The Lucretius Plan

Brand new Ankermi

When we were in Flores, our refuge from the mayhem was Ankermi, a dive shop and restaurant run by our friends Kermi and Claudia. Just a 40 minute motorbike ride along the coast from Maumere, it was tranquil and relaxing. We both miss it enormously now we are back in the UK.

For the past year or so Kermi and Claudia have been building a new place just round the bay from the old one, and it is now complete. So, if your travels ever take you to Flores, make sure you book a few nights at one of the new Ankermi beach houses. Here is a PDF of their brochure: Download new_ankermi_information.pdf

Makassar sunset

Taken in Makassar, South Sulawesi, a place famous for its sunsets.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Trimming the hedge fund

A couple of weeks ago our chum Nick took a detour from his peripatetic meandering through the labyrinth of international finance, to spend a couple of nights with us here in Maumere.  He certainly caused our local friends to revise their opinion of bules (white folk), as until now they have tended to meet either backpackers or aid workers, all  of whom tend to be shabbily dressed in high-performance modern textiles.  When Nick stepped from the 'plane resplendent in Armani and Kenzo, with Prada loafers, the locals were very impressed.  The last time someone this well-dressed arrived in Maumere was when Pope John Paul II came here in the 1980s.

It was a whirlwind trip, but we managed to pack in a fair bit, taking him to a wedding, some of our friends' houses and also to meet the traditional tenun ikat weaving group, who sang and danced for him.  He also broke the speed record for returning to the UK, leaving us at 16:00 on Sunday, he was back in London at 07:00 Monday morning, which he regarded as a good commute.  I am still not quite sure how he did it.

He did manage (quite inadvertently) to do something which reminded us of home.  One night he turned the water pump on in the kitchen to fetch a little water in order to brush his teeth (our water is drawn from a well using a small electric pump, which needs to be turned on whenever you need water).  Unfortunately he forgot to turn the pump off again, so it ran continuously until 06:00 the next morning when Beth woke up and switched it off.  Fortunately we had left the tap open in our bak mandi (the cistern we use for washing, flushing the WC etc.), or else the pump would have seized.  However, this meant that overnight hundreds of gallons of water were pumped out of the well and into our overflowing cistern, eventually flowing out into the drain and down to the sea.  This somewhat offset our careful management of water over the rainy season, where we have been setting an example to all our neighbours by collecting rain water and using it for washing clothes. 

We were all duly (and quite rightly) chastised by Pak Minggus the next day, as the whole neighbourhood draws water from the same aquifer, which is now somewhat depleted!  As it will not rain again until December, this has not made us popular, but to be honest this last rainy season has been so wet that I doubt there will be a problem.  However, I understand that a casual attitude to water conservation is all the rage in Britain, where the water companies cheerfully allow millions of gallons of water to leak from the mains system in spite of apparent shortages.  Perhaps we should send Pak Minggus over to sort them out.

Anyway, no blame should fall on Nick, who could not be expected to understand the intricacies of life in the tropics in so short a visit.  In any case, he brought wine, champagne and a copy of the Guardian, so all is forgiven.

7 minutes in the abyss

While in Singapore (it seems like weeks ago) I read an article in the Straits Times about the city’s famous metro system (MRT).  It was accusing the MRT company (Singapore’s equivalent of London Underground) of complacency because off-peak waiting times for a train can now reach a barely tolerable seven minutes.  The article grudgingly admitted that the peak service is acceptable (a train will arrive at least every two minutes), but pointed out that today’s busy lifestyles mean many people also want the train at off-peak times (say, 3pm on a Sunday) and they cannot be expected to suffer the indignity and ennui of a full seven minute wait on the platform.

Singapore is often described as boring, yet any city that seems so keen to ensure that its citizens have no time to ponder their boredom is probably getting the balance about right. ‘Platform time’ is usually a good opportunity to bemoan the collapse of civilization, and contemplate the litter, graffiti and muggers in that context.  As Singapore does not appear to have any of these attributes, it is hard to work out what to do in those tortuous seven minutes.  Perhaps Singaporeans think about who to vote for in this month’s election?  This is also an unfruitful line of thought as in most constituencies the all-powerful PAP party is standing unopposed.  Everyone is too polite here to drop litter or spit, and voting against the ruling party just seems ungrateful somehow.

I can quite understand how those seven minutes must open up an existential abyss for the poor off-peak travellers.