An Amazing Weekend!

 So -
I have only one full weekend in Jakarta before I ship off to Sulawesi and beyond.  The big question, what to do?  Go to some islands north of the city? Or head south into the cooler highlands, ringed by volcanoes and studded with rice paddies?  Fresh air, here we come.
After some planning, on the part of a fellow ACICIS member, we booked ourselves in the Cianjur Adventure homestay accommodation and tour.  Cianjur is a smaller city about 120 km from Jakarta but takes about four hours to reach due to traffic and crazy winding roads.  Twelve of us decided to head there for the weekend. We all brought our stuff to uni on Friday and were picked up by two guys in vans.  Two groups of six in the vans and we were off.  The ride brought us down the toll road, past the city of Bogor, with views of green mountains and fields to greet our city-weary eyes.  The ride was pretty uneventful except for a brief detour through some crazy steep roads and a few rest stops.  We arrived around nine, exhausted, and were fed some nasi goreng (fried rice).  We decided on an action plan for the following day, half of the group headed off to the bamboo hut while the rest of us crashed in the rooms provided.  I shared a bed with Sarah, a fellow Murdoch student, and we chatted for a while before falling asleep.  BAM the mosque woke us all up, and all I felt was, you gotta be kidding me.  The speaker was literally across the street.  But it was brief, and we slept not so fitfully, and were up at seven. 

So the twelve of us piled into an angkot, a local van transport, and headed out of town into the hills. We stopped and began to stroll down into beautiful, terraced rice paddies. We all pulled in deep breaths of mountain fresh air and took insane amounts of photos. We walked up and down rocky paths for an hour or so, visiting a small rice mill, finally arriving at our lunch destination, a few houses where some local women were busy cooking up a feast for us. Here there is no electricity or running water, and everyone grows most of their own food. In the other house a woman was boiling sugar cane sap into brown sugar, which we tasted hot off the fire.

Rice likes rain.

Here is the man working in the local rice mill, powered by a generator.  The mill is cooperatively owned and funded by the government.

Here is our host, a smiling and charming woman who has lived in these hills her whole life.  Jakarta would be quite a shock for her I imagine!

And lunch, fresh local, healthy vegetarian food, served with white rice, of course.

Here's the girls trying the freshly produced brown sugar.  It looked like fudge and then hardened before our eyes.  Yum!

After lunch it began to rain so we waited in the house for it to stop.  Then we walked about another half hour back to the main road.  Here a random ute (pickup) picked all of us and our two guides up, and we started rallying up the steep roads towards the tea plantation.  It rained again and we sought refuge in a small roadside shelter, entertaining ourselves with charades, everyone smiling and in high spirits.

Jumping into the back of the truck with 12 wet foreigners and our guides.

Here's David, one of our guides, enjoying himself in the mist from the waterfall.



Eventually we arrived in the tea plantation, and took a quick walk down to the waterfall in the drizzle.  Photo ops ensured.  Back into the ute and an hour ride back into Cianjur.  I stood up in the front the whole time, getting quite wet.

Back at the house, we all took hot showers and rested, and were soon picked up by a local restaurant owner who took us to his place and gave us the royal treatment.  All I wanted was a cold beer but alas, this town is quite Muslim, and no alcohol was served.  So on the way to our bamboo hut we stopped at a small convenience store and bought all of their 'cold' canned beer.

After an evening of warm canned beer and conversation, we awoke in our bamboo hut in front of a rice field with people working away.  Ring ring goes a random phone from inside the hut.  We are invited to a wedding!  Right now! In our dirty clothes! Would we like to go? But of course! And we're off. . .






Here's the bride who greeted us like family and had us take numerous pictures with her bridal party. W e were quite the celebrities and everyone wanted a picture with us, especially the women with the Aussie men.

                                                      

All in all a great time!  Back to Jakarta in the insane traffic which ensues each Sunday, exhausted, but happy.

Kevin Rudd Speaks . . .

So back to classes, exhausted on this Monday morning, we were informed that Kevin Rudd, Australia's former Labor Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister, would be joining us for lunch.  At first we thought it was a joke, but no, the man himself would be gracing us with his presence.
As many of my American friends may have no idea, Kevin Rudd was PM of Australia from 2007 until June 2010, about the time that we arrived in Perth, when he was betrayed by his own party and ousted from his position, to be replaced by Julia Gillard (Australia's first female PM).  Rudd was responsible for many positive initiatives, notably his "I'm sorry" speech to Indigenous Australians and the "stolen generations" and his stance of climate change mitigation.
So at about noon today, our group assembled to meet with him.  He arrived with his entourage and entered the hushed room, cracking jokes about quiet Australians, and immediately began to shake hands and introduce himself.  Everyone was starstruck and smiling and queued up to shake his hand.  He then gave a brief but powerful speech about the relationship between Australia and Indonesia, calling the two nations the Odd Couple.  He stated that the countries provide an example to the rest of the world of a white, Western, Christian nation getting on quite well with a large Muslim country, in spite of their enormous differences and heritages.  He called on the Australian students to continue their work and studies in Indonesia and to be part of both countries' futures.  I felt moved by his speech as I feel so many people in the US State Department need to hear and heed his words, and I told him that as we took a photo after.

Here's K Rudd in an American sandwich, with Taylor from Burlington, Vermont! I think he's doing Richard Nixon.
In the US, and Australia as well, there is so much anti-Islamic banter and fear that it drowns out everything else.  The media parade surrounding the 'Ground Zero Mosque,' spurred onwards by Rupert Murdoch (an Australian) and Fox News, is an apt example of the absence of a dialogue and simple understandings of the Muslim faith.  Granted, Indonesia is a quite secular nation and the amount of radicals are relatively small, but people tend to overlook such basic facts and rush into the big news stories of Sharia Law in Aceh, stonings of a teacher who called her class teddy bear Muhammad, etc.  Stories that sell, in other words.  When we had a lecture on Islam last week, the lecturer steered clear of talking about the radicals because that is what reporters and students always ask about.  The story is not in the radical Muslims in Indonesia, but instead in the working example of a pluralist society, working to maintain connections between 17000 islands, 300 languages, and an acceptance of one's faith.
It's too bad Rudd was ousted, as his replacement is a weak followup, kissing the mining companies' asses and weakening climate change legislation.  Rudd was immensely popular with Australia's youth, but perhaps he is better off now in his position as Foreign Minister, using his engaging speaking style and prowess of history and geography to inspire young Australians to move beyond race, colour, and religion in order to become better citizens of the corner of the planet they inhabit, an island of white Anglophones surrounded by Asians.<c>

From Wall Street to . . . West Papua?

Wall Street, the scene of the crime . . .

Just blocks away from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan is another sort of ground Zero; Wall Street, home of Goldman Sachs are other casinos masquerading as investment banks.  The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) began in the US and quickly reverberated around the world, soon becoming the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  Indonesia was largely spared, as the majority of its growth comes from domestic demand and consumption and thus is not contingent on global market demand.  GDP growth did slow in the year 2009, but has since recovered.  Foreign direct investment (FDI) however did decrease as a result of the actions of some reckless mortgage bankers half a world away.

The day before departing for Indonesia, I got to stroll through lower Manhattan.  I have only been the city a handful of times and I wanted to check it out.  The Wall Street bull, symbol of the strength and might of the district, was mobbed by post-Christmas tourists, and surrounded by barricades to prevent vandalism.  Here we are -

Hurray for free market capitalism!!! Deregulate, liberalise, privatise, and all will be well!

Less than two blocks away, there is a small square which has since bcome world famous.  Zuccotti Park, the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street movement, is surrounded by the big name banks.  In this tiny space, hundreds and thousands of people camped for over two months to demonstrate their outrage at the corrupting forces of money in American politics, as well as the fact that the people who perpetuated the biggest scam in history were still working in the surrounding offices, unscathed.  Flawed as the movement was, it got the conversation rolling about the growing income inequality in the US, the damages of Citizens United, and the general decline of the American middle class.  Here, the people created a community they saw as a plausible option, a community based in the principles of direct democracy, sustainability, engagement, group consensus, and empathy for others.  The police cleared the park in November and it has since been barricaded and access restricted.  Here in the now empty Zuccotti Park.

So what does all this have to do with my time in Indonesia?  Well, my interest in the connection between this and my work was piqued when I read a report from Oxfam called 'The Real Story Behind the Numbers' (Oxfam GB Feb 2010).  The report looks into the impacts of the GFC on Indonesian women, and discusses how women are far more likely to be adversely affected by economic downturns. As I will be working on a gender project in South Sulawesi, to me it is fascinating to draw parallels.  The report found that a greater proportion of women were adversely affected by the GFC, especially in manufacturing as they lost their jobs in the export sector when demand fell.  While the report was inconclusive, it found that the Indonesian government in spite of its gender-empowerment rhetoric has not succeeded in implementing reforms to assist women or prevent further hardship.

So when these people at OWS voiced their outrage at a broken and twisted system, whether they knew it or not they were also speaking for people half a world away who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.  Bringing income inequality and corporate greed to the forefront of the debate not only opens up discussion space for Americans, but the world at large.  Indonesia has a burgeoning middle class, but the benefits of fantastic economic growth are grossly uneven.  Wealthy Jakartans passing their afternoons in massive air-conditioned mega-malls buying Gucci products may have benefitted from the effects of free trade and a low corporate tax rate.  Indonesians in far-flung, mineral rich corners of the archipelago have not been so lucky.  As precious resources are stripped from the land, people are forced from their ancient territories, forests stripped, rivers polluted, and dignity is lost.  West Papua, the site of the Grasberg copper mine, has the highest poverty and HIV rate in Indonesia, while Freeport-McMoRan, an American-based company, is netting profits of some $4 billion a year.  Labourers there began striking since the same time that OWS began.  

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The strikes in West Papua ended last month after Freeport agreed to a 39 percent wage increase.  However, locals continue to protest the existence of the mine, which is at the base of glaciated Puncak Jaya, the highest mountain in Indonesia.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, workers are demanding higher wages more comparable to their foreign counterparts, as the New York Times reported.  Here in Jakarta, workers recently went on strike for higher wages.  Such discontent in the working class has the potential to scare off foreign investors seeking to maximise and squeeze every penny from their employees.

So what exactly is my point here?  I feel that the majority of the people on this planet are reaching a breaking point.  Tired of exploitation and unfairness, we are beginning to rise up to challenge unbridled corporate greed and demand respect and dignity.  All of these factors are interconnected; rioters on Wall Street and protesters in West Papua.  This is just a kind of random rant and I am no economic or trade expert.  However I believe this year will indeed bring some interesting changes to the global economy and the position of workers versus giant transnational companies.  As an ACICIS participant I am forbidden to even observe any sort of protests, but as a student of globalisation I cannot help but be interested in the direction that these events are taking us  . . .  There is more to life than making an easy profit, and the workers of Indonesia and the US are starting to finally a life with more dignity.

Ever wanted to know what it's like to be/live in a Muslim country?  So the mosque sends out the call to prayer five times a day, as you may know.  Here is the scene from my window.  It goes off at about 430am every day as well.

Classes Start

So we begin our first week of classes at Atma Jaya University, a Catholic university about a 15 minute walk from our kos. Indonesians do not really walk anywhere and seem confused as to why us Westerners refuse taxis and motorbikes and instead chose to stroll. There are no rules on the streets and you can pretty much walk hugging the shoulder, and the bikes and cars will just go around. To cross the road you simply walk into traffic and wave your hand down to gesture to the cars to stop. Quite practical actually. So it's Monday, our first day. Renae, a lovely girl living across the hall, and I had a quick brekkie of bread and fruit and headed out onto the street. After two weeks of walking this route every day I am sure we will be the neighbourhood celebrities. Our walk takes us across the busy Prof. Dr. Satrio street, then we cut through and take a small road which passes some absolutely foul and stagnant water, shacks and small businesses.

So just walk out there and go for it!

Then you cross a bridge and are at the base of luxury apartment buildings with amazing pools, tennis courts, and security guards. That is the most surprising aspect of the city is that the rich and poor live side by side, practically on top of each other. Sure there are more affluent neighbourhoods, but there really is no divide.

Here you can see the contrast.  At the left are the makeshift shacks and people living in filth, right beside the uber-wealthy.

Welcome to Atma Jaya Universitas!

Here's our uni! No smoking.  In fact there is a public smoking ban in the whole city but no one follows it.

Some scenes from the uni, including the small jungle chapel.

And there are some squatter toilets on campus, taking me back to my Korean days.  Just so you don't get confused, they give you some advice . . .

This morning we had a four hour language course, and I of course was in heaven. Having studied a little bit before, most of it was review, but it was good practice. Some of us will pick it pretty quickly, while it may take a while for others. After a free lunch, we had a two hour lecture on Indonesian political structure, learning the makeup of the government, how the Constitution has changed, as well as current issues facing the nation. We were all getting a little groggy towards the end but I feel like I have a good grounding in the basic background of Indonesian manic bureaucracy, as well as the imbedded corruption. The president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY for short), for instance, has some 34 cabinet members, as well as 20 deputy ministers. As the lecturer stated, we can't expect instant change after some forty years of dictatorship. Indonesia is also ranked #124 on the UN's Human Development Index (HDI), a measurement of many factors such as health, education, and GNP. Australia is #2 and the US is #4. We got to ask some questions at the end as well. Renae, my kos-mate, is travelling to Aceh when the two weeks are over, to work on a microfinance project. Aceh is on the farthest tip of Sumatra, and the site of the worst tsunami damage. It is now under sharia law and killings occur daily. West Papua is the other site of the most strife, as the movement for independence is still strong. All interesting stuff. Tomorrow is another full day of language class, then a lecture on economic trends, so for a dork like me, I am in heaven :)

Drop Box

New Year's Eve

What a night!

So even though this is a Muslim country they obviously follow the Gregorian calendar and celebrate our Western New Year. Most people celebrate by going shopping in the massive mall complexes. People have been selling New Year's memorabilia on the streets; dragon horns, noise makers, etc since the afternoon. We started the evening with a few beers down the road, then free dinner buffet at our hotel (well, we actually paid for it, as NYE lodging cost extra.) After that, I told my small group about a supposed pub down the way, and we stumbled into Dyna Pub, which was actually not the one I was looking for.

We entered the most surreal and awesome little bar ever. The place was decked out to the core with Christmas decorations, and many other random objects like felt-covered dynamos on the ceiling and wooden puppets along the wall. When we arrived, the only people in sight were three small children who hurried off the alert someone of our arrival.

Here are the brave kids setting off fireworks outside the pub.

So we had some beers. Before we knew it, almost everyone from the programme was packed into this tiny, out-of-the-way pub. And midnight was quickly approaching.

(Photos courtesy of Laura Macintosh and Kate Ross) We drank the whole pub out of Bintang!

About 30 minutes to midnight, we ventured with the throngs of people a few blocks north towards the National Monument, built during Sukarno's regime after independence. It is a giant flame, something similar to the Washington Monument. Masses of people and motorbikes led the way, and we scurried across busy intersections, saying "Ma-af" and "Hello" to the smiling throngs.

I lost my small group on the way and joined another, watching the fireworks in the distance. Midnight came and went with no great fanfare, though we attempted our own countdown and hugs, etc. Alas, it was over, and we headed back down, picking our way through the traffic, at times using the litter-strewn grass median as a sidewalk. No harassment, no theft, no negativity. Just smiles and exclamations of "Happy New Year!" and "How are you miss?" I have never felt so safe in a developing country.

Back to the expat bar, the air was thick with heat and smoke, and a rock band played cover songs . We got a text from a fellow ACICIS guy who was sitting outside of our hotel listening to some employees jam on an acoustic guitar and homemade snare drum. We listened for a while and contemplated giving them money.

Here they are.

Soon, however, we began to dance little moves very slowly to the beat, and before we knew it we were encouraging other onlookers to join us. We danced and danced, thinking the song was just about to end, while some children spied on us through the hotel lobby window, giggling hysterically. Exhausted, we finally retired, chasing the kids up the stairwell. Finally to bed. What a night!