Somewhere in Indonesia

Somewhere in Indonesia

Even though all this happened years ago, what I saw there has not changed to this day.

I have only sailed around a few Indonesian islands once in my life; friends invited us for a week. There were twenty of us, including the ship’s crew, and every day we went to a different island. The ship would dock, and, like real clueless tourists, we would listen to the local “guide’s” speech, walk around part of the island, then return to the ship, and the next morning we would arrive at the next island.

Indonesia boasts Asia’s largest population practicing Islam. Ninety-five percent of the population practices the religion. This week spent with our friends helped me understand everything I had only known very superficially until then.

I hate elegant hotels. However, we had no choice, as we wanted to be with our friends before setting off on the ship. In the hotel, there were smiles, deep bows; at first, it seemed nice to me until I realized that this was the same ritual as in Japan, where bowing replaces a handshake. Cocktail glasses bobbing on the surface of the hotel pool, dinner under the starlit sky, the staff bustling around. It all made me very uncomfortable. In the morning, stepping out of the hotel, there was a five-foot-high mountain of garbage, little children in the trash heap, stray dogs, and a few kids clinging to my husband’s T-shirt, repeating three words in Japanese. (At that time, Japan was the “America of Asia” in Indonesia.)

In the coffee houses, lizards swarmed the walls—the service, of course, was impeccable, and the kids got a few coins, so they let us drink our coffee.

The next day, we boarded the ship—a beautiful frigate, with friendly sailors and cooks—and the next day we docked at the first island. The local guide took us up to the “village,” which consisted of a few huts made of mud, the windows (two) were just bigger holes, and some rag fluttered in place of the door. In the “house,” a few scraps of cloth—the beds—and on the wall, a huge calendar illustrated with a photo of Osama Bin Laden.

There was no water or electricity. A girl, about ten years old, sat in the dirt in a wooden frame, which was locked with a padlock. The girl was weaving batik. How long does it take to finish, I asked the guide. A week. And where do they sell it, I asked, though I already knew at least part of the answer. Oh, a trader comes from another island and buys them all; they pay one dollar for a piece one meter long and forty centimeters wide. That money comes in handy, adds the girl’s mother. And then I remember a friend in Tokyo who sells a batik textile of this size in his Asian shop for the equivalent of 200 dollars in yen.

Of course, I didn’t say this to the mother or the guide. I looked at the girl, and then her younger brother appeared, then another older boy, her brother. The father also appeared and explained that not a drop of rain had fallen that year, so there was no rice in their fields. There was famine. But every Sunday, I send my two sons to the mosque, he said; there they get clean clothes, they are bathed, they get food, and they bring home drinkable water, so they are in the best place on Sundays.

The father invited us into the hut and proudly showed us the calendar. Every family had received one as a gift from the imam.

We still had six days left of our trip; we saw islanders living a little better than this, too. Then back to the hotel; my husband went to Jakarta with our friends, and I returned to Tokyo.

Two days later, I heard the news: the hotel’s beach bar had been blown up, 183 people lost their lives.

I remembered the calendar that the islanders had received as a gift.

Ferber Katalin
Berlin