ROSS TAYLOR OAM WELL DESERVED

   A man of passion and purpose    

                    

 

In 1993 Australian rock phosphate trader Ross Taylor was showering in a Jakarta hotel when his fingers tweaked a marble-sized lump in his left armpit. 

Normal?  Not really, but it could be put on hold. Business first, deals to be done, money made. The growth might even vanish.

It didn’t. In a Singapore hospital Ross and his wife Katherine got the dreaded diagnosis: Metastatic melanoma, stage four skin cancer, spreading wildly into vital organs.

Ross probably caught the killer disease while performing the teenage ritual of the times, surfing under Australia’s searing sun wearing nothing more than board shorts and a carefree grin. Australians have the highest skin cancer incidence rate in the world.

The family headed home to Perth and an expected short future together.  The prognosis was awful – just ten per cent chance of surviving beyond three years.

Yet Ross, 62, is still here through a mix of diet and determination, medication and meditation.  With the help of other battlers and his family he fought for his life - and won. 

He’s so fit he puts his heath stats on the Internet.  He’s also still surfing, though now well clad and sunblock-smeared. Next month (July) he’ll be in Yogya before heading south to push his board into the Indonesian Ocean on a quest for the best beach break.

“A journalist once asked if I was glad I’d had cancer,” he said.  “I thought it a stupid question, I wouldn’t wish disease on anyone. Later I realized that without it I wouldn’t have changed.

“Before I got ill it was all business. Everything else had to wait. I’d only been present at four of my daughter’s first nine birthday parties. Cancer altered everything and put me on a journey that’s been absolutely inspirational.

“Cancer strips you raw. It makes you look differently at everything.  It’s good to have a nice house and big car – but what’s really important in life?  

“I’ve spent time with dying patients in palliative care and never heard one say their triumph was buying a Mercedes.

“In their last moments most ask: ‘Have I made a little difference to the world as a human being?’  I’d dread to be in the position of having to say ‘no’.”

Once he had cancer blown out Ross returned to Indonesia, this time as the Western Australian Government’s Regional Director, promoting trade with vigor. WA and East Java have a long-standing Sister State agreement.

Much of his work involved helping high country dairy farmers and potato growers lift yields and improve quality using WA livestock, seeds and expertise.

Although he’d always been restless, the scarifying encounter with the Big C gave Ross new energy to live every moment to the full. 

He started Lifeforce Cancer Support Services, became National Vice-President of the Australia-Indonesia Business Council and more recently founder and president of the Indonesia Institute.

This Perth-based NGO is a lobby group promoting better relations between the neighbours.

For these achievements and services he has just become a member of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honors list.  The award is for “significant service to Australia-Indonesia relations, to primary industry and transport, and to the community”.

This bland cover-all phrase hides the astonishing achievements of a man who has written top-selling inspirational books on combating cancer (including one in Indonesian that’s sold 40,000 copies), raised huge sums for cancer research and all the time banged the gong for understanding and respecting the people next door.

He’s done this by lobbying and commenting in the media, including this newspaper. Unlike many Indophiles Ross hasn’t indulged in basa basi, the ultra-polite behaviour refined by Javanese to mask their true views. 

Instead, like Sumatran Bataks, he’s directly criticised both countries’ policies and to good effect.  A major Institute win has been helping get scores of young Indonesian fishermen released from Australian jails.

Under Australian law foreign minors caught crewing asylum seeker boats should be repatriated.  But those unable to prove their age were slammed into adult prisons.

Another recent target has been the Australian live beef export market.  Ross accused both governments of “inept handling” following revelations of cattle mistreatment in Indonesian abattoirs. Bans were imposed, damaging all. Exports have now restarted.

A current objective is to by-pass immigration roadblocks holding up the reciprocal working holiday visa program.  This was designed to encourage young people to live and work in each other’s countries for up to a year.

However a mix of bureaucratic inertia and political distrust has prevented applicants from accessing the scheme.

His bid to address “the issues that really matter in developing a deep and trusting relationship” hasn’t always made Ross popular. 

His reasoned and informed comments on matters that divert mature understanding in both nations - like jailed drug runner Schapelle Corby, kids drinking toxic arak in Bali, and terrorism - often lures redneck Indophobes from their bunkers of bigotry.

But Ross’ background as a businessman, further reinforced by the Monarch’s recognition, has given him the clout and carapace to withstand slurs.

“I never get criticism from Indonesians for speaking frankly,” he said. “In Australia we tend to tip-toe around issues, fearful of giving offence.

“Indonesia has changed so much yet Australians seem stuck in a time warp, thinking our neighbor is still run by a dictatorship supported by the military.  We have a distorted perception, and that’s very strange.

 “On the other side topics like asylum seekers that are driving Australian politics are underwhelming Indonesians.

“The relationship keeps bumping along; the good news is that despite all the challenges the barometer holds strongly.  Our mindset has to be grounded on more than business and trade.”

And the cancer?  “Business can be rough, but the big lesson I’ve learned is to be kind and considerate to each other.  Life is fragile.”

(The Lifeforce website in Indonesian can be found at http://www.lifeforce.com.au/indonesia/id_pub_simply.htm)

(First published in The Jakarta Post 24 June 2013)

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CORRUPTION CRIPPLES SOCIETY

Frenky Simanjuntak

Inspired by Orwell                            

                           

What does a corruption-buster do when hassled for a backhander?

Pay up and get back to business because protests waste time and temper – or berate the official and call the cops?

Raising Cain isn’t smart when the gouger wears a uniform.

This was the dilemma faced by Transparency International’s Frenky Simanjuntak when being fingerprinted by the police for a clean slate certificate required for a foreign scholarship.

“To be honest I paid the Rp 10,000 (US $1),” he said.  “It wasn’t a legal charge but I reasoned the money would have gone into the staff fund.  Some argue this is disguised welfare for people on low wages – but it’s still wrong.

“Though the police have the highest bribery rate in Indonesia with up to 40 per cent corrupt according to TI research, I have a little sympathy for their dilemmas. In some cases they have cars but no fuel, so resort to shaking down motorcyclists for gas to maintain their patrols. Reform must be integrated.”

Big corruptors outrage the electorate and inflame headlines with their gross behavior.  But it’s the petty everyday graspers who are hardest to eradicate because they’re tolerated by the public as the price of doing business.

“Corruption thrived for the 30 odd years of Soeharto,” said the former manager of TI’s economic governance department in Indonesia, “but decentralization has made the problem worse.

“We are making progress in countering corruption, though it’s a slow process.  There’s a strong need for education about the damage caused to the country, but so far most effort has been put into prosecution.”

Indonesia ranks alongside Egypt at 118 according to TI’s corruption perception index, slipping down from 100 the previous year. New Zealand, Finland and Denmark are the least corrupt, all at number one.  The US ranks 13.

TI is a non-profit organization operating in more than 100 countries and promoting good governance.  It is funded by agencies, governments and individuals and publishes the donor list on the Internet.

Frenky, 38, quit his job in Jakarta this year after winning a NZ government scholarship to study public policy.  He listed transparency, ease of accessing information and good law enforcement as key factors in clean administration, along with social intolerance of dishonesty. 

Shortly after arriving in the South Pacific nation he saw media hounding of a government politician who had been rude to a hotel waiter.  Public distaste of the policy maker’s behavior forced the man to quit parliament.  Commented Frenky wryly: “That would not have happened in Indonesia.

“Our education system is a disgrace.  Schooling is not about understanding integrity but rote learning. We should be teaching honesty and accountability from the very beginning.

“At TI I worked with the private sector in anti-corruption projects.  Foreign bosses often asked: ‘How can we do anything here without paying bribes?’

“The answer is to join with other companies where all agree not to support corruption.  Overseas countries that have laws prohibiting their nationals from bribing public servants in Indonesia and elsewhere are effective.  They provide the initiative for business people to work together.”

Before joining TI Frenky worked as a researcher with another Non Government Organization, the now defunct Center for East Indonesian Affairs under sociologist Dr Ignas Kleden.

The center closed when overseas funding evaporated, though not before Frenky had spent six years on conflict resolution in Kalimantan between indigenous Dayaks and Madurese transmigrants, and in Ambon between Muslims and Christians.

He was involved in voter education projects leading to the 2004 election particularly in Papua, a province he first visited as an anthropology student on fieldwork from the University of Indonesia.

“The things I’d heard about Papua were very scary, but that wasn’t true,” he said.  “They are intelligent and funny people and I really enjoy their company.

“There has to be a peaceful resolution to the problems after pulling out the military.  But I don’t want to see West Papua secede.”  His wife Florencia Yuniferti also works as a university researcher in the province.

Frenky’s track into the dirty world of corruption started as a child when he read British writer George Orwell’s famous allegory Animal Farm in English, a language he’d been encouraged to study by his parents.

“For me politicians were like the pigs in the book,” he said.  “They talk glibly and make lots of promises.  There’s always the possibility of change, however dire the situation.”

The exception on his loathe list is former president Gus Dur - “a powerful Muslim leader with an open-minded approach.”

Frenky’s father, an executive with a fertiliser company, traveled widely overseas, returning with books and stories of a wider world to grow the imaginations of his four children.

The Christian Batak family moved from Palembang in South Sumatra to the capital when Frenky was a babe.  So he considers himself a Jakartan raised in an ethnically diverse district where, he said, he never experienced prejudice.

At university he demonstrated for democracy and became a political activist, though “not hard core, and never arrested”.   He started working for NGOs “because I felt a responsibility to be an agent of change – and wanted to work where it matters.”

Though shrinking from the idealist label he added: “I want to contribute something, to myself, the people around me – and the community.”

After two years studying public policy in NZ he’ll be looking for a position with the Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK – the Corruption Eradication Commission) – if it still exists after a new president is elected in 2014.

The job he wants is in public education, not bugging hotel rooms and retrieving fat envelopes from startled crooks in sting ops.

“The KPK does a good job, but prosecution and prevention should be separate,” he said. “We need to explain that corruption is stealing from our country, denying the government money necessary for public works.

“You cannot be a corruptor and morally pure.  That may not be the situation legally but it is so ethically.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 10 June 2013}

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DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION

BTW

Sharing is caring

As the family’s only car owner my sister in law is an unpaid de-facto cabbie, carting siblings, nieces, nephews and a saloon of other relatives to schools and shops.

Like many women drivers SIL doesn’t exhibit the brash, bash-through behavior of male road users preferring to be cautious – a fine quality when avoiding the brutal, careless and confrontational drivers.  And that’s just the pedicab pushers.

My admiration goes beyond her skills behind the wheel. For SIL always travels with a full tank of patience.

Not towards other motorists.  They get the heavy horn treatment if they haven’t hit third gear before the lights flick to green. Her tolerance is for others in the car.

An excursion isn’t a journey of one driver and five passengers.  It’s a trip with six drivers.

No matter that most don’t have licenses or have never driven – these are not impediments to giving advice:

“Overtake him, go faster, push in, don’t worry - he’ll brake, ignore him, he’s smaller, you can get through there, turn left, no, sorry right, ha, ha, wrong again …”

At first I thought SIL would boot the brake through the floorboards and scream: “Will you all shut up! If you reckon you’re so smart, drive it yourself,” then jump into the next passing bemo with the keys in her purse, shouting: “Just leave me alone!”

Of course being an Indonesian she’d never display such impoliteness.

I almost succumbed, demonstrating crassness and maladjustment. Instead I swallowed my tongue for I was not in a culture where driving is a job for one – here it’s gotong royong.

This is the communal self-help system (a ‘busy bee’ in some parts of Australasia), not confined to threshing rice and building mosques.  Apart from driving it also extends to education.

After setting an assignment at a prestigious East Java university I was astonished to find the students in the library huddled in clusters.

“This is not a group task,” I raged, impotently. “I want to know what you’ve learned and what you think as an individual.”

I might as well have spoken in ancient Greek because it was clear no one understood.  Independent, alone, solo, unaccompanied – what do such words mean?

A student explained in a voice used for the young and witless:  “We have to work and assist each other so when we graduate and want a job we can call on our former colleagues for help.”

Sharing as an exercise in future proofing.

The West has the do-it-yourself (DIY) cult that keeps home hardware stores hammering – Indonesia’s practise is DIT (do-it-together).  No wonder around 50 million Indonesians use Facebook – the highest number in Southeast Asia.

Scots say too many cooks spoil the broth – Indonesians assume the more chefs the better the meal. Westerners claim a camel is a horse dreamed up by a committee – Indonesians reckon only a group could have designed a horse.

We think two’s company, three’s a crowd, a mass a misery.  The more the merrier; there’s safety in numbers.

Foreigners here try and avoid eye contact with other outsiders.  Why seek out folk we’d never acknowledge at home?  Indonesians abroad seem forever happy to meet fellow expats.  No wonder Indonesian friendliness is world famous.

Demographics determine attitude. In my home state there’s a square kilometer for every human.  In Java, the world’s most populous island, I rub up against 960 people (and a similar number of motorbikes) in the same hundred hectares.  Even soy beans in tempe have more space.

The proverb makan gak makan asal kumpul (even though we have no food we have each other) sums up the situation. A song of the same name celebrates a life compressed.

If English poet William Wordsworth had lived in Indonesia he wouldn’t have wandered lonely as a cloud.  He’d never find himself apart, and certainly wouldn’t get to see a host of golden daffodils – they’d have all been trampled.

Given such a cultural background it’s no wonder my SIL has no problems with backseat drivers.  Me? It’s walk, or adapt and join the car chorus.  No local license but I’m a foreigner and a man so clearly know it all: ‘Hey, keep left …’ 

(First published in The Sunday Post, 9 June 2013)

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HOT BEMOS FOR JAKARTA

Enrico Halim

Take a ride on the wild side        

                                  

If you’re around Jakarta’s Jalan Sudirman next month (June), fed up with air-conditioned luxury cabs and feeling adventurous, keep an eye open for a pink bemo.

Or maybe magenta.  The color is still being debated, but it’s likely to be standout shrill.

Either way the driver will be Pak Kinong so you’ll be in good hands.  He knows the back streets like his steering wheel because he’s been driving the noisy, smelly three-wheel rattletraps since 1970.

Except that this time he’ll be at the controls of a clean and quiet spruced-up electric machine – the Bio Bemo.

So if you’re ready to chance a ride you’ll be helping take down the capital’s appalling pollution by a few grams of carbon monoxide, which has to be all good.

So where’s the risk?  Although the bemo has been mechanically checked it shouldn’t be on the road.  

Law-conscious Westerners shy at riding unlicensed transport because it might void insurance policies, but that doesn’t seem to bother too many Indonesians, including Enrico Halim, the man behind the Bio Bemo

“We want the machine registered but transport laws don’t say anything about electric bemos,” he said.  “So the bureaucrats have told us to go away and find a solution workable to them.

“Most technical issues have been fixed – it’s the paperwork blocking us from going forward.  We’ve spoken to Jokowi (Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo) who said the idea is ‘very interesting’.” A low wattage response, but Team Bio Bemo sees a spark of support.

Enrico, 44, doesn’t fit the image of grease-stained mechanical inventor.  Originally from Bandung he’s a graphic artist trained in the US who teaches part-time at Tarumanegara University.   He set up an agency called Aikon, ‘an institution for the open minded pursuing the better Indonesia’.

A petrolhead he is not.  He rides a (non-electric) motorbike and is more interested in making his city safe and sweet than being seen at the wheel of a black saloon from Stuttgart.

Which is why he’s pushing to convert old bemos to electric power locally rather than import glitzy modern machines – a solution favored by the big transport operators.

Bemos may have been sidelined but there are still about 500 operating from eight stations in Jakarta. “They are part of our heritage, first imported from Japan during the Soekarno era,” Enrico said. “Sadly our education doesn’t teach us to respect history.

“Bemo are efficient, able to negotiate narrow and crowded streets, to go on roads inaccessible to other vehicles. They are particularly good shifting produce to and from traditional markets.”

The two stroke engines are noisy, thirsty and dirty.  So Enrico and his mates have built a pick-up using four standard batteries and a Chinese 48-volt brushless electric motor.

The orange prototype has been on the roads for almost three months.  The next model, out soon, will carry passengers.

The gas engine and transmission have been removed, so the clunky gear system has also been eliminated, giving passengers a smoother ride.

It’s claimed the maximum distance is 75 kilometers on a full charge, though best to park after 50 to avoid battery damage.  This is within the range of many routes, though not all. An overnight battery top up using a standard household cable should cost a few thousand rupiah.

Enrico isn’t all torque - he’s also into social engineering.  “I want to put the Bio Bemo within the reach of owner–drivers,” he said. “At the moment they earn about Rp 150,000 (US$15) a day but more than half of that goes on gas and oil. 

“We’ve been talking to banks and should be able to negotiate a Rp 30 million (US$3,000) loan for conversions, repaid over 30 months with the money saved.

“Half the drivers who have seen the Bio Bemo are enthusiastic.  The others are worried about range and recharging time.  We’re considering is a battery exchange program.”

Jaywalkers won’t be able to hear or smell the Bio Bemos so a “fun sound” from little drums on the Bio Bemo’s wheels may be added to alert the unwary.

Enrico has long been keen on alternative energy and for a while experimented with hydrogen power. His interest switched to electricity when visiting his daughter Kintaka who is studying in New Zealand.  In Wellington he saw local government staff driving electric-powered cars to promote the capital’s clean and green credentials.

Using the Internet (“my mechanic is Pak Google”) he plugged into an international ring of incandescent electric vehicle enthusiasts.  They included pioneers of the Philippines’ distinctive E-Jeepneys, the flamboyantly decorated electric mini-busses now becoming popular in Manila.  Three experts came to Jakarta and gave advice.

Overseas aid agencies have signalled interest in the Bio Bemo (Greenpeace backed the E-Jeepney project).  However Enrico is wary of getting too much support that could over-engineer the bemos, ramp costs and make the vehicles too dear for drivers.

For example, lithium batteries and fast chargers would triple the conversion cost.

“Our Filipino friends couldn’t imagine why our government isn’t supporting the project,” Enrico said. “They also noted that electricity in Jakarta is about half the cost of power in Manila.

“I hoped we might interest local universities, but there’s been no enthusiasm.  It seems the Bio Bemo isn’t sexy or modern enough.  Of course we’re using really old technology and looking for long-term solutions.

“Everyone seems to be depending on Jokowi and Ahok  (deputy governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama) to have all the ideas and do everything.

“They are just two men.  We should solve problems ourselves.  The main point is this:  Why doesn’t the government see this as a practical solution to some of Jakarta’s transport problems?”

Maybe it will after the Bio Bemo team heads to City Hall on 22 June in an all-out bid to turn on the public servants’ interest and maybe even get them to authorize registration.

In that case foreigners might be more willing to try a trip.

(First published in The Jakarta Post, 3 June 2013)

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WEST PAPUA - INDONESIA'S TROUBLED TERRITORY

Tangled in Papua’s political thickets                                             

Fifty years ago this month (May) Indonesia took over administration of what is now known as West Papua.  Two years later the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM – Free Papua Movement) started.

Following the fall of President Soeharto in 1998 some thought the time ripe to seek independence.  But how to do it?  In the remote province few knew more than the meaning of merdeka  (ironically gained from studying Indonesian history), the urge to demonstrate and a symbol.

On Biak Island off the north coast there was political will - but no flag.  Activist Filep Karma had seen the Morning Star but couldn’t remember details.

Employing a seamstress would have attracted the police so Karma sprayed blue and red spray paint on a piece of white cloth.  This was raised over a water tank at the harbor.  A prayer meeting was held.  It was a makeshift, amateurish, largely spontaneous and certainly naïve protest.

The unarmed demonstrators brandished Bibles and sang hymns.  That didn’t stop the military opening fire, apparently after some soldiers had been assaulted.

Karma was shot but survived.  He alleged 29 were killed.  Witnesses claim bodies were dumped at sea.  The Army said just one person died, and the washed up corpses victims of a giant wave far away.

Also in Biak was American doctoral student Eben Kirksey who heard (but didn’t see) the shootings.  Had he been able to film the event – as journalists did in 1991 at Dili’s Santa Cruz massacre – the world might have paid more attention.

East Timor is now an independent nation, in part because of the outrage following the Dili killings. But West Papua remains firmly Indonesian with the support of Western governments.  With revolutions in Africa and the Middle East, the problems of the region get little international attention.

In Dr Kirksey’s Freedom in Entangled Worlds we get a book with enough insights to fill in the gaps – but not an objective account. 

The Indonesian government’s refusal to let in foreign journalists means that most reports come from partisan sources – including the military.  As in Syria this leaves us wondering who to believe.

The author first encountered Papua in the 1990s when travelling from the US to Jakarta as an exchange student.

During the night refuel the teenager got a whiff of the exotic and mysterious, penis gourds and grass skirts, oppressive heat and the scent of kretek (clove) cigarettes,  

Later he returned as an adult planning a thesis on the independence movement and globalisation.  Instead he was “drawn into a struggle for freedom … (becoming) an advocate who accompanied West Papuan activists in political meetings.” In 2005 he worked in Washington as a human rights advocate.   Hardly the language and position of an even-handed academic.

Nonetheless Dr Kirksey’s extensive research has been accepted and he’s now a lecturer at a Sydney University where he teaches ‘environmental humanities’. He’s also become a media commentator on West Papua.

This book proves not all dissertations translate well into mainstream non-fiction.  There are plenty of fascinating anecdotes illustrating the cultural complexities and the author’s undercover work, but these have been forced into theoretical moulds and decorated with jargon. 

So we get mixtures of Melanesian myths and magic laced with half understood (or misunderstood) stories from the West, guaranteed to engross all – then given equally weird explanations.

To try and make sense of it all he uses extended metaphors drawn from the natural surroundings – jungle roots.

West Papua is quivering with spies.  It’s almost impossible to do anything or meet anyone without being observed and reported to Intelligence, so activists and Dr Kirksey have taken great risks to garner information. 

The man is no dilettante.  He spent three months with one tribe, speaks Indonesian and a Creole called Logat Papua and interviewed 400 people. Impressive.  So is his lack of arrogance.  His achievement is ‘not a monograph with pretensions to completeness (but) a story of compromises situated within multiple entangled worlds’.

Tangled indeed. The layers over traditional beliefs have included Dutch colonialism, the Second World War, fundamentalist Christianity, academic analysis, capitalism, massive mineral exploitation and military oppression.

The missionaries introduced hopes of the Messiah’s return.  The Allied armies’ cargo brought proof of the riches beyond the mountains that could appear out of the sky given the right mantra.

Instead, ironically on Christmas Day 1971 Freeport arrived to dig a giant hole and take away the province’s riches.  What were the poorly educated and uninformed (or misinformed) Papuans to make of it all?

That so many have mastered the complexities of international business and politics, and aroused global concerns about exploitation and alleged human rights abuses is a tribute to their abilities, tenacity and courage.

There are signs of hope.  President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is reported to be pushing for a ‘development through compassion’ solution before he leaves office next year. 

One way would be to listen the Papuans’ grievances, ranging from dispossession, through torture and murder, enough of their dreadful plight articulated in this book to warrant action that doesn’t involve violence.

The danger is that Dr Kirksey’s book will be considered antagonistic by the military, restricting a peaceful and just settlement of this suppurating wound infecting Indonesia’s relationship with the rest of the world – and particularly Australia.

Freedom in Entangled Worlds: West Papua and the architecture of global power.

Eben Kirksey

Duke University Press 2012

322 pages

(First published in The Sunday Post, 2 June 2013)

STAMFORD RAFFLES - A NEW APPRAISAL

The man who loved Java                                         

On 2 February 1824, Sir Stamford Raffles, his sick wife Sophia and their son Charles left Bengkulu (then known as Bencoolen) on board the Fame.  They had been waiting months for a passage to Britain and had booked on another ship, the Borneo.

Then the Fame arrived and the impatient family’s goods were transferred. The former Lieutenant Governor of Java thought this was one of the happiest days of his life.  He wrote presciently: ‘We were, perhaps, too happy.’

That evening a steward ignorant of chemistry went into the hold to uncork a brandy cask.  He was carrying a candle. Also on board was a load of saltpetre, an essential ingredient in gunpowder.

The ship was about 50 miles off the coast of Sumatra.  All made the boats before the Fame was ripped apart, but the story doesn’t have a happy ending.

Also in the hold was what Raffles described as  ‘the cream and best of everything I had collected learnt and attained.’ 

According to Victoria Glendinning’s Raffles and the Golden Opportunity the collection included 300 bound volumes and many unbound, shadow puppets and craft, even a gamelan orchestra. 

All Raffles’ notes, maps, drawings, plants and stuffed animals were also lost. Fortunately his History of Java had already been published.

The value (in today’s currency) was US$4 million, but the loss to Indonesian history and appreciation of the archipelago was immense.  Raffles collected ‘for cultural propaganda to prove back in England that Java had been, and could be again, a great and civilised country’.

Lesser men would have dissolved in despair.  The family was already grieving from the earlier death of yet another child, and the Fame fire would have suggested a curse. But Raffles set about drawing the map of Sumatra that had been lost with the ship to the admiration of Sophia.

When he eventually managed to sail Raffles wrote: ‘Perhaps I was too much attached to the things of this world. The lot of man is a mixture of good and evil, and we must be content with it – and at all events we know that all worketh for good in the end.’ 

Are these the words of a devious wrongdoer?  Raffles was admired, but also mauled by critics during his brief lifetime – he died aged 45 of a brain seizure.  Many were driven by jealousy of a former clerk with limited education and contacts who became a star administrator and founder of Singapore.

It didn’t help that he was English, small, had no military experience, was a faithful lover, keenly interested in other cultures and the environment, and ‘physically fragile’ – hardly the sort of man who’d appeal to the Scottish and Irish warriors subservient to his civilian rule. 

The British invaded Java in 1811 during the Napoleonic Wars and held the Dutch colonies till 1816. 

Raffles and his boss Lord Minto understood their interregnum would be brief should peace break out in Europe.  Reforms had to be swift. ‘While we are here let us do as much good as we can,’ he said.

The new Lieutenant Governor agreed. His motives were not religious – he had little time for missionaries and was ‘vituperative’ about the Dutch administration. Raffles set up a committee with the instructions to ‘consider the inhabitants without reference to bare mercantile profits.’ 

Comments Glendinning: ‘But the relationship between the common good and the profit-making purpose of the (East India) Company answerable to shareholders, was uncomfortable.’

Raffles’ committee recommended the abolition of ‘all kinds of servitude’ and a major shake-up of the taxation system. He ‘sought to promote the value and beauty of the indigenous culture and its pre-Islamic Hindu heritage’. 

Once the bloody work had been done and the Dutch suppressed, Raffles set about his benign dictatorship. 

In this biography he comes across as a free trader, a visionary reformer ahead of his time who loved Java and its people, particularly villagers, supporting them against claims of indolence. Inevitably he attracted haters.

But they were up against Raffles’ determined widow Sophia, his second wife.  His first, Olivia, famous for reversing the Dutch policy of excluding Eurasian wives from functions, died in 1814. Sophia bore Raffles five children but only one survived to adulthood and then died unmarried.

Sophia wrote a biography of her husband celebrating his public service.  Yet Raffles died in debt to the East India Company, undermining his detractors’ allegations of corruption.

This is Glendinning’s eighth biography, written in her early 70s. She writes with clarity, impartiality and controlled enthusiasm.

There have been many biographies of Raffles, some hagiographic. This isn’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s hostile.  ‘Raffles’ story, in a work of fiction, would strain credulity,’ she writes.  ‘His good fortune and his ill fortune were both of an extreme kind.  He became the entrepreneur of his own ideals and an utopian imperialist.’ 

She described writing the biography as ‘an act of concentration in both senses. There are a great many strange characters churning around in this book, and a great many clamouring outside it.’ 

So she’s set up a website www.rafflesbook.co.uk including titbits, links and an events diary celebrating the life of an extraordinary Englishman, famous for founding Singapore, but fascinated by Java, an island he served briefly – but well.

Raffles and the Golden Opportunity

Victoria Glendinning

Profile Books 2012

350 pages

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SURYO WARDHOYO PRAWIROATMODJO

Farewell Indonesia’s Green Renaissance Man    

                     

Here’s proof that attitudes and values can change faster than we think, and that citizens have the ability to wake interest when governments yawn.

Not too long ago conservationists were considered siblings to communists, dangerous even when just respectfully suggesting that caring for the environment might be smart.

That was the situation when Suryo Wardhoyo Prawiroatmodjo first proposed building a rural centre to promote sustainable organic agriculture and teach the benefits of nurturing nature.

Radical?  Hardly, but this was during Orde Baru (New Order) days when ideas that didn’t flow from Soeharto’s presidential palace were considered subversive.

However the credentials of the young and physically small veterinary surgeon from the Surabaya zoo were above reproach.  The son of a high-standing Javanese family educated at the prestigious Airlangga University, Suryo might have some whacky notions about trees, but there was no hammer and sickle in his kitbag.

His interest in animals and plants came from an aunt who owned a plantation, loved the outdoors and developed her nephew’s understanding of the interconnectedness of nature.

True, he was a member of the Green Indonesia Foundation. He’d been overseas studying wildlife management at the University of Western Virginia and conservation education in Britain, but unlikely to stir the masses.

So in 1988, with no red taint detected in his green credentials Suryo was allowed to set up Indonesia’s first environmental education centre at Trawas, in the hills above the steaming floodplains of north East Java using foreign funds.

Even by the mid 1990s few  tourism officials had heard of Seloliman.  But it was well known among hundreds of international  backpackers who followed instructions in the Lonely Planet travel guide to make their pilgrimage using bemo (minibuses) and ojek  (motorbike taxis) up winding tracks.

Communication was chancy and visitors had to hope accommodation might be available.  This could be a simple cottage with an open-roof bathroom set in rows of vegetables alongside bamboo classrooms.

Europeans loved the experience and ambience, but it took a few years before Indonesians felt comfortable and schools ready to bring students to stay and learn by getting their hands dirty and lose their fears in the forest.

By then Suryo was well known internationally.  In 1990 he had won awards in Geneva, Washington DC and Rio de Janeiro.  It took a further five years before his achievements were recognized in Jakarta with a medal for ‘participation in development’. 

About this time Suryo fell out with the committee running Seloliman over principles of management. He also became seriously ill with the incurable Crohn’s Disease, a rare and debilitating bowel condition, ironically often linked to environmental factors, but in his case more likely genetic. 

Buddhist architect and philanthropist Bagoes Brotodiwirjo paid for Suryo to get surgery in Singapore that included removal of much of his gut.  Back in East Java his movements were restricted by excessive tiredness, dietary needs and toilet proximity.

Despite these handicaps he turned to running seminars and travelling across the archipelago setting up environment education centres in South Sulawesi, Bali, Kalimantan and West Papua backed by the World Wildlife Fund.

Like many pioneers he was better celebrated overseas than in his homeland, lecturing in Thailand, drawing teachers and senior students from across the world to his workshops in the East Java wilderness.

At these he urged young people to hearken to the elders and appreciate ancient wisdom. He created puppets and games based on traditional tales, believing the past had much to teach the present. 

“I want to give confidence to the villagers, tell them that what they’ve been doing is a treasure from our ancestors,” he said.  “We need to love Mother Earth for sustainable humanity.”

He was quietly persuasive, not strident, and this seemed to calm sceptics.  It certainly opened the wallets of foreign aid agencies.

Academically sound he never used his education to stand aloof.  The functions he organised always included farmers and professors, faith leaders and bureaucrats.

Suryo had little time for modern mainstream religious practices and was a student of the 14^th century Majapahit empire that once ruled much of Southeast Asia from its East Java heart. Not because of its military and trade triumphs, but because it worked with – and not against - nature.

Mt Penanggungan from Suryo's house

He loved the 13^th century Panji stories of wandering royals, which originated in East Java, spread up to Burma and are entrenched in wayang (shadow puppets).

Suryo built a modest multi-level cottage with his partner Anton Ayungga in the village of Tamiajeng that matched his outlook, gazing across green paddy to dark Mount Penanggungan.

This is the dormant volcano magically transported from India to Indonesia to become the mother mountain of Java’s Hindu and Buddhist religions. Its slopes are an archaeologists’ heaven with about 100 known sites, including temple remains.

Sadly Suryo was not in his beloved home entertaining friends with food cooked to ancient recipes served in Majapahit-style pottery when he died this week (wed 8 May) in a Jakarta hospital following a relapse. 

He was aged 57 and was Indonesia’s Renaissance Man, drawing knowledge from every culture, every land, and full of wonder at everything.  As a teacher he had the ability to infect others with his enthusiasm and awe.

Suryo’s story is proof that the individual can make a difference, even when confronted by a suspicious state. Publicly he was always optimistic, but privately he regretted that Indonesia was slow to realise that destruction of the environment and waterway pollution was a serious problem impacting on all citizens and their future.

His ashes will be scattered at Candi (temple) Kendalisodo on Mount Penanggungan.

“Suryo was an environmental agitator, a pioneer and a hero,” said Jakarta environment lecturer Stien Matakupan who along with hundreds of teachers here and abroad is helping spread his philosophy of care for the land to future generations.

“His spirit, his inspiration will stay with us.” 

(First published in The Jakarta Post 16 May 2013)

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