JACK! INSPIRING OTHERS TO CROSS CULTURES

A symphony of Indonesian love 

Not all festschrifts travel well.  Sometimes the contributors veer away from the subject, driving in another direction in search of their own interests.

Though not with this beautiful book where even the format and design pays tribute to a remarkable musician, photographer, entrepreneur, teacher, song-catcher and above all lover of Indonesia, its people and music.

Jack! celebrates the life of the New Zealand composer Jack Body, ‘his endless musical curiosity’ and ‘love of life’s complexities’.

He died earlier this year shortly after the book was completed and he’d been named a NZ Arts Icon, the nation’s highest arts award and the first composer to be recognized.   

Although the writers knew Body was ill and that the cancer he thought he’d defeated was galloping back, Jack! is seldom maudlin or clogged by irrelevant minutia.

Its one hundred contributors record a life well lived and where the subject was still thinking of compositions to come ‘about what the earth taught me, what the plants said, what the birds said.’  

In it Body talks in interviews about ‘discovering a new sensuality’ in Indonesia where he taught at the Akademi Musik Indonesia. He also found the love of his life, Yono Soekarno.  They lived together till Body died.

‘We met in the Yogyakarta Post Office on Boxing Day in 1976 …[Body had been recording street musicians in the city].  He is beautiful even though he is no longer the dazzling youth I first met.  Oh my God, was I the envy of all, male and female to have such a beautiful and desirable companion!

‘And the miracle of it all is that he loved unlovable me!  I like to point out to the young that love is something that is learned, something that grows with time.  Yono taught me how to love.’

One of the many photos shows Body and Soekarno together shortly after they became a unit, two handsome young men smiling and joyful, as are almost all the pictures. For Body had an orchestra of friends drawn by his cheerful humility and unqualified commitment to music – and the gamelan in particular.

Among his friends were the three women who edited this book – Gillian Whitehead, Scilla Askew and Jennifer Shennan who writes about Body’s ‘inclusive personality and joie de vivre …a low tolerance for boredom, cliché and comfort zones’.

John Stanley [Jack] Body was born in 1944 in Te Aroha, a dairy town in NZ’s North Island.  His father had a small farm and also worked as an earthmoving contractor. 

Though his Dad ‘never really understood my interest in music … [he] certainly didn’t stand in my way’. Body’s parents must have been farsighted because in those days rural NZ was a masculine place where boys played rugby in the mud, swilled beer and prided themselves on their toughness. 

Despite this young Jack was taught the piano and sent to board at the prestigious King’s College in Auckland where his artistic talents were nurtured.

In his final year he garnered a group of friends for a performance of Haydn’s [or maybe Leopold Mozart’s] Toy Symphony. This work with its disputed authorship includes birdsong and a cornucopia of sounds from toy trumpets, whistles and other instruments. 

It was a sign of things to come; apart from his organisational skills and ability to attract support for projects he developed an ear for the natural and human-made noises of the world, particularly in Indonesia, and incorporated them in his compositions.

At Auckland University he graduated in music and then completed a master’s degree studying composition and teaching.

He went to Europe on a NZ grant to study at Cologne and Utrecht.  On his slow way home overland he diverted through Indonesia and his life’s direction was set.

‘The experience of living in Indonesia and of being in a different culture, having to learn the language, hearing the sounds around me, not only the musics but the environment … that gave me a very rich resource.

‘Indonesia was a total environment; it was the weather, the food, the friendships.  I would say also the sensuality.’

In the NZ capital of Wellington where Body eventually became a professor at the School of Music on the campus of Victoria University, there was a gamelan. 

It had been donated in 1973 through the President’s wife Tien Soeharto after formal relationships were established between the two nations.  Instead of gathering dust in a storeroom, where such government gifts are often abandoned, under Body’s leadership the gongs, drums and metallophones have become a key component of Wellington’s music, training hundreds of students and exciting many to study in Indonesia.

It remains one of the better-known ensembles in the city, regularly playing in locations as diverse at Parliament House, churches and concert halls. In a music environment dominated by European traditions, the gamelan offers a splendid alternative and a prelude to exploring the nation’s nearest Asian neighbor.

The NZ players will tour Java next year. Since 1996 Embassy employee and local resident Budi Putra has been the gamelan’s musical director bonding the orchestra with its roots.

The gamelan is not the only enduring legacy of Body’s involvement with Asia.  He also became enchanted by the music of Cambodia and China where he collaborated with the Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra,

When funds could not be found to bring composers and musicians from Indonesia and other Asian countries to NZ, Brady used his own funds, as he did with the Asia Pacific Festivals.

There are several Indonesian contributors to Jack! thankful that their horizons have been expanded through one man’s credo:  Music is the universal language that moves through political, geographical and ethnic obstacles as though these barriers don’t exist.

This book is a primer on how individuals can make a difference in cross-cultural relationships.

Jack! edited by Jennifer Shennan, Gillian Whitehead and Scilla Askew

Published by Steele Roberts, 2015    256 pages

(First published in The Jakarta Post 4 April 2016)

DEMOCRACY - GUIDED, ILLIBERAL AND STUMBLING

Diehard myths threaten Indonesian democracy     

             

You have to know the past to understand the present. Astronomer Carl Sagan

Official public monuments are the victors’ version of history.  The most conspicuous example in Indonesia is Pancasila Sakti [Sacred Pancasila] where the inscribed founding principles of 1945 are overshadowed by giant statues of seven officers slaughtered in an alleged communist coup 20 years later.

General Soeharto, who later became the Republic’s second president, linked the separate happenings to give his authoritarian Orde Baru (New Order) administration a top coat of imagined legitimacy. He composed the oxymoron ‘guided democracy’.

Although many ‘facts’ about the event have been debunked by US scholars, families still go to Pancasila Sakti in East Jakarta to gawp at sickening dioramas of the killings to shape their understanding of history.

Indonesia identity has many wellsprings.  The original has the theme of perjuangan [struggle] culminating in first president Soekarno’s proclamation of independence on 17 August 1945.

Unlike their neighbors on the Malay Peninsula, Indonesians didn’t wait for a benign European overseer to bestow freedom.  They seized it and hung on through a grim four-year guerrilla campaign to drive the Dutch from their prized colony.

This story has now become more accessible to Westerners this year with Australian journalist Dr Frank Palmos’ translation of Student Soldiers (published by Obor), the memoirs of street fighter Suhario Padmodiwiryo.

There are few kampongs in Indonesia without a concrete spearman or machine gunner guarding the entrance below the slogan Merdeka! [Freedom].  Repainted every August they remind the smartphoners: This is how the oldies built the land you now enjoy.

Earlier history offers more nuanced explanations of influences that have formed the world’s largest Muslim nation with a reputation for practising moderate Islam.

Long before the 16^th century Europeans arrived in the Spice Islands, Chinese and Indian traders brought their different faiths and worldviews. These helped create the mighty 15^th century Majapahit Kingdom, still seen by utopians as the Golden Age.

Their crumbling temples, sacred sites, masks, dances, music and ancient beliefs litter the landscape of Java as adat, the customs and traditions that maintain Indonesian values.

Some believe such symbols and tenets are indigenous, mystical, ready to reappear and unique to the archipelago. The critical question: Could the well-embedded folklore, coupled to Soeharto’s corrupted version of the past, threaten Indonesia’s teenage democracy, born 1998, still fumbling with change and frustrating its citizens?

Australian academic Dr David Bourchier thinks there’s a chance.  He’s been identifying the remnants of collapsed ideologies and deciding which remain viable, like archaeologists rebuild shrines from shattered stones and vandalised statuary.

He’s spent the last two decades assembling the pieces for Illiberal Democracy in Indonesia: The ideology of the Family State published by Routledge.

The cover features a cynical tableau by Solo artist Herri Soedjarwanto in the 19^th century British cornucopia style.  It shows a jolly Soeharto at the head of a food-laden table, surrounded by admirers.

The author calls it “an intellectual detective story”.  It’s certainly that, and better than the sanitized accounts of the nation’s gestation and birth pangs served to schoolkids since the 1965 coup.

The lust for freedom from Dutch colonialism peaked in the 1940s. The Indonesia we know today almost didn’t happen as blue-sky notions collided with international events. Fundamentalists came close to forcing a theocracy. The occupying Japanese could have run amuck as their empire collapsed.

Had the Marxists triumphed the People’s Republic of Insulindia would now be worrying the West. If sentimentalism had prevailed Indonesians would now be speaking Javanese and have a Thai-style dysfunctional government.

The bright youngsters who imagined a new world and are now lauded as nation-building heroes, would today be condemned as traitors.  In West Papua [‘taken over by Soeharto in 1969] they’d be imprisoned for seeking independence.

One of the few women among the founder-thinkers was lawyer Maria Ulfah Santoso who protested the absence of basic rights in the draft Constitution.  Her concerns were flicked aside by the macho men. 

Like her fellow activists during the 1920s Santoso had been educated in the Netherlands.  They dined on an eclectic menu - Marxism, Fabian socialism, notions of the nation state, church  interpretations of a secular society, free thinkers, European anti-colonialism; if there was an ‘ism’, it was there.

At the same time, though far away, the feudal Japanese were getting interested in the Dutch East Indies with an empire in mind.  They’d already shown muscle; in 1905 they thrashed the Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War.

Writes Bourchier: “Accounts by early Indonesian nationalists highlight this first victory by an Asian nation over a European power … as a tremendous inspiration…The Japanese changed the way Indonesians thought about themselves.”

So hardly surprising Indonesians welcomed the 1942 invasion and for a while cooperated till  discovering the new rulers’ real interests were resources for war. The brutality of the romusha forced labor system scarred families everywhere. The invaders might be fellow Asians but not allies; Indonesians would have to fight alone for freedom.

First Vice President Mohammad Hatta found the Japanese imperialism unpalatable.  Although feted as the ‘Gandhi of Java’ during a visit he was unmoved by flattery. Indonesians should give thanks; a lesser man might have imported the North Asian military ideology.

Ki Hajar Dewantara, a Javanese journalist and activist whose writings combined elements of Javanese, Indian and Theosophical thinking, was another spreading ideas of ‘Eastern Democracy’ and ‘feeling-of-family.’

Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew with his ‘Asian values’ popularized the same idea.

Cosy notions, easy to understand and exploit – one nation, one kin group.  The citizen children would be properly guided by wise and just rulers [Ratu Adil] demanding obedience. No need for checks and balances.

By contrast with the refined and respectful Javanese approach to authority, the  Western model of democracy puts power in the people’s hands; everyone an equal individual entitled to her or his opinion, sceptical of authority and demanding limits to state power .

The Decent Daddy principle is now legless. But before Soeharto was revealed as a kleptomaniac allegedly accumulating $9 billion, his definition of the State ruled for 32 years: A big happy family with bloodlines and beliefs stretching back into the misty rural hinterland where all was pure and perfect.

Some hanker for those good old fantasy days. T-shirts of Soeharto captioned ‘better in my time, ya?’ are on sale. While liberals see Indonesia’s democracy as a beacon to Asia and the Islamic world, others claim it’s a quarrelsome Western implant upsetting indigenous values of harmony.

Could Indonesians, fed up with corruption, inactivity and political bickering retreat to  ‘a more culturally authentic style of rule?’ Translation: Authoritarianism.

Bourchier warns that  for Indonesia to avoid repeating history “there needs to be a concerted effort to construct a national identity more in tune with the needs of a pluralistic, dynamic, democratic nation.

“A necessary first step is to look critically at romantic notions of the Volksgeist [spirit of the people] in both legal and political thinking.

“It is only with an understanding of how key concepts such as musyawarah [consensus after long discussion] gotong-royong [community self-help] kekeluargaan [shared kinship] and adat came to be part of Indonesian public discourse and how they have been deployed for anti-democratic ends that they will begin to lose their seductive power.”

Perjuangan – the struggle continues.

(First published in Strategic Review - see http://sr-indonesia.com/web-exclusives/view/diehard-myths-threaten-indonesian-democracy )

THE GREEN, GREEN WALLS OF HOME

The Great Walls of Green     

                                               

Long before the Internet developed listicles of trite clickbait [‘ten fun ways stars tie their bikinis’] serious students of classical history learned of the Seven Wonders of the World. 

They included the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.  These supposedly existed in the Eastern Mediterranean around 200 BC, but destroyed three centuries later.

Nothing remains; artists later let their imaginations loose, but the marvel remained a mystery.  How was it done?

Zip forward two millennia to when US architect and academic Stanley White patented his ‘vegetation-bearing architectonic structure and system.’ Fortunately a copy editor reduced it to ‘botanical bricks’.

These were described as ‘plant units capable of being built up to any height, for quick landscape effects, the vertical surfaces covered with flowering vines, or the like.’

That was in 1938, not a time for inventing anything which didn’t explode or fire projectiles, so the idea lay dormant.  Now its slumber is over, and green walls – also known as living walls - have become the new architectural statement for prestige buildings, or to cover mistakes.

Jakarta and Surabaya have a few, but in Asia Singapore is leader. Changi Airport has some spectacular examples and even normally austere government offices have been given a soft green edge.

In the East Java city of Malang authorities at the University of Brawijaya wanted to screen a roadside rubbish dump so turned to horticulture lecturer Medha Baskara. (left) He’d studied the work of French botanist and ecological engineer Patrick Blanc in Holland and France.

Blanc [which curiously translates as ‘white’] is credited with reviving and expanding White’s ideas.

“The green walls at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris are stunning and exciting,” said Baskara. “Blanc calls his creations ‘vertical gardens’ and there’s one at a resort in Bali.

“I spent a whole day just admiring the designs and decided to help introduce the idea to Indonesia.  By building a green wall on campus we could beautify the university, create projects for the students and promote the concept.”

The result is a 27 meter long curved metal frame three meters high and clad with a hanging carpet of glass wool, the insulation also used in motorcycle riders’ jackets.  Twenty different types of plants are pushed into slits in the material. 

 Selection is important – if one variety blooms early or late the effect can be spoiled.  Likewise with positioning; sun-shy plants will perish with no shade

An automatic pumping system runs for one minute every hour delivering water through a pipe on the frame top.  The water, which includes nutrients, drips down and irrigates the plants.

Unlike traditional botanical gardens where admirers have to keep back lest they trample flower beds, green walls let visitors get close.  For workers the extra advantage is standing or sitting to prune, not crawling on hands and knees among the mud and snails.

“In Europe green wall designs try to create a wild, irregular jungle feel,” Baskara said.  “However Indonesians prefer symmetry.  Maintenance can be low if tanks, timers and pumps are used, but the capital investment is higher – it cost the university Rp2.5 million [US$183] a square meter to build and equip this wall.”

Some systems use pots suspended on a wire frame.  Others adapt PVC gutters or drainage pipes with holes or slots for the plants. Plastic cool drink bottles hung horizontally can also be effective. There are other growing media coming on the market which are cheaper and easier to use.

The only limits are those imposed by a lack of creativity. The challenge is to make green walls accessible to all using low-cost or recycled materials, and not just for big business projects. [See breakout].

“Ideas like vertical gardens are giving horticulture and agriculture courses new status on campus,” said Baskara.  He was raised in a home where his teacher parents had a garden and encouraged his interest in nature.

 “In the past medicine and law, business and management were the key disciplines. Now students concerned about global warming and conservation are turning to botany and what they can do to protect the future.

“They are taking their learning and skills into the world and will hopefully apply them.”  One of his graduates, Dias Anggarsari, 23, who spent time up a ladder helping build the green wall is now employed with the local government maintaining Malang’s parks and filling them with plants.

The office she shares with her colleagues faces a green wall. “It’s a marvellous job,” she said, “This is what I wanted – to work with nature and do something that adds beauty.”

Not a tree - a vertical garden

A green Jakarta?

The Indonesian capital is planning to have 34.51 percent of the city green by 2030 through creating garden roofs and green walls.

Under Jakarta’s Spatial Planning bylaw the city should provide incentives for residents to create green open spaces.

Jakarta Development Planning Agency head Sarwo Handayani reportedly said he was confident the target could be reached, but land would have to be bought.

Jakarta’s environmental plans have been reduced several times since the 1970s. Grey office towers, shopping centers, glass-walled apartments and hotels have gobbled anything green.

The result is that families tend to use the air-conditioned malls for recreation, while overseas the places to exercise, relax and meet friends are the parks.

In the 1970s more than 37 per cent of Jakarta was said to be public open space.  Now it’s down to less than 20 per cent.

How green was my kampong?

The residents of Sukun New Camp 3 [that’s the name, not a translation] call it their ‘main road’ with some sense of irony.  It’s 1.9 meters wide so can be negotiated by kaki lima [mobile food carts] while the by-lanes are just 1.2 meters across.

The kampong is sandwiched between Malang’s Sukun Cemetery and a cluttered highway linking the East Java city with Blitar.

That tends to reduce the planning options, particularly when the 350 households have green ideals but no spare space and little money.  So the only way is up, using recycled bottles and cans for the plants.

These soaring ambitions have resulted in transforming what could have been a decrepit slum into a showplace of blooming creativity which has won scores of local and international awards.

Community leader Zainul Arifin said the process began in 2009 when residents sought ways to make their kampong healthier.

“We started growing a huge variety of plants, including medicinal herbs, but there was so little room,” he said.  “So we turned to rooftops and walls.

“Now New Camp 3 attracts international visitors, including from the World Bank, and Indonesian politicians.  This has been a community effort – apart from planting we’ve made and installed 70 compost bins for household scraps.”

The abundant greenery also softens traffic noise.  The plants convert carbon di-oxide, of which there’s an excess from traffic, into oxygen.  They make the urban feel rural. No masks required.

     

(First published in The Jakarta Post 15 March 2016)

##

SEEKING A BOGAN-FREE ZONE

Avoiding the ugly Okkers                                                     

All nations get labelled.  However complex their culture, sophisticated their citizens or rich their history all get boiled down to a one-liner.

Most are negative - the sexy, arrogant French, the aloof class-conscious English, and the quaint, simple Irish – even though they’ve produced some of the world’s greatest writers.

Leaders accept the tags if positive – the Germans are proud of their reputation for being hard-working and disciplined; likewise with the Japanese, famous for their politeness and efficiency. Indonesians get a bit of both, smiling but superstitious.

But the negative images? Outrageous falsehoods! 

The latest to plead unfair and say the world has got it wrong is the Australian Ambassador to Indonesia.

Paul Grigson reckons his country’s reputation for sending uncouth boors and bogans [alayan or anak lebay is probably the nearest local equivalent] to Bali is undeserved.  The career diplomat, apparently a fan of Indonesian coffee which proves he has taste, underlined his claim this way:

From a million plus visitors “the number of cases dealt with by the consulate in Bali last year was in the low hundreds.”

As the interview with the Philippines-based social news network Rappler was about crass conduct rather than trade and investments or lost passports, there’s a perceived problem – and as politicians say at election time - perception is reality.

Stereotypes are simplistic and clichés grow trite but most started life as facts.

Presumably the vague “low hundreds” Grigson highlights were the extreme cases where the police became involved, and through them the Australian authorities.

Only people in serious strife would go to the consulate which doesn’t have a reputation for accommodating idiot drunks (as opposed to those who’ve suffered misfortune or accidents) so these figures are a poor indicator.

Undercover research isn’t necessary to show the extent of the concern.  Jalan Legian and surrounds is much like any Australian city’s night club district, though with a higher level of tolerance for push and shove, swearing, shouting and vomiting.

In Australia disorderly conduct, generally known as offensive behavior, is subject to on-the-spot fines.

However in Kuta uniformed police are rarely seen and bouncers seem loathe to intervene.  The visitors’ loud mouth conduct may be ugly, but their wallets need emptying before management gets heavy. Locals watch the circus with contempt.

A subjective survey by travel app Triposo ranked Australians fifth in a list of notoriously bad tourists.  Americans, Brits, Russians and Chinese were ahead, with the government back in the People’s Republic now threatening travel bans on those who bring shame on their nation.

Grigson said the reputation of Australians in Indonesia “shouldn’t be tarnished because of a few misbehavers.”

Absolutely, just as all Indonesians should not be judged by the evil actions of a fundamentalist few with crazy agendas.  But as the bombers and corruptors make the news rather than the gracious majority, so the Bali brats are giving tourists from next door a nasty name in the archipelago.

So what to do?

Indonesia could prosper from the sort of tourists who go to New Zealand for the scenery, culture and adventure, earning that tiny country more than US$54 million every day.  Twelve per cent of the workforce is involved. That’s a serious slice of the economy.

Grigson praised the Indonesian government’s policy change allowing Australians visa-free entry and urged visitors to wander wider; if they harken his words there’s a chance the image might get slowly repaired and the Republic succeed in reaching its goal of attracting more than ten million foreigners.

“I think for far too long we’ve understated the importance of Australian tourism to Indonesia,” he reportedly said, claiming his countryfolk spend more time and money here than other visitors.

“There’s a myth Australians come to Bali, they stay five nights and six days, stay cheap and then go home.

“But actually, they stay longer than any other tourists … they come for a long time, spend more than anyone else, and most importantly they come back. Australians are interested tourists.”

Those who follow His Excellency’s excellent advice and venture across the Bali Strait won’t be seeking pool parties and wet T-shirt competitions; they don’t exist.  The big hotels cater for sober-suited businesspeople, not slobs in skivvies.

The mountainside resorts market tranquillity amid plantations, not happy hours.  Beer is only available in the bigger cities. The spirits to be found will be in mysterious temple compounds predating the arrival of Islam, not in supermarkets.

Australians working their way through Java’s magic mountains will be more mature, modestly dressed, quieter spoken, better educated and in search of beauty, culture and rural Indonesia. They’ll admire, show respect and put questions about history, art, lifestyle and cuisine.  They’ll try the language and probably bring their kids.

Inevitably the locals will ask these weird wayfarers dari mana? Trekkers should carry compasses, as geography is not always a strong point with rural folk who sometimes locate Australia in Europe or North America. A huge map on a Malang school wall has Indonesia bigger than China.

Indonesians discovering that their nearest Western neighbors can be decent people with a genuine interests should help offset the negative views generated by the slobs.

At this stage it’s too ambitious to expect a massive reappraisal of the Ugly Okker, but one step at a time – away from Bali.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 14 March 2016)

##

TOLERANCE NOT EXCLUSION

BTW: It’s about respect, not recruitment

Last weekend we missed a wedding.  Only distance and other commitments prevented our attendance – we were in Jakarta, they were in Wellington.

We hear it was a happy and loving event celebrated at St Andrews’s on The Terrace.  This is a fine old Presbyterian church in the New Zealand capital, a city whose physical and spiritual foundations were largely set by Scottish immigrants who arrived around 1840, stout people of faith with a vision of equality.

The wedding was conducted before friends, relatives and well-wishers, and then followed by a party. There were all the usual trappings, flowers, cakes, drinks.

The happy couple aren’t just active fellow parishioners – they are also our hillside neighbors where most residents are professional couples or retired.

The newly betrothed live just down the road in a modest house where they tend the garden and take their small dog for regular walks.  They’re friendly low-profile business folk. When we’re in Indonesia they keep an eye on our house.

So what?  Marriages happen most weekends and suburban life is hardly worth Page One of a national newspaper.  Except in Indonesia; that’s because the couple is gay.

Their union was legal – NZ passed same-sex marriage laws in 2013 by 77 to 44 votes in a Parliament dominated by centre-right conservatives. 

NZ wasn’t number one in the world to legalise LGBT weddings – that was the Netherlands - but it was the first in the Asia-Pacific region. It’s still the only one.

Louisa Wall, the politician responsible for introducing the proposal told her political colleagues: “Excluding a group in society from marriage is oppressive and unacceptable.

"This is not about church teachings or philosophy; it never was. The principles of justice and equality aren't served if the key institution of marriage is reserved for heterosexuals only."

Before the debate politicians had been subjected to intense pressure from the Catholic Church, self-appointed groups claiming to represent ‘the family’ and the so-called Christian lobby, mainly Protestant evangelicals.  Muslims, who form less than one per cent of the population, also joined the moral police.

‘Prayer Rallies’ were held outside the legislature and threats made to start a new political party.  That didn’t eventuate.

Some Christian protestors seemed to have forgotten a couple of precepts attributed to Jesus – ‘judge not that ye be not judged’ and the absolutely unqualified ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’. 

As in the Republic today there were forecasts of Old Testament hell and damnation if LGBTs got their way.  It’s true - there have been earthquakes. NZ, like the Archipelago, is on the unstable Ring of Fire, but the earth was trembling when Aotearoa, as it’s known to Maori, was still an empty land.

Predictions that traditional marriage would drown under a tsunami of godless LGBTs seeking holy matrimony have also proved groundless.  In the first year after the law was passed 520 female couples and 406 male couples tied the knot.

More than a quarter came from Australia where fundamentalists still get frothy-mouthed at the idea and politicians tremble.

In 2014 more than 20,000 male-female marriages were registered.  So the ratio is around five per cent, though the number of LGBT unions has since dropped.

The former minister at St Andrew’s, now with preaching in Sydney, is a prominent theologian and champion of human rights including marriage equality,

She is also a lesbian.  Perhaps her appointment in 2001 turned some away from the church.  But their places in the pews were quietly taken by LGBT folk rejected by other churches.  Their presence has enriched the congregation and broadened its outlook, but it hasn’t made anyone change their natural preferences.

At no time have we heard:  'Hey you, let's be lesbian and gay.’ the fear voiced by Vice President Jusuf Kalla.  No-one has promoted LGBT lifestyles or sought to recruit. Recognition of difference is about respect, not recruitment.

St Andrew’s is Progressive Christian, a philosophy foreign to Indonesia. Other faiths have addressed parishioners.  Indonesian Muslims have played the gamelan before the altar.

  But we’re careful telling this tale in Indonesia lest we cause offence.  That’s already happened and we’ve lost friends.  Not Indonesians, but ‘Christian’ visitors from NZ. Duncan Graham 

First published in The Jakarta Post 6 March 2016                  

.  

KRUPUK - THE TRIUMPH OVER CHIPS

A bite-size problem   

                                    

Eddy Suparman (pictured, left) agreed – it was a tricky issue so he’s not inclined to make radical changes anytime soon.

However the 62-year old founder of Super Jaya, Malang’s biggest krupuk manufacturer will soon hand over to his son Erik (right).  The scion studied mechanical engineering at Brawijaya University and has a few ideas of his own.

“It’s an ethical problem,” said the old man who started the company in 1976.  “If we install more machinery there’ll be fewer jobs for the locals.  They are our neighbors. They’ll suffer and so will the kampong.

“We bought three machines for Rp 45 million (US$ 3,400) each eight years ago; that removed 24 jobs.  We didn’t sack them, they replaced others who left or retired.”

Seeing the way the company makes krupuk is to jump back in time – not pre-industrial revolution, but gear-meshingly close.

Krupuk are Indonesia’s triumph over the West’s potato crisps. The delicious light crackers are roadside food stall favorites, occasionally found in upmarket eateries claiming to serve authentic village fare. 

They’re ready on stained benches among the coffee grounds in old 20-liter fuel drums with a window cut in one side and the brand name stencilled on the front.  Soon these will be collectors’ items - airtight plastic containers are becoming popular for hygiene fusspots.

Street-food customers help themselves and pay about Rp 100 (less than one US cent) a piece.  The previous consumer’s fingernail droppings are extra.  This ritual is so ingrained it needs a Neil Diamond number – say, Crunchy Krupuk Suite?

The traditional eatery culture is now being replaced by labelled bags at five times the cost.  Apart from being cleaner the packaging adds to the rubbish mountain.

Most krupuk are round, the size of a saucer.  Others are oblong.  They are made from tapioca flour – which is said to be a good source of dietary fiber - salt and a few other flavors, including onion and prawn. 

As a bonus the buyer also gets a tobacco taste; most men processing, packaging and selling can’t function without a fag.

Manufacturing isn’t complex, but it’s labor intensive.  The 100 workers spend much of their time doing jobs that machines would love to do.

Super Jaya turns out 750 kilos of krupuk every day – and these are short days because it’s the rainy season and the product is sun dried.

“We’ve tried using ovens but it hasn’t been a success,” said Erik. “That’s a pity because we could then work around the clock and not be slaves to the sun.

“However the taste has to be right.”  Indeed; this snack market may be vast, but that doesn’t mean it’s not discerning.

Once a bad word spreads – and Australian wildfires don’t move faster than Indonesian defamatory food appraisals – traders should consider transmigration.

Flour from West Java is mixed into dough with warm water, squeezed through a press to make spaghetti-like strings, pummelled then processed again till the texture feels right.

Another machine stamps out little swirls onto bamboo-frame racks lined with shadecloth.  After being steamed for 20 minutes in a sealed room they are spread outside on a concrete floored yard.

At tables nearby women do the same job using cookie cutters.  In the background the apparatus that will eventually replace them bang away relentlessly, never tiring.

The workers start at 6 to catch the dawn  and leave for home at 12.30 when the dark clouds roll over the mountains and tumble down to the East Java city. 

The working environment is smoke, steam and, hot oil – but the outlook is grand – an ocean of terracotta roofs with the sacred Mount Kawi in the background.

These guys have no meteorological training but their rain-spotting skills could be used by radio stations.  There should be competitions at the 17 August Proclamation Day fun fairs for the fastest dash for cover without dropping a single snack.

When the baby pressings, about the size of a Rp 500 coin, are ready they’re dunked in boiling palm oil for a few seconds.  In that brief moment they puff up like an affronted politician and turn into an adult krupuk.

Laden into big plastic bags inside bamboo baskets astride bicycles – though the progressives use motorbikes - they head to markets.  When the Dutch strolled the streets the scene would have been much the same.

Though for not much longer.  “If you come back in five years there’ll be more mechanisation,” said Eric, though not in earshot of his father who was prowling the factory checking every detail.

 “Dad starts work at 5 am – he always wants to be here ahead of the workers.  He’s here when they leave.  He started the business from nothing and knows every process; nothing escapes his eye.

“We used to export to Malaysia but krupuk needs to be kept in an air-tight jar or bag, otherwise they go soggy after a few days.

“We don’t use our brand name on the product which is still sold in bulk.  Many changes could be made.”

This looks like an industry to excite the foreign entrepreneurs President Joko Widodo is trying to woo.  They’d install new equipment,  a computerised production line and lifting  by robots.

Erik says business is doing well; the nearby grand family villa is proof:  “I’m optimistic – demand is growing and we can only just keep up.”

Then workers like Ibu Sulik who has been with the company for 31 years and has family on staff, would have fewer repetitive strain injuries from punching out patterns.  But unless they can be retrained to punch computer keyboards and trace motherboard malfunctions they’ll also be jobless.

Then the government will have its modernising investors – and  a rising unemployment problem.

First published in The Jakarta Post 26 February 2016

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH

Polishing the Plin-Plan President      

Jolly Jokowi - man of the people - as seen before his election

                                                  

The always dapper Indonesian President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo is a splendid advocate for batik.  Most days he wears a new design; whatever the colour or pattern the traditional shirts dazzle on his slim athletic frame. 

His plump PDIP (Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) boss and former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, who famously dismissed him as ‘a party official’, once remarked that he couldn’t be a politician because he wasn’t sufficiently portly.  She might have added ‘Machiavellian’.

If Jokowi wasn’t running the world’s third largest democracy he could grace a catwalk for models are supposed to be seen, not heard.

Unfortunately being the seventh president of the Republic requires him to give speeches. These neither arouse not inspire - they anesthetise. The pause, so important in oratory and mastered by Megawati’s father first president Soekarno, becomes an embarrassment with the reserved Javanese:  Has he lost his way, his notes or both?

It’s not the only disenchantment with the man who seized the top job in the 2014 direct election by a narrow margin.  He won not so much for what he was, but what he wasn’t – a member of the corrupt oligarchy that’s run the nation of 250 million for so long and so badly.

Unreal expectations were also projected onto the former Governor of Jakarta, considered a friend of the wong cilik (ordinary folk) by taking walkabouts (blusukan) to hear the word on the street.

The illogical leap followed that he’d be a Lee Kuan Yew scourge of corruptors and a compassionate Nelson Mandela on human rights and social issues. A reformer, though not a liberal; the term carries negative baggage, particularly with Muslims.

The man Indonesia wanted - but hasn't got

These hopes have been shredded with Jokowi’s failure to wield a big stick against the rent-seekers and his flawed reasoning for executing drug traffickers.

Economically he’s plin-plan - one minute a protectionist, the next a free trader; anti West, then welcoming foreign investors.

His politically savvy supporters aware of the disappointments have been involved in makeovers partly led by Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.  Unfortunately they’ve compounded the problem

Retno is the first woman to hold the position and a surprise pick.  Jakarta scuttlebutt claims her credentials include a close relationship with Megawati.

The former Ambassador to the Netherlands doesn’t have the intellectual firepower of her predecessor Dr Marty Natalegawa. This is obvious from attempts to bolster Jokowi’s credentials as an international statesman when all evidence indicates his policy priorities and personal interests are domestic.

To counter this image Retno took letters urging peace from Jokowi to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz. 

No request had been made for Indonesia to broker a deal.  Unsurprisingly nothing came from the trip – Indonesia, like Saudi Arabia, is a Sunni Muslim nation that trashes Shia – the majority faith in Iran.

On her return Retno, who presumably hatched the idea, made much of the 20,000 kilometres travelled on her ‘diplomacy marathon’ but nothing on the results:

“We in the Islamic world … need to ensure that the region where most of the Muslim population resides, the Middle East, is peaceful, stable and prosperous, and continue to voice Islam as rakhmatan lil alamin (a blessing to the universe).”

The next stage in the attempted transformation  came during this month’s (Feb) trip to the US-ASEAN Summit where it seems the President said little and achieved less.

‘Jokowi conveys words of wisdom’ said one headline over a story about a courtesy call to Choummaly Sayasone of Laos on becoming chair of ASEAN: ”I am sure the chairmanship will lead ASEAN to be better and more successful.”

If Jokowi thinks the octogenarian  former general who  has been running the People’s Revolutionary Party in his Marxist-Leninist  state  for the past decade can put pep and purpose into the 39-year old ASEAN then the Indonesian is letting diplomatic niceties eclipse reality.

While Jokowi was heading to California, Indonesia’s  TV One (a station owned by a conglomerate headed by Aburizal Bakrie, a strong opponent of Jokowi during the 2014 election) telecast an  ‘exclusive’ interview with the President.

This turned out to be a brief love-in with lawyer and media executive Karni Ilyas heavily buttressed with thumpty-thump music and fast-edited  clips of the President looking decisive.

Jokowi claimed problems of infrastructure were holding back the nation, but failed to explain  how the roads will be rapidly  broadened and lengthened before gridlock cripples the economy.  The mounting frenzy against LGBT groups and ‘deviant’, sects of Islam didn’t get a look in.

Jokowi comes across as a nice one-on-one guy, not the tangiest spice on the menu but the sort householders might elect as their RT (Rukun Tetangga) neighbourhood chief. He’d sort out stray cat and rubbish problems without snarling or taking sides; there’d be no suggestions he’d trouser their donations for paving the footpath.  Nor would he initiate anything.

The wong cilik still seem to like him as his former opponents are in more disarray than the US Republicans.  However it would be naïve to think no plots exist in a country where conspiracies go with the rice.

The real power is muttered to be the tough-talking US-trained  former four-star General Luhut Binsar Panjaitan, Chief of Staff of the President’s Executive Office, whose credentials include a past business partnership with Jokowi. 

Despite his military background Luhut dresses plainly.  In batik he looks scruffy – so little chance of promotion – particular as he’s reported to be much disliked by Megawati.

So for the meantime Jokowi looks svelte and safe – provided he stays home and stops trying to be someone else.

(First published in New Mandala 23 February 2016.  See: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2016/02/23/polishing-the-plin-plan-president/

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