Daydreaming among the Dayaks
There are
two standard images used by outsiders trying to grasp Indonesia: Jakarta’s
shopping malls and wayang kulit shadow puppets.
The first
offers surprise – ‘goodness, we never know the country was so rich, modern and
sophisticated’. The second hints at
hidden forces manipulating mysterious figures beyond the ken of Westerners.
Both are trite.
Australian
Dr Mark Heyward has avoided these clichés in Crazy Little Heaven – an
Indonesian Journey. Instead he’s used an east-west rock and river trek
across Borneo, undertaken almost 20 years ago before the chainsaw triumphed and
mercury poisoned waterways.
He went to
explore and help explain – at least to himself - the Archipelago’s
multi-layered complexities. At the same time his venture became an interior
search for direction.
Heyward was
37 and had lived in Kalimantan as a teacher with his Australian wife Jan and
family before the 1994 trip, inspired in part by the epic explorations of 19th
century British naturalist Alfred Wallace.
Heyward had
been in Indonesia for two years so was no naïve newcomer, labelling everyone
beautiful and gentle as so many Westerners do, even when being ripped off in
Kuta. He’s prepared to confront the
tough stuff.
He asks an
anthropologist the most difficult value he’s had to confront. ‘Dishonesty’ was
his quick reply’ - letting the author canvass reasons for a trait that troubles
so many Westerners, loving Indonesia but hating the lack of trust.
It’s a
regular theme in the book as guides ramp agreed payments, pilfer stores and
make false promises. Then there’s the
infuriating jam karet (rubber time) and what an American missionary
calls ‘form over function’, the government tendency to focus on policy
packaging and forget the product.
Eventually
Heyward gives up and accepts the ‘frank dishonesty’, adding: ‘Living and
travelling in Indonesia teaches you nothing if not flexibility of thinking’.
His mates
were two Australians, two Europeans and an Indonesian. One carried dive gear. They wore bow ties for dinner and played
cards round campfires. They met a sandalwood trader who asked the obvious.
The
exchange illustrates the cultural divide: ‘This is always difficult to explain’
writes Heyward. ‘Local people seem
unable to comprehend that a journey might be undertaken simply for its own
sake.
‘An
expedition? the chubby trader suggests. No, not really an expedition. We just travel for fun.’
The answer
is clearly unsatisfactory so they settle on a book. Who’d risk 17 uncomfortable, exhausting and dangerous days in
largely unmapped jungle, far from help, unless there’s another agenda?
A
middle-age identity crisis and search for self? Seeking sense of the bigger issues through a back-to-basics
adventure? Time out with the lads to escape domestic responsibilities? Perception through perspiration?
All these
and more, plus the limp ‘fun’. Before
the trip the author’s marriage fell apart and his ‘trailing spouse’, who never
wanted to live in the ‘boy’s town’ of Sangatta, returned to Tasmania with the
couple’s two kids. On the real and metaphorical watershed between East and West
Kalimantan he pondered his future. The
East won.
Later this
Anglican bishop’s son met Sopantini, a teacher from Central Java. He converted
to Islam – though nicked off for a beer during the marriage ceremonies - and
started a new family. He now works as
an international education consultant and lives in Jakarta though has a home in
Lombok.
As a
travelogue the book moves well. Heyward
comes across as an adaptable guy worth meeting, despite smoking kretek. He has
the essentials - curiosity, sense of wonder and feel for place.
These
qualities sustain the reader, though the author’s habit of darting after nectar
sometimes makes the boots-in-mud tramp difficult to follow. An index would have
aided navigation. Likewise a detailed
map.
Knowing
something of the lifestyles of Dayak tribespeople living on the Mahakam River,
and migrant laborers in Kalimantan’s expanding extractive industries helps
provide insights into the problems facing a nascent democracy seeking its place
in the world.
What’s the
connection between a pale-skinned, miniskirted shopper in a capital plaza and a
dark girl with long ear lobes laden with jewelry on the steps of a stilt
house? They illustrate the Republic’s
diversity, and hint of the difficulties in running the nation.
One moment
he’s confronting a breakfast of boiled frogs in Kalimantan, the next analysing
religion in Flores. His observations are usually interesting, though often
distracting.
The best
are the frank accounts of marriage disintegration, and sharing Idul Fitri with
in-laws in Yogya.
The least
valuable, musings on the 1965 massacres and 1997 riots, add little, even though
Heyward was in Jakarta when Soeharto fell.
A Further Reading list would have led inquirers into more
substantial accounts.
Fascination
with orang-utans and concern about the deforestation of Kalimantan gets more
space than necessary. We know about these things – they’ve been given
saturation cover elsewhere by experts.
What we
don’t know is how six men from diverse backgrounds held together when
confronted by environmental extremes, real dangers and personal challenges in a
strange land. Did the ‘group of
misfits’ also experience transformations and wrestle with ambiguities? Heyward’s discussions are internal
monologues rather than campfire debates.
As a fresh
expat’s initiation it’s a useful introduction to the archipelago of
amazements. It could have been a better
book given ruthless editing and concentration on the real question the author
poses: ‘Where are the gods?’
Crazy
Little Heaven
By Mark
Heyward
Published
by Transit Lounge 2013
253 pages
(First published in The Jakarta Post, 20 January 2014)
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