and our behaviour was hypocritical.  Also, we were curious to find out how we could live a simpler life, unsullied by status anxiety and neophilia.  However, we were keen not to be 'development tourists', objectifying the disadvantaged and regarding their poverty as part of an experiential cultural encounter.  We needed to get to know these people and understand their situation in as many dimensions as possible and thus form a sound framework by which we could better understand the causes and consequences of inequality.

I think we can state that we achieved that level of understanding, but not necessarily in a way that it can be communicated lucidly to other people (though hopefully in this blog we have occasionally made sense).  Also, going back home to the UK was the test to see if we had really changed or not.

I don't think we are ready to report on all our experiences and impressions, but here are some snapshots:

- It seems to be a rite of passage for returning VSO volunteers to suffer a panic attack on Oxford Street in their first week back.  We were no exception!

- We were struck by how badly dressed most people were, and the sheer amount of flesh on display was a shock after the conservatism of Flores.

- We learned about something called a 'Muffin' and a WAG.  The latter was easier on the eye, but still faintly alarming.

- Most people seemed very vexed and stressed about the state of the country (though less upset about the state of the world, oddly enough).  There seemed to be an obsession with immigration and tax...

- We had never noticed before how the British have a keen sense of entitlement.  They see themselves as 'entitled' to a secure well-paid job, free healthcare, low taxes and decent weather.  One needs to live somewhere else for a while to realize that most people in the world would count themselves lucky to be 'entitled' to a daily meal. 

- After Indonesia, it is a joy to walk around cities where the traffic is so orderly, the streets so clean and safe, and the general environment so conducive to human habitation.  This is something the British fail to appreciate, and may be surprised by what they take for granted.

- The British are confused about globalization in a way that Asians are not. They enjoy the freedom of movement of goods and capital (from which they benefit massively), but are less keen on its corollary: free movement of labour.

- Polish barmen have transformed British pubs and eateries into polite, congenial places that are a joy to visit.  In fact, this is one of the most striking things we noticed about the country.  Gone are the surly students resenting the imposition on their leisure time that a bar job represents, in their place stand smart and polite Polish people.  Except in the Channings, Clifton, which is an oasis of crap service untouched by Ryszard or Waclaw; it should become a theme pub to remind us of how things used to be.

- Most people were genuinely interested in what we had been doing in Indonesia, were not as hard-hearted about foreign aid as we were led to expect, and were generous to a fault. 

I read a piece in the paper that seemed to encapsulate much of what we were observing:

'It is almost 15 years since the UK had a serious economic downturn and the voters are so used to having money (or, for many, credit) that they take it all for granted. The New Labour creed is that we are all consumers now, so it can hardly complain when the public acts like the mob in ancient Rome.  For bread, read wall-to-wall shopping on the never-never. For circuses, read the brutishness and cruelty of reality TV, for the mercenary armies on the borders of empire, read the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.'
(Larry Elliott, The Guardian, 25/09/06)

It seemed to us a shame that the British are so determined to be dissatisfied with their lot when in many ways they are so damned lucky to live where they do.  Most people seem very affluent (thanks to the property boom) but they are confused about what this wealth means.  People seem to think that the holy grail of financial independence will secure liberty for themselves and their family. But is liberty really freedom from obligations? Traditionally the British has used their liberty to build the elements of civil society and habits of reciprocity (what some call ‘social capital’) that in many ways laid the foundations of liberal democracy in the world.  It would be a shame if prosperity and individualism led us to shrink back from the network of social obligations that maintains politeness, charity and mutual respect, and makes Britain (and the British) so admirable.

Where did we go?

Since our departure from Flores in July, we have spent a couple of months in the UK, and in early October returned to Indonesia.  We have now settled in Jakarta and both have jobs working in development.  It has been tough settling into new jobs after so long working in Flores, however we are now more settled in and can renew our obligation to keep this blog up to date. 

You can now expect some thoughts about our jobs (we are both working on some very interesting projects) and some obervations about Indonesia and aspects of living in Jakarta.

Chivalrous Enthusiasm

So the day has finally arrived that we must take our leave of all our friends and close this episode in our lives.  A great sadness descends.

It is hard to imagine life without the rhythms and observances of Maumere, and it is certainly hard to wrench ourselves away from all our friends and the extended family we have enjoyed out here.  All the steep challenges, frustrations and disappointments of the last two years fade to insignificance as only the high points come into sharp focus, and it suddenly becomes hard to envisage an experience that will top this one, and thus the unseen remainder of our mortal coil, still unwound, holds little interest for us.

We both feel more resilient (we have proved ourselves to be so, both physically and mentally, though what the legacy of Malaria, Dengue, Typhoid and numerous parasites will be we are yet to establish) yet at the same time we are more sensitive.  We feel more alive and yet also somehow disconnected from the outside world.  Perhaps the next few weeks will allow us to return to earth gracefully.

The last few months have been demanding (hence the lack of activity on this website) as we have tried desperately to tidy up all our various projects.  As is apparently often the case, we did not really hit our stride until six months ago, and we became really super-effective from about May onwards.  By that time our cultural understanding, language skills and constructive relationships with colleagues all aligned themselves in one indulgent constellation, and everything we touched seemed to yield to our ministrations.  We were, as they say, in the 'flow'.

This all culminated in our farewell ceremonies (acara perpisahan), one on Thursday in the health department, and then a major party at our house on  Friday night.  We did little to organise these events, they just sort of happened around us, and we were amazed that 150 people turned up on Friday to enjoy a prayer service (giving thanks for our presence) followed by food and dancing.  Our neighbour cooked his dog (which was delicious) and twenty chickens also made the ultimate sacrifice.  We danced traditional sequence dances (Poco-poco, Jai'i, rokatenda) until the early hours, while drinking some lethal arak ('tuak') provided by one of the villages.

The following morning we were accompanied to the airport, where more friends waited for hours to eventually wave us onto the (delayed, of course) Merpati flight.  It was a very glum couple that boarded that flight, and the tourists on board must have been confused by the strange white couple (looking bedraggled and frankly less than healthy) that sobbed their way through the flight to Bali.

So here we are in Bali, trying to make sense of the last two years, and so far (as this rambling blog entry testifies) failing to find coherence.  We are excited to be going home and seeing friends and family, many of whom we have not seen for well over two years.  But we are sad to be leaving our Flores family behind, and we are anxious about how we will cope with the reverse culture shock of the UK.  We have been rather cut off from events since April 2004, and the world somehow seems a more dangerous and less forgiving place than it was before.  Maybe it is just that the true state of things is now more apparent to us. 

No doubt it is unfashionable to quote Karl Marx nowadays, but one is tempted to ponder his comment that bourgeois capitalism has 'drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy waters of egotistical calculation.  It has resolved personal worth into exchange value.'

As we step back through the wardrobe and return to the 'real' world, we wonder what capitalism and materialism have done to the essence of humanity, and this I guess brings us full circle to what this 'Lucretius Plan' was all about: making sense of how what we need is so often eclipsed by what we are led to believe we desire.

Reflection (part 1)

This is version of an article I was asked to write for the VSO Indonesia in-house newsletter about what we think we have learned from our experience here in the last two years.

Pembelajaran (lessons)

It would be all too easy to finish one’s placement and rush home to the bosom of one’s family, cheeks moist with tears, and in all the excitement forget to reflect on the lessons of the past two years. Thus I present my top FIVE pembelajaran (lessons) from my time in Flores:

1. Nothing is what it seems, and in any case it was not caused by what you supposed.

Getting to the bottom of any situation in Flores is like peeling away the layers of an onion, and just as likely to make you weep.  Just when you think you have established beyond any shadow of a doubt the real state of affairs, and when all your colleagues have finally confessed to their various transgressions, a new piece of data arrives that casts doubt on everything.  Furthermore, even when you get a clear grasp of the situation, your attempts at analysis will be in vain as you apply your western logical reasoning to the problem in hand.  We are brought up to believe in cause and effect - the scientific logic that describes a linear sequence of events - and we encourage our colleagues to deploy this logic in problem trees and so forth.  I can now reveal to you that sometimes things happen that are not part of this sequence. Flores has taught me that there is an alternate dimension that intrudes on our existence, and introduces the ‘random element’ that cannot be explained in a cause/effect flow chart. This is deeply unsettling, but is perhaps a phenomena confined to NTT.

2. The comparative advantage of Flores is mass catering

According to economists at the World Bank, the ‘comparative advantage’ of Indonesia is in furniture, natural gas and handicrafts.  Not so with Flores.  Experience at various acara (cultural events) has demonstrated to me that orang Flores can muster up a square meal (served with a plastic glass and a banana) for any number of people, irrespective of the number of people actually anticipated to arrive at the event.  After many years of bitter experience as a customer of hotel catering in the UK, where the arrival of just one extra person throws an entire banquet into disarray and recrimination, it is extraordinary to see how orang Flores cope with fluid and potentially chaotic situations.  Furthermore, the food is always much better than you get in any restaurant, and is served with a smile by one of the seemingly endless supply of young unmarried girls.   

3. There is always someone worse off that the person you are talking to

No matter how remote the village, infertile the land or unhelpful the topology, your belief that you have now discovered the most disadvantaged person on the island (and therefore, possibly in the whole of Indonesia) will be shaken by the knowledge that just round the corner is someone even worse off.  This is partly because your definitions of poverty are always changing, but also because people themselves have a certain amount of pride in their capacity for hospitality, and however humble the homestead, the welcome is as rich as you will receive anywhere on earth.  The people you need to worry about are those you cannot see, and only rarely hear about.

4. The Japanese were not all bad in WW2

It may be a bizarre piece of historical revisionism, but the Japanese themselves always maintained that their invasion spree was intended to liberate Asian nations from the yoke of European colonialism.  Clearly this did not make much sense in Manchuria, which was not a colony, but perhaps it did have some resonance in Flores, where the Japanese tend to be regarded with a certain amount of respect (in spite of their monopoly in the pearl trade).  As the Japanese mainly left Indonesia to its own devices during the war, this ironically led to a higher degree of empowerment for native Indonesians than they had ever enjoyed under Dutch rule.  Not surprising then that when the British came in 1945 to accept the Japanese surrender and to reclaim the archipelago on behalf of the Dutch, they were told to stuff it.  Quite right too.

5. Not all ‘culture’ deserves respect

VSO do a good job of introducing the thorny issue of ‘culture’ to new recruits, and it is important to help us understand the meanings, context and importance of cultural diversity.  I cannot see how any volunteer could be effective (or happy) if they decided to challenge every unusual cultural practice they encountered.  That said, it can sometimes be tempting to blindly accept any cultural practice regardless of how it may sit with what can be termed ‘universal norms’ (such as human rights).  Passivity dressed up as cultural sensitivity can all too easily mean conniving with the status quo and not confronting or challenging certain power structures.  My frustration at certain attitudes or outcomes has often been met with a shrug, and the comment: ‘Begitulah budaya di sini’ ('that's just the culture here').  After a while, however, it occurred to me that I was here to share skills about professional business practices, and so I felt that this gave me the platform to start questioning certain practices and asking if we really mean ‘budaya’ (culture) or ‘kebiasaan’ (habit).  Often, my colleagues would agree that it is the latter, and can therefore be challenged.  Common (and rather unimportant) examples include: jam karet ('rubber time'), talking while someone is presenting, passive aggression, selfish driving etc., and I challenge such behaviour in Flores just as I would back in the UK.  However, there are also some larger cultural forces at work which are more ingrained and harder to challenge, e.g. hierarchy, gender. One needs to accept that these change over very long periods of time, and little progress can be made by pointing out how ‘backward’ these cultural viewpoints appear to western eyes. After all, the west is also plagued by unhelpful cultural practices and would find it hard to claim that the Enlightenment made us all rational.  A quick glance at the current USA regime will demonstrate that ignorance, arrogance  and love of patronage can still dominate apparently 'civilised' societies, with woeful implications for the less powerful in the world.

Floating Palace

One of the more surreal things to happen to us in our last week in Maumere was an invitation to lunch aboard Orion, an Australian luxury cruise ship that put into Maumere harbour.  In return for some trivial assistance we gave the crew and their guests when the berthed here in June, they returned the favour in style by giving us a full tour and fabulous lunch. 

I take back everything I ever said about cruise ships.

Our new chum Jos, the hotel manager, insisted that we joined him for a glass of chilled Chardonnay, fresh salad, ripe French cheeses and an astonishing black forest gateaux.  After all this it was rather strange to disembark back to the dusty Maumere quayside and get back on our motorbike.  After an hour or so back on dry land we assumed we had dreamt the whole thing.  Funny what happens to you when you are a volunteer.

Pests of the reef

One of the many benefits of living in a tropical paradise (seismic events aside) is the easy and frequent access to coral reefs, for either diving or snorkelling.  However, one of our local reefs has been infested by the Crown of Thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci), a nasty critter that attacks the coral and breeds at an alarming rate.  To counter this threat, Beth and I joined our chums Claudia and Kermi on a reef conservation exercise on Sunday morning.  Armed with rudimentary tools (chopsticks and sacks), we dived down to the reef to hunt these starfish.

They are very nasty animals that need to be approached with care as their spines are poisonous and can make one very sick on contact.  Also, they tend to grip onto the coral when they are under attack, making it almost impossible not to destroy some coral while getting hold of the pest.  I have never destroyed so much coral in all my dives put together, but we had to rationalise this by observing that if we leave the Crown of Thorns in place then in a few months the whole reef is dead anyway.

Eventually, we perfected the technique of lifting the animal from underneath with a twig, and then tossing it off the reef, catching it with our chopsticks and then placing it in the sack held by our buddy diver.  We did not get too badly injured doing this, but we have decided that this is a rather risky process. For next time we are going to get a local blacksmith to make us something resembling barbeque tongs, which should be ideal.

After a marathon 74 minute dive, we had collected around 100 of these pests, which we burned on the beach.  We hope to repeat the exercise every Sunday for the next few weeks, which will be both good exercise and good for the reef.  We will also be doing an education exercise with the local fishermen, many of whom have collected giant Triton shells from the reef to sell to tourists and also for export.  The giant Triton is one of the few predators of the Crown of Thorns, and its depletion may be a contributory factor to the recent infestation.  Once the fishermen understand that reef preservation is essential to support fish stocks, then hopefully the collection of Tritons will cease.  Assuming of course that tourists are not so dim-witted as to keep on encouraging the trade.