peace!

I was on my way to work Monday morning when I realized that something was different about the day. Even before I was picking my way through the exhaust flecked sunshine, while still in bed I noticed that the call to prayer was somehow mellowed. How could we as a community be such letting down out guard against the demons? Truly, I was concerned. Out on the street, I could swear there were fewer overturned cars lining the street, and when I hired a motorcycle, I was happily handed a sturdy helmet. Something was up.

The gangs of hepatitis-addled stray dogs that roam the streets looking for the next meal had turned into adorable puppies that playfully nipped at my heels and rolled over expectantly when I turned. Even the mosquitoes had changed their stripes and were planning a Roger’s & Hammerstein revival for that afternoon’s siesta.

All through the afternoon the unmistakable buzz was in the air—you could just tell that virtually everyone on the streets had put aside their work to reestablish the caliphate. Men were shaving 20 year old beard, and babies were being baptized in the open sewers. ‘Death to the foreign infidel!’ had become ‘Yo, bro, what’s up?’

Math and science were flourishing, and our neighborhood bombmaker told me, ‘I don’t want to make the bomb, man, ‘cause love is the bomb.’

Honestly, readers, I was stumped. Something out of the ordinary was going on; I felt like society was being perfected before my eyes. But what—or who—could be behind the glorious final plan?

Then, in the evening, I saw a news ticker. The state department, characteristically riding the very crest of the trend, had lifted the Indonesia travel warning. It is true, that just that morning the dark ages had seemingly lifted, terrorism evaporated, and peace and harmony reigned. Indonesia finally was safe! What a fortuitous, fortuitous thing for the state department to be so closely monitoring.

And so, I exhale, after 8 months of living dangerously. I am finally safe.

fair warning..

Jakarta, as a place, drips with contradictions. Take a movie billboard for an Indonesian version of ‘American Pie.’ Besides the surfeit of unusually good-looking youngsters, leather jackets, and fishnet stockings, the bottom of the advertisement comes with a warning, like a pack of cigarettes. It translates: “Warning: Careful with free sex.”

In a country where no one pays any attention to posted warnings, the inclusion of this one bears pause. Not just that there are 10 meter tall, hair revealing (shocking, I know) representations of saucy vixens on the street, but that the cultural gulf between Jakarta and everywhere else is so wide.

If anything, this type of warning is a reminder—‘Hey! You down there! We are still religious and traditionalist!’—more of its own impotence than of society’s underlying piety and conservatism. Outwardly, almost every place in Jakarta bears the markings of Westernization. You can assuage your personal lotioning needs at The Body Shop, buy bathroom fixtures at Ace Hardware, see a movie on the same day it premiers in the United States (I saw Iron Man), and even find the greatest American tradition, the wet t-shirt contest.

Of course, if you duck back into the kampoengs (traditional neighborhoods), you get catapulted back in time. Gas lanterns hang from pushcarts selling porridge and boiled peanuts; old men spend the day leaning against a greasy bench watching luxury cars jockey for space in the confined alleyways. If you ask an ojek (motorcycle for hire) driver to take you to a café with wireless, they stare at you blankly.

Indeed, Indonesia still is very religious and traditionalist and one need not trek to Banda Aceh for evidence. Mosques belonging to the Ahamadiyah sect of Islam are frequently attacked no more than 30 km from the city. The government with announce its decision on the potential banning of the sect on Monday. It may be difficult to perceive from the glossy thoroughfares of Jakarta, but Indonesia remains agrarian, religious and reactionary.

In many ways, Jakarta embodies the stark economic inequalities of Indonesia and in truth, the ‘westernized’ represents a stratus of consumption that few Indonesians can hope to attain. Economic growth in Indonesia was resource-led and these factors of production were concentrated in the hands of very few to whom immense wealth accrued. Jakarta, which over the past decade has managed to evolve a middle class, in large part because of its never ending supply of cheap labor, is an Indonesian exception, both because of its exposure and its middle class.

For most Indonesians, the benefits of growth have been concentrated among the few. The majority of the agrarian base has very little purchasing power, access to credit only through government-run pawnshops (a laughable concept I may blog about at some point), and are enslaved by a narrow and cyclic menu of consumer goods (satellite tv and motor scooters on long-term leases). These people are under-exposed, nominally Muslim, superstitious and, except for satellite tv and motor bikes, unchanging. I was talking with an ojek driver who asked me how many women I lived with back home. When I explained none, he seemed genuinely stumped. He was kind enough to explain to me that in the movies—satellite TV, and HBO no less, strikes again—bules are sexually involved with many women at once, so why was not I? That I was not trying to land an Indonesian girlfriend he called a downright lie.

So, I saw a funny movie poster; what any of this mean?

I cannot say I know for sure, but Indonesia is two countries, on the same billboard, even on the same boulevard, but sometimes they seem irreconcilably far adrift.

help wanted: kids!

Eating sweets that come in a banana leaf sealed with a traditional staple, I was in a coffee shop Sunday morning, the TV blasting away with its usual omnipresence, when I was winged back to childhood memories of watching weekend cartoons. That and being forced to dig my parents sprinkler system when I was in second grade. All that digging and sweating and pvc cement might seem like a strange association to make, but as you might expect, Indonesia TV is rarely what you expect (and frequently hazardous to the health of young ones).

However, instead of cartoons, the children of Indonesia can look forward to a tabloid-style program, loosely translated to ‘Kid World,’ that mostly seems to extol the virtues of working.

The first segment was a tight little piece about a family of brothers and sisters who go wading around some of the ‘rivers’ in Jakarta to collect a certain type of water-growing plant. The best word to describe Jakarta would probably be swamp so I feel obligated to scare quote. These stalks, nourished at the bosom of Jakarta’s runoff, when dry are used to weave mats, something I am sure these lucky kids get to play blindman’s bluff for the privilege of doing.

I would get bogged down here, but why waste time when the next segment is coming, right, at, you!

The next piece is about a special place that all Indonesian children dream, bi-nightly, of being magically transported to. Undoubtedly a land of dreams, in this town the local elders have decided to sink their community activity funding into building child-sized becaks to be peddled around a child-sized course. I think somewhere between the shot of the local welder fashioning mini becaks and a 7 year old negotiating hard with a fare, you could really see how lucky these kids are. I should be clear, becak-driving is one of the lower rungs of the Indonesia employment ladder. Any life as a becak driver categorically involves poor dental hygiene, one of those really long-term sunburns, emphysema (though this issuance extends to much of the populace), several traffic accidents; and all this in only the base package!

Though, when I take a step back from the fact that children’s TV programming is openly plugging child labor, I realize how much I just cannot wait to have kids of my own, so they can love life in their highly-competitive, by-admission nursery platform (for when the word ‘school’ is a scosh too traditional).