EXPLORING THE HEART OF DARKNESS

Kalimantan – why care?   

                                       

Looking for Borneo is wrongly titled.  It should have been called Looking After Borneo – because it’s really – as veteran travel writer Bill Dalton says in the foreword –   “a call to action, a plea to save this special place from the ravages of development.”

Fair enough – the lush photos and quirky paintings, the splendid layout and care for detail    make this a fine addition to Green literature. The plight of orang-utans facing fast death by firearm or slow extinction through loss of habitat is reason enough for attention.

But if these things are so important, why are the Australasian contributors to this lovely book living in Bali and Lombok? Their commitments to Kalimantan are genuine, but like US forces in Syria, their boots aren’t on the ground where their talents might be even more effective.

Readers who can’t get to Borneo, the world’s third largest island can maintain their concerns by buying this book, as the author cheekily suggests, though not for personal gain.

None of the contributors got paid.  Should there be any profits these will go to three charities – two of them in Kalimantan.

 Looking for Borneo is also a handy resource with a list of internet links under the heading What Else Can You Do? Good idea, but how effective are these likely to be against the big dollar developers clearing the bush for palm plantations, deaf to the conservationists’ concerns.

Here’s an answer, though hopefully more a reinforcement for urgent action than passive acceptance:  This review was written under a blanket of haze blown across the Java Sea from the illegal burning of forest trash in Kalimantan, a practise that was supposed to have been halted long  ago, yet continues every year to smother this country and its neighbors.

Another reality: Borneo, Asia’s largest island, is shared by three nations – Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, the latter controlling almost three quarters of the land mass.  In 2007 the tripartite Heart of Borneo Conservation Agreement was declared at the urgings of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Splendid decision - but this year the WWF reported that 10 per cent of the supposedly protected forest cover of what it calls ‘Asia’s last great rainforest’ has been put to the chainsaw since pen scratched paper.

Last year education consultant Dr Mark Heyward published Crazy Little Heaven, an account of a 17 day cross-Kalimantan journey with a few mates taken almost two decades earlier. Looking for Borneo is an extension and enlargement, embellishing Heyward’s earlier prose with photos by David Metcalf, landscapes so juicy the sap runs, portraits so clear the sweat has odor.

Then there’s Khan Wilson’s surrealist artwork featuring manga-eyed maidens, their tilted heads resting on well-upholstered bosoms,

These are also supposed to have been inspired by Heyward’s words, though the link is tenuous and the colors more interior than exterior.  The style is Bali-spa hedonistic and repetitious, but the pictures are joyous enough even though out of place.

Another addition is a 14-track CD featuring the skilled guitar work and composition of polymath Heyward, mainly in what Dalton labels ‘kampong folk rock’. Party stuff rather than gentle listening, though the ballads, when allowed to rise above the backing, encourage contemplation.

So altogether a substantial package assembled for good reasons. The problem is structure.  The early parts of the book don’t coalesce despite Borneo being the central theme.  The words are about a man’s brief mid-life venture into the heart of the unknown (real and personal) with a few mates last century – a tale already told in his earlier book

It’s a pity that Heyward didn’t revisit his walkabout and record his impressions anew now his vision has matured and understanding broadened.  Then readers would have before and after examples to aggravate their wrath at the despoliation.

Towards the end we get the hard update:  “East Kalimantan is the province with the highest gross regional product in Indonesia, yet a quarter of a million of its people are classified as poor.”

Heyward canvasses eco-tourism, a ban on new plantations and boycotting palm oil products as possible solutions, but rightly recognizes there’ll be no change without “strong political will … and better law enforcement.”

Looking at how national parks are managed in the rest of the world might help, but not all overseas strategies survive transplantation to countries where the politics are brutally corrupt and where personal gain regularly trumps national interest.

 Indonesian solutions have to be found for Indonesian problems – and if the powers in Jakarta don’t care about their environment and citizens, then why should others?

Maybe it’s too late.  Heyward says the Dayaks are already divided between urban dwellers and bush people; missionaries have planted alien faiths; technology and a cash economy are impacting on forest folk along with cultures everywhere.

No doubt some will prefer clicking files in air-conditioned offices to blowpiping proboscis   monkeys in the dripping canopy, but if their environment is preserved the Dayaks will have the chance to choose how and where they live, a basic human right.

It’s not just the traditional occupiers and users of Borneo’s riches who will then benefit.  The whole world will literally breathe easier if this great green lung survives. That makes it a matter too important to leave to the cabals in Menteng, so they also need to read this book.

Looking for Borneo                                                                                                                   

by Mark Heyward, David Metcalf and Khan Wilson                                                    

Published by Creatavision Publishing 2014   168 pages

(First published in The Jakarta Post 3 November 2014)

EXPLORING KALIMANTAN AND SELF

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 19^th 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)

 

PRELUDE TO KONFRONTASI

Curtain raiser for Soekarno's anti-Malasia campaign

For proof that ‘military intelligence’ is an oxymoron, The Brunei Revolt is your book.

It’s supposed to be a serious account of insurgents rising against the sultan’s rule in the former tiny British protectorate clinging to the North Borneo coast.  The rebels, influenced and maybe directly supported by Indonesia, failed miserably.

The brief encounter that cost 55 lives with almost 3,300 men taken prisoner was a curtain raiser for Sukarno’s Konfrontasi campaign against the creation of Malaysia.

The Brunei experience should have served as a warning to military adventurers driven by ideology. The Indonesian military’s heart was never totally in the fight; once Sukarno had been deposed by Soeharto, Konfrontasi quietly disappeared.

This is the sort of history that academics and old colonialists enjoy but the rest of us find tedious.  Do we really care how many rounds a Bren gun fires or how the Mark V .303 performs?

Yet this book is full of laugh-out-loud moments as author Nick van der Bijl retells the farce and underlines what most of know by instinct – that armies succeed through happenstance rather than masterful planning.

This was a quality in short supply in late 1962. Although rumors had been rolling, the British only found facts when an old woman asked the police to release her grandson from the army.

When asked ‘which army?’ she produced his green uniform complete with the buffalo insignia of the pro-Indonesian North Kalimantan National Army (TNKU).  The police then found most supplies of green cloth had sold out in the markets.

There were dozens of other indicators that trouble was marching. Soekarno was becoming more belligerently anti-Western. The 14,000 Indonesians working in plantations were probably communist sympathisers. But intelligence was either not shared or ignored.

So senior officers and some troops headed back to Singapore for Christmas, only to hear that rebels in Brunei had attacked strategic buildings and kidnapped oil company employees and administrators.  The troops were rapidly retrieved from their golf clubs, parties and families.

Many thought the alert a training exercise or a mistake – a view reinforced when a commander was told to fly to Brunei but given a map of Kuching by an intelligence officer.

When a proper map was found in Brunei it was aligned west, not north.

Another soldier, learning how to use an unfamiliar weapon while flying fired four shots through the fuselage.

Men loading a Land Rover were told to drain the fuel tanks – yet the vehicle had to be ready for instant action once the plane landed.

A warning banner designed for riot control was discarded because it was often unfurled upside-down causing laughter rather than fear, or got blown away.

The silliness wasn’t limited to one side.  TNKU troops stalking a police post stumbled into a drunken Chinaman in the darkness whose abuse woke the defenders.

When British aircraft approached a TNKU controlled airfield they met no resistance.  The rebels saw the colors red and white on the tail and assumed the plane was Indonesian.

Insurgent vehicles identified themselves by flashing headlights three times – a code quickly used by the British to lure the rebels into ambushes.

Further south in Jakarta the left-leaning author Pramoedya Ananta Toer called the British action ‘reprehensible’.  However the West applauded the speedy crushing of a pro-communist movement at a time when it was feared all Southeast Asia might fall.

The TNKU uprising, led by A M Azahari who had trained as a vet in Java and fought against the Dutch, failed for multiple reasons.  The men were poorly armed (many just had staves and shotguns) and ambivalent about their cause. 

A people’s revolution it was not.  The masses did not arise. Confronted by disciplined Gurkhas hundreds surrendered. 

When the guns stopped firing, attention shifted to Sarawak, Sabah and Peninsula Malay where British Commonwealth troops fought communist insurgents and Indonesian invaders.  The Sultan of Brunei rejected the opportunity to join the new Malaysia and opted for independence, though this wasn’t consolidated till 1984.

He could do this because of vast oil reserves. This tiny authoritarian and charmless Islamic kingdom of only 400,000 people has a per capita income of around US $50,000 (Rp 500 million), and relies on Indonesians to do most of the manual work.

Author van der Bijl, a former British intelligence officer, gets some things wrong.  He calls Indonesia’s first president ‘Ahmed Sukarno’ and describes the Indonesian government as ‘communist’.  He seems more at home with firearms than politics.

Although there’s ample military minutia to excite armchair warriors, these details can be zipped past with no loss of storyline.

Compensating is an occasional droll line.  An officer in Singapore tried to requisition a Comet ferrying soldiers and their families back to UK for Christmas and use it in Brunei.  Writes the author:   ‘RAF movements staff were not entirely in favor of his proposal.’

He cross references to the 1982 Falklands War, which he has also researched, and the way mistakes made and lessons learned in Borneo impacted in the South Atlantic, though the environments and politics were entirely different.

More significant is that the jungle warfare experiences of the British were useful when the US and its allies started fighting in Vietnam.  However looking at the final result in the former Indochina, it’s clear some military intelligence didn’t translate.

The Brunei Revolt                                                                                                                   

 By Nick van der Bijl                                                                                                       

Published by Pen and Sword, 2012                                                                                           222 pages

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(First published in The Sunday Post 14 July 2013)