Geworfenheit

Thrown back to the Irrelevance

2011-03-14T23:42:00.004+07:00

My oh my, how long has it been? Well, who wants a blog in this busy, fast-moving, world when you have facebook and twitter?;=) You don't have to really think about what you are writing, do you? You don't need a long, well written articles to read, don't you? Always new. Short. Quick. How convenience!

So I don't know. I am back. In Dilbert's world, only 2 things are relevant now: China and Facebook (Isn't Dilbert sarcastically adorable?). So, by coming back, I am basically trying this old, irrelevant means. We'll see.

Neoliberalism

2009-05-31T20:28:00.006+07:00

Ah, finally. I have been waiting for this moment. It is about time that the jargon is discussed publicly. The jargon was made famous in Indonesia by the president candidates who were rushing to attack their opponents. It becomes the buzzword of the year. Neoliberalism.

I have heard it for quite some time without having a clear idea about what exactly it means. Those politicians and the so-called economic experts (pengamat?) only add more to my confusion. It seems like they throw everything that they dislike into this jargon. Perhaps a conference should be held to define neoliberalism ;-). It is absurd to attack something that is so vague, isn't it?

I always think that it is about state intervention vs market mechanism. But as everyone knows, laissez faire is a just ghost. It is not real. There is no such thing as pure capitalism where state intervention is absent.

But then, there is this argument that neoliberalism is not about economic policy. It's about philosophy. It's about the way people see reality i.e. everything is at the mercy of market mechanism. With or without state intervention, neoliberalism can still prevail. But where does this view lead us to? What could we do about it? How would that translate into policy?

So, it all boils down to policy. I am afraid there is not much the would-be-elected president could do in the current economic situation despite the debate during the campaign. Reality bites. Still, it is quite an interesting and relevant discussion particularly when countries worldwide are seriously considering and evaluating their macroeconomic policy and when capitalism is being revisited.

Beware of "Relativism"

2008-12-30T23:20:00.014+07:00

I spent the first day of 2009 in Tokyo. I come to Tokyo for the second time to visit my friends, Dede and Jim. From Tokyo, Papua seems like an island in a different planet. So affluent, so clean, so efficient and so expensive. What a city! The soaring yen makes everything in Tokyo becomes much more expensive than it has already been.

Pricing everything in Rupiah makes things seem even more expensive (USD/Yen=89, USD/IDR=11.000). Housing and transportation are certainly not cheap. Taxi costs a fortune. The flag rate (when you start) is Yen 710 ($8 or Rp90.000). In Jakarta, taxi starts with Rp 5.500. Lunch in ordinary restaurants costs about 800-1000 Yen ($9-10 or Rp112.500-Rp125.000) per person. Japanese traditional stuffs are particularly expensive. I saw an origami product (Japanese paper-folding art)that cost Yen 12.000. A geisha hand-made comb costs about Yen 13.000.　And there is this small box of food (about 30cmx30cm) i.e. Osechi Ryoori especially made for new year that I find excessively expensive. It costs Yen 10.500 ($120 or Rp 1.320.000).

Actually they have another type i.e. Chez Matsuo Osechi that costs Yen 126.000 (Rp 15.750.000)! So much for food! Japanese are nuts, aren't they?

So shopping in Tokyo is totally a not great idea (I like Hongkong better). But somehow, I don't know what's gotten into me that I managed to buy 6 bags! Am I becoming one of those women who shamelessly spend so much money on things like bags? Hm, but I didn't think they were that expensive (ergh ... except 1 or 2). Oh, wait a minute ... what is expensive, what is not?

I think "relativism" is at play here. It's amazing to see how it works. The first time you see the tag price, you'll scream outloud. Man, it's so expensive! In a few days you'll get a sense on the price in general when you see the price of groceries and other daily stuffs which obviously is at a different level. Before you know it, you already get yourself adjusted to the local price level. So, having had complained and dreaded on how expensive things were, I gradually shifted my "affordability" threshold. In a few days, things didn't seem that expensive anymore as they seemed in my first day in Tokyo. I ended up spending more than I had planned to.

And I brought home with me that new price level. Everything seemed so cheap in Jakarta. I began to compare the price in Jakarta and Tokyo. I felt this euphoria of living in Jakarta. But as a result I found myself spending more than I normally did. I think it has got to stop or else I will get broke. I need to adjust myself back to my old price level. Still struggling ;-(. What a dangerous thing this "relativism"!

Shop Till You Drop

2008-12-23T07:59:00.004+07:00

Last Sunday I went to Grand Indonesia for the first time. Gosh, it's huge and so full of people! And they do buy stuffs! It's business as usual. The economy crisis doesn't seem to belong here. No impact of job cuts. No weakening demand. No spending tightening. So I am wondering if things are not that bad at all here? Or are these people still in denial?

According to AC Nielsen survey (Kompas, 23/12/08, pg 26) 97% Indonesians love to go to malls. Is it because they do love shopping (or being in the shopping mall ;-)) or because they don't have or see any other choice yet? Should we build city parks or nice and big library in Jakarta as alternatives to those malls? But to do that, we may need to do some DNA redesigning ;-).

How many more shopping malls do Jakarta actually need? Don't we have enough already? Over the past few years, Jakarta have several new big malls: Senayan City, FX, Pacific Place, Grand Indonesia not to mention some new second class malls or trading centres like in Tanah Abang or the one in Kebon Kacang.

They all sell similar stuffs. Most of branded goods are sold at those big malls. You can find Zara in Plaza Senayan, Plaza Indonesia, Grand Indonesia (or maybe other malls) which are all located within 10 minutes drive. Well yeah there are slight differences. Pacific Place seems to focus on high end stuffs only whereas Grand Indonesia provide more varieties. FX, having failed in the beginning, strives to be a food/entertaining place.

Let's see what will happen to those malls next year. Will they survive the crisis and the competition?

Dr Do Little

2008-12-22T20:56:00.005+07:00

It took him only a minute or two to finish the "examination". He couldn't wait to leave the clinic of the hospital. He didn't touch my painful arm. He hardly talked to or looked at me. He actually scolded the nurse for having called another patient. Apparently I was supposed to be his last patient. It's only a little after 10am. The board shows that his schedule is 8am-11am!

I was so stunned that I didn't know what to say. It happened so fast. Too fast to be true. I didn't even have time to be angry. Did I just see a doctor? Was he a real doctor?

I so regret it to have come to that hospital. The only reason I went there was because it's 10 minutes walk from my apartment. My left arm was so painful that day that I had to keep it still. I'd rather walk slowly than take a cab to go to other hospital/clinic.

It is not a first class hospital but it is not a free one either. The hospital belongs to the Navy. I later heard from other doctor that it could be the so-called frozen shoulder. I am so grateful that it was "just" frozen shoulder. What if I get a very serious illness? Could I trust that kind of doctor who couldn't wait to escape his patients? No wonder there are so many Indonesians go to Singapore and Malaysia to seek better medical services. But, what about those who couldn't afford to go there? Pray a lot, I guess.

I think doctors have no rights to be uncaring. We, the patients, are the ones who pay them. It is our bodies that are at stake. We are the ones who will suffer from their wrong diagnosis. We trust them with our bodies and pay them a lot for that. So, what gives them the right to be careless and unsympathetic?

Fortunately, I later found out that there still exist some good doctors out there. A few days later, I went to see a neurologist in Carolus. He talks. He examines. He asks. He cares. He is a doctor.

Where is the Bottom?

2008-11-21T08:28:00.002+07:00

The global recession finally arrives. It’s a new reality. Stock indices have been plunging. Oil prices, commodity prices, currency (except USD) follow suit. Get used to the new price level, folks! They may have seemed to be cheap 3 months ago but hey they may look pretty expensive tomorrow. As if it is not enough, some say the worst is yet to come. The bottom is yet to be found.

How bad can it be? Where is the bottom? It’s definitely a trillion dollar question. Unfortunately, no one knows the answer.

But the bottom is there, isn’t it? Eventually it will be discovered. The stock price will finally stop falling. People will stop selling. However, I know that this knowledge of certainty is hardly a consolation for anyone particularly those whose investment has been slashed by 50-70%. It is just like saying that everyone will die while what everyone really concerns (if they should) is when and how it will happen.

But, again no one knows the answer. It would remain a mystery. So let’s be content with one thing i.e. someday the bottom will disclose itself.

A friend asked if this current financial meltdown has got something to do with the Gaia Project 2012. I guess he is running out of plausible explanation about what’s happening with the global economy. Hm … maybe we should start looking for some alternative explanations ;-).

The Unprecedented Victory

2008-11-05T19:46:00.005+07:00

I am blown away! Americans finally make the right decision. We should give them credit for this historic event. To make Obama as their president, they should earn great respect from people around the world who had disliked Americans over the past 8 years. After all, we all can learn and change.

Think about this: who would've thought that a black guy can be the president of the US when he, as a black guy, was not even allowed to vote some 40 years ago! Moreover, just around 140 years ago, the blacks in the US were slaves. What an overwhelming achievement!

I am just wondering if the same thing can actually happen in Indonesia. Will Indonesians be willing to look beyond the labels (be it race, ethnicity, sex or even religion)in the coming election? Will Indonesians choose capability over ethnicity or religion?

I want to believe that. But it's so hard. Some of them are thinking only for their own interests. Look at that stupid porn law among other things.

Oh, how fragile hope is. But Obama has shown us otherwise. I should dare to dream that Indonesians someday will take a great leap as Americans did today.

Thanks to you, Barack Obama! Thanks to your audacious hope.

Unprecedented Stuffs

2008-10-31T20:56:00.002+07:00

I came back to Jakarta and got myself entertained with the “unprecedented” market crash. We had market crashes before but they were not quite like this one. Yeah, I don’t know how many times I heard this word “unprecedented” (in the media) because there are indeed lots of unprecedented stuffs: unprecedented volatility, unprecedented concerted global movement by bank centrals, unprecedented government bail out, unprecedented losses, etc.

So, the bubble has burst out. Even worse, it burst unprecedentedly ;-)).

I had got myself off the hook. I had kept my portfolio cleared from stocks. Still, the magnitude of the crash surprised me. I try hard to put my excitement out of sight whenever I am meeting with friends who lost 50-70% of their stock values. By no means I’m happy for their losses. It’s just that I’d been waiting for this to happen to do the bottom fish. Some friends got quite bored when we were talking about stocks because I had repeated the same phrase to them: “I had been sitting on cash.” It’s hard not to gloat about this ;-).

Like other disasters, this market crash should or have had taught us something. Capitalism (or is it the American capitalism?) is being questioned. The market players who in the normal situation hate the government interventions have no choice but to turn to governments for help. Believe me, it has hurt their pride.

The business practices must change. Leveraging has gone too far. Giving bonuses based on the short-term performance will only lead to higher risk exposure.

Anyway, I just don’t get it. Why on earth do people think that the stock price will keep on going up? Unsubstantiated optimism. But nobody is willing to consider the risk when the money is good. This attitude has cost them a fortune. An unprecedented huge amount of loss!

The Truth Bites

2008-09-11T18:09:00.005+07:00

How much would you be willing to tell the truth if it could harm other people's lives?

As a result of the auditing that I conducted for health centres owned by the Diocese of Manokwari-Sorong, some employees lost benefits that they used to enjoy. These benefits are not complied with the Diocese's policies. But, we are not talking about big amount here. And these people do not have much. And I know some of them very well.

So I feel quite guilty.

And, my friend Dede just told me that after reading my blog regarding the infrastructure and work ethics, some of his friends cancel their plan to do business in Papua.

Oh, please don't!

Vote for Me - 2

2008-08-27T14:01:00.005+07:00

Okay, let’s continue with our plan.

Fourthly, I would create business friendly environment for small-medium enterprises that many Papuan will stop dreaming of becoming the civil servants. Gosh, these people are so keen on being civil servants. You can tell it from the way they mention their occupations or some relatives’ occupations. It was as if they worked for good, efficient, professional companies that offer big bonuses. Doesn’t it remind you of the very old days back to the days of Dutch colonization when civil servants were considered a different class of society?

But creating entrepreneurship is an enormous task. And it of course will take a long time to make it into a realization when you consider the stage of development most Papuans are at the moment. They are the gatherer. They are not even entering the agricultural phase yet. They hunt for the boars. They catch fish from the sea. They collect sagu from the woods. They don’t plant. They don’t grow. They don’t know how to look after cows. They laugh at the Javanese (transmigran) who carries grass for their cattle. They find it funny to see man feed the animals. Aren’t the animals supposed to look for their own food?

So there occur some problems when they are thrown to the current stage of civilization not so long ago. Instead of taking a natural phase of development, they are thrust into it. Some adjust quite easily, some are not. The latter are then left behind. They are having a hard time to make ends meet. Naturally, it is easy to blame others i.e. the non Papuans. The Papuans tend to get quite sensitive regarding this issue of Papuans vs non Papuans.

So, how does my plan sound? Expensive? Populist?

Hm …. This is not all though. Oh gosh, I actually still have lots of things in my mind. They should learn to throw rubbish in the place where it is supposed to be i.e. the rubbish bin, not on the street or in the front yard or in the office building or wherever they like it. I want the young women to start loving their bodies, respecting their selves, and have safe sex when they are ready. Many young women here got pregnant at a very young age (some are studying at the elementary school or junior high). Their mothers take care of their children because they are too young to raise their own children. Papua ranks first on HIV/AIDS infection rates in Indonesia .

And, yeah, if I got elected, I would only go for the first term. I wouldn’t run for the second term. I’m scared of my human frailty. My vanity. I’m worried that I wouldn’t be able to control the need of power which will corrupt me. So, stop while you can and leave peacefully. One term only, folks.

Okay, so would you vote for me?

Vote for Me - 1

2008-08-24T16:32:00.003+07:00

If I were the Head of Sorong Selatan Regency, I would do the following:

Firstly, I would build the hotmix streets from Teminabuan, the capital town, to the places where some people live. Ergh … maybe not hotmix, a strong, good street would suffice ;-). Expensive? For sure, yes. But it could help drive the prices down in the inland, in those faraway kampongs. It is the people in the inland that suffer the most from bad infrastructure. It makes no sense to me that the people in Ayawasi pay 3 times higher for basic goods than the people in Teminabuan which is only 3 hours (120km) away. So outrageous! And these people by the way are by no means rich. They have no gold, no copper, no nickel, nothing there. How do they get by with their lives then? Only God knows.

In line with this plan, I would make affordable public transportation available to the inland. How? I would buy some buses which will run regularly with sensible fares. This would serve as benchmark for other private-owned public transportation companies (or individuals) that are now controlling the public transport in absence of the government involvement.

I’m aware of the vastness of the region. Sometimes, as I wrote earlier, there are only a few houses in one kampong. That could be sorted out earlier by looking at the number of people living in one place. I would not encourage people to live that far away in the middle of nowhere in spite of their sentimental reason of the past. I hate to see people in Seya walk for hours to get 2 buckets of water. I can’t stand the fact that they have to walk for 8 hours through the jungle to carry the materials to build their houses or stuffs that can’t be made in the village. Don’t tell me that they love the place so much that they are willing to endure their hard situation. Get real, people! This island is so big. There’s enough place for everyone. Oh, am I being insensitive and naïve here?

Secondly, I would make the public transportation to and from outside the region as cheap as possible so that the Papuan people can go visit other places as often as they could. Why? They would be able to see how people outside the island go about their lives. Perhaps they could learn something. I couldn’t stand people who think that they are the center of the universe. Pricey transportation cost will cut them off from the rest of the world. As much as I respect their way of lives now, I believe there are many things that they could learn from others.

Thirdly, I would invite the highly competent teachers in the inland and pay them five times higher than their colleagues in towns. Three times normal salary is to compensate for the higher good prices in the inland and twice the price is to reward their willingness to stay in the remote, lonely, difficult-to-access inland. As the prices go down as the result of the would-be-good infrastructure, their salary would be three times higher.

But, listen up, if they skip classes for more than 2 weeks (with no apparent reasons) they should be fired right away. I can't be more serious. Yeah, I haven’t talked about this phenomenon of teachers leaving their post of duty for weeks or even for months. They often go to town to do their own personal business. I know one teacher who has gone for 2 years! Dear goodness! So I smiled when I read Kompas several days ago about teachers in the inland of Papua who complain about their situation to the first lady.

The Election Fever

2008-08-23T13:48:00.004+07:00

It never happens before. Never have I had or known some friends who are running for parliament members. It tells something about my social setting, doesn’t it? ;-) But here (in Papua) is different. I happen to personally know some caleg (calon legislatif).

It amazes me. These friends are not big businessmen or high profile public figures. They are the guy or the woman next door. They are just the “ordinary” people. Most of them are running for local parliament members here in Sorong. Perhaps they are just trying their luck? But perhaps they really have ideas what to do for their voters. Or perhaps, it is actually money and power that lure them to enter the arena. But yeah so? Most of those big guys who call themselves professional politicians are also doing nothing but pursuing money and power. Moreover, they do it shamelessly.

Here, it is easy to spot members of parliament. They dress differently. They behavior are also different. They probably do that consciously to distinguish themselves from others. You can find them easily in the airports because they often travel. Sometimes they even rent an aircraft. It had caused me some troubles the other day. In Jakarta, we don’t give a s*** about them, do we?

Nonetheless, regardless of their true motivation, it is fair to say that here politics is no longer the exclusive game for the elites only. But as much as I dislike the politicians, I don’t think we should ignore them and thus let them rule our lives according to their liking. Imagine if they make unreasonable, outrageous laws that will adversely affect our lives. Who do they think they are? It’s either we watch them carefully or we join in. It is the very reason why I told Rahel and Eta, my Papuan friends here in Sorong, to start thinking about running for parliament. You cannot not care.

I would love to see more intelligent Papuan women run for parliaments or head of regency or head of districts. Psst, some people suggested me to also run for member of local parliament here in Sorong. I'm sure they're joking ;-) ...

The Whole Holes

2008-08-04T13:59:00.005+07:00

They complain. They swear. They curse. It’s printed in the local newspaper. It’s aired in local the radio. Every time I am with other people in a car, in a public transport or a motorbike, I always hear bad languages addressed to the Mayor of Sorong. I’m with them because the streets in Sorong really suck! There is no exception including the so-called main streets.

And the rainy season gives more new holes to the already damaged streets. Those holes are big, deep and full of mud. Don't even think of driving a sedan in town. Compared to other towns in the Bird’s Head, Sorong is the worst when it comes to road or street conditions. And oh, do not forget that it’s also the dirtiest town in the region. The town looks shabby.

Yumame is the mayor’s name. I don’t know what this person is really doing as a mayor. Perhaps he’s got his own imaginary streets that his driver never takes him through the streets in Sorong.

But this is his second term. Who’s to blame then? I guess the people of Sorong have to take the blame, too. Why on earth did they choose someone like him? I heard someone said that he used money to win the votes. So common, huh? It’s a short-term gain for a long-term suffering. So not worth it.

And nothing is done so far. The people here hold a demo when a member of their ethnic dies. They fight against other ethnicity over a personal feud among them. But they do nothing to demand for good public facility. Or perhaps nobody knows what to do. Perhaps, they need someone to organize them?

The mayor’s son now heads a big, established political party ready to run for the next mayor when the dad steps down. Gosh!

Expansion: Blessing or Curse?

2008-08-02T12:46:00.006+07:00

I waited and waited for the so famous sunset in Kaimana as promoted by a popular old song “Senja di Kaimana”. But the beautiful sunset never happened. Well yeah the sun still set but it didn’t look as spectacular as I had expected. Perhaps it’s because of the weather. It’s very cloudy when I was there early July. They say you should come in October to Kaimana to witness that supposedly beautiful sunset. So yeah … bad timing.

Like Bintuni, Kaimana just recently became a new regency. Both regions were used to be the districts of Fakfak. Ever since the new special autonomy for Papua was launched, there have been many new regencies, districts, or even villages. They will set up 3 new provinces in this island after the 2009 national election.

However, considering the small number of population compared to the size of the island, often the new regencies or districts are underpopulated or are just enough to meet the number of population requirement. There are only about 3 million people in the whole island (Indonesian part). I heard sometimes they manipulate the amount to meet the minimum requirement. I saw a new village with only 14 houses (but probably around 20 families lived there).

It seems that people in this region have been pouring so much energy to this particular matter. It’s a hot issue. Sometimes they seem to be overdoing this. There is a reason to that. This expansion (“pemekaran”) needs a lot of money. Using the special autonomy as a vehicle, the central government throws so much money for Papua. Is it to wash the central government’s sins of having ignored Papua in the past? Or is it to prevent the Papuans from demanding their independence.

This expansion brings some positive impact to the regions. Physical development is the most obvious one. New streets, new public facilities or even new jobs are created. The education in Bintuni is free. Over the past years, many people from other East Indonesia come to the newly set regency or districts to look for jobs or business opportunities.

However, it also creates lots of opportunities for corruption. And, problems in other areas still remain. Has the expansion managed to eradicate poverty? Has it enabled the Papuan to handle malnutrition problem? Has it improved the quality of human resources? One may argue that it takes some time to see the impact on those above mentioned area. It’s a long process. Meanwhile, let the government officials or members of parliament get as much money as they want.

The Compensation Game

2008-07-27T15:49:00.005+07:00

Watch out for animals when you are driving here in the Bird’s Head particularly in the outskirts of the town. You’ll get fined, dude. Yeah, you’ve got to pay some money for compensation to the owner of the animals. The funny thing is the compensation is in proportion to the number of the animals’ tits. No kidding! The more the tits are the higher the compensation is. So there is this rather harsh joke that it’s better to run into a grandma than into a pig.

There are many compensation or fine in Papuan’s traditions. Perhaps it could be thought as penitence to your sins or wrongdoings. When you are cheating on your wife, you’ll have to pay some compensation to your wife’s family. When you impregnate a girl then you have to give some money to her family. The same thing applies when you physically hurts or hit someone until s/he bleeds. You pay for the blood. In some communities, you are even fined when you break up with your girlfriend regardless you already sleep with her or not.

They even asked for compensation when a member of their communities, especially the distinguished one, dies. As long as the person dies in a considerably young age (well let’s say not above 55 or 60 years old) then there is always this suspicion that s/he was murdered. (Well, I don't understand this suspicion.) I heard a demo took place when a native pilot crashed his plane years ago. I witnessed a protest march a few months ago asking for clarification and compensation from the government when a member of local parliament died.

It also occurs in "business" transaction. It's strange but true that when you buy a piece of land, you actually have to pay some compensation for any trees in there. This may cost you extra money because the people who own the land are not necessarily the same with those who plant the trees. This may even cost you some extra energy because you cannot cut the trees down unless you get the permission from the person who plants them. You have to negotiate for that and pay. You should hope that the trees bear no sentimental memories to the owner ;-). There are some durian trees in the land that was bought by the Diocese in Fakfak years ago. The trees are still there because the owner of the trees in the land that is not his hasn't given a permission to cut them down.

Almost everything can be settled with compensation. How big the amount of the compensation is up to the negotiation skills of the parties involved. The negotiation can be quite tricky. Often they start off with a ridiculous amount of money. But they may end up with very little or nothing. It could start from something like Rp 10 million but end up with Rp 2 million or they throw an amount of Rp 50 million but eventually are being content with Rp 5 million. In a more "serious" matter, people may ask for Rp 1 billion but agree to take Rp 60 million or bluff for Rp 15 billion and end up with nothing.

No Alcohol Please

2008-07-24T14:37:00.005+07:00

Now I know where to go if I decide to permanently live in Papua. It’s Manokwari. Well, I haven’t been to Jayapura or Timika yet, but I could say that Manokwari is on top of the list for a place to live in Papua. I like the town. Compared to Sorong, Manokwari is far more “civilized”. It’s beautiful, clean, green, in orderly and not very crowded. Whereas it is hard to find streets without holes in Sorong, most streets in Manokwari are in good conditions and clean. Even the streets to the outskirts of the town as far as 80 km are very good (for Papuan standard).

Manokwari just recently became the capital of Papua Barat, the new province. [In case you wonder, it is a picture of fish in the beach of Manokwari]

The town is at the bay and is quite hilly. So the town has the beaches and the hillside. The beaches are clean and beautiful. There is also forest in the northern part of the town that belongs to the local college. You could take a small boat to go to the nearest, small islands like Mansinam where the first Christian missionaries (Dutch pastors) first set foot in the land of Papua in 1855. That’s why Manokwari is called the “Bible Town” (Kota Injil). In every corner you could find a picture of Jesus giving the blessing to the town.

Like other towns in Papua, Manokwari is a small town with perhaps only 2 or 3 main roads. There is 1 department store and some convenient stores in town but there is no (yet) a mall. So you could actually save up some up some money because there is nothing really to spend your money with.

Surprisingly, I saw some coffee shops here in Manokwari. These coffee shops look quite nice. I never see any coffee shops in Sorong. Well, yeah there are restaurants and pubs in Sorong but coffee shop is something different.

The only shortcoming or perhaps advantage of the place (depending on how you see it) is that no alcohol allowed in Manokwari. So, the only place where you could drink wine in Manokwari is in the church during the communion ;-). They’ve got quite some problems with alcohol here in Papua. By legally banning alcohol in town the government hopes to solve the alcohol problems. Effective? Hm ... I don't know. But the rumour has it that some people (those with lots of money obviously) fly to Sorong to get booze during the weekend.

So, perhaps Manokwari is a good place to raise your children. Don't you think? A beautiful and clean place without malls and alcohol. What more could you expect?

Fly Me to The Neck

2008-07-21T15:04:00.005+07:00

I just came back from some places around the Bird’s Head of Papua doing some auditing works for the clinics owned by the Diocese. Over the past 2 months I’ve gone to Manokwari, Fakfak, Bintuni and Kaimana. That’s why I’ve been offline for quite sometime.

Sure you have no idea where exactly these places are. I just realized that most Indonesian who live in Java or Sumatra have very poor knowledge about Papua. It’s almost like a foreign country to them ;-). Okay, let me give you some description. Imagine the head of a bird. Sorong is the eyes of the bird and Manokwari is at the backside of its head. If Bintuni is in the chin, Fakfak and Kaimana are both in the neck.

To go to those places, except to Manokwari, one has to take small aircrafts, around 16 people on board. But these are bigger planes compared to the one we took to Suswa last Christmas. Often the flight is delayed or canceled because of the bad weather. The runway in Fakfak is so short and small that in a cloudy day the pilot has to do some maneuvers in order to find it. It took us 1.5 hours, normally takes about 45 minutes from Sorong, to land at the Fakfak’s airport. It was quite an experience to be in a Twin Otter that flew below the cloud, went up the cloud and went down again, made several u turn, flew up and down again for 45 minutes before it finally landed. Phew!

Is it cheap to fly in Papua? Heck No! You pay Rp 1.3 million to go to Kaimana (1.5hours with Twin Otter and 1hour with a bigger air craft, I forgot the type). It costs around 1 million to go to Manokwari (30 minutes with Boeing 737-200). And what really bothers me is the fact that in some places (except Sorong and Manokwari) it is not so easy to get the ticket. You can only get the ticket one day before the day you fly. There is no certainty whatsoever. In Fakfak, having booked the ticket for 1 week, I’ve got told just one day before the day I was supposed to fly that there was no flight to Sorong tomorrow. Great! The plane was rented by members of parliament. Sometimes it is rented by the local government. “Important” people, huh?? I think the reason why they cannot confirm the ticket until last minute is to make the ticket available for these self-important people.

But it teaches me to be more patient. I learn to put up with uncertainty. Here in Papua, you should be ready to stay longer than you plan. And stay calm when it happens ;-). I went berserk when I first experienced this.

Alternatively, you could go by ship. Most places are not yet accessible by cars. Ship takes longer but the schedule is much more reliable. Apparently, ship is quite a popular means of transportation here in East Indonesia. The big ships called Kapal Putih go to most big towns. I once took the ship to go from Fakfak to Sorong. It’s actually quite convenient if you are not in a rush. To most people here, Sorong-Fakfak, 12 hours by ship, is considered close. “It’s only 12 hours”, say them. It takes 3 days to go to Timika (from Sorong) or to Jayapura. Yeah, but a 12-hours-flight could take you from Jakarta to Capetown.

A Nice Coincidence

2008-05-15T16:44:00.003+07:00

We human are so keen on looking for meaning to our existence, aren’t we? We try hard to make sense of everything. The problem is our "equipment" looks quite limited to explain everything sensibly or say rationally. Some things apparently are meant to remain mysterious. Or do we just call everything that we don't understand mysterious? And why should mystery exist? To make life more interesting?

That Friday morning in the Seminary I read Kompas Minggu. I saw a short story by Ayu Utami (I forgot the title) but I saw a line below the title saying “Untuk Bona dan Weni”. The story was dedicated to them. Aha, I know them. It must be them. It must be that Bona and Weni. I bet there aren’t many couples whose names are Bona and Weni. So I told Fr Tromp that I know these people. Wow, isn’t it awesome to have a short story dedicated for you in Kompas Minggu? But he wasn’t so impressed since he didn’t know who Ayu Utami was. Well ...

That was 7 am. I then went into the class teaching. At 9 am, my cellphone was ringing. I didn’t pick it up because I was still in the class. It was a new number. At 1pm I called the number back. It was Weni!! Gosh, what a surprise! We haven’t contacted each other for almost a year and suddenly she contacted me two hours after I saw her name in Kompas. I told her about the short story. Yeah, it was their wedding gift from Ayu Utami. They just got married on April 4.

A coincidence? Well, we haven’t contacted each other for almost 9 months. So, what is the odd that she called me two hours after I saw and thought of her? Perhaps it’s a sheer coincidence. But I’d like to believe it as a synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence though I didn't know what exactly it meant ;-). But it had given me a little break from the “rational” explanation of reality. A nice little coincidence!

Born to Be A Catholic?

2008-04-23T16:14:00.003+07:00

I almost leaped with joy when one of my students in Rumah Bina submitted an essay outline with this topic: God does not equal religion. Rumah Bina Tolentino is a house for diocesan and OSA postulants. He started with an argument that most of us “inherited” our religions from our parents.

Yeah, tell me something that I don’t know, you might think. But hey for these people to whom religions become their most important identity, this is quite a thought. Their lives revolve around church activities. They address others according to their religions. You hear these remarks often: “Yes, that policeman is a Catholic” or “No, she is a Protestant”. Well yeah we might find similar situations in other parts of the world including the so-called the first world. People are even fighting in the name of religions.

But that student hadn’t gone that far with his outline when other students protested him right away. Some were so convinced that they become Catholic because they chose to. The class was soon debating the issue.

Oh really? Let’s see. I asked the class about their parents’ religions. These students come from the Christian / Catholic region of Indonesia namely Papua, Nusa Tenggara Timur, Mollucas Islands, and North Sulawesi. Out of 16 students, there were only 2 students whose parents were Protestants (not even Moslem). So, I asked them, “If you had been born in West Sumatra or West Java in Islamic families, would you have been Catholic?” Nah!

And by the way, have they really examined other alternative religions exhaustively before they decided to become Catholics? I doubt it. Not in a way that I think is sufficient to make the claim that they have done their homework before making that decision. I don’t think they had ever seriously considered Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or even atheism. Well, I don’t blame them. They are the children of their society. There is always a few who could go beyond or transcend their social settings. But most people don’t. It’s more convenient to accept the socially-handed-over beliefs, isn’t it?

Anyway, back to the essay. That student backed off. He canceled the topic. Apparently he got intimidated by his classmates’ reaction and scared away with the consequence of his writing if it was published in the diocesan monthly bulletin as I planned. I failed to convince him. I console myself with the thought that at least the class started thinking about the issue. Is religion divinely bestowed upon them regardless their geographic, social, political settings?

Life in Ayawasi – Part III

2008-04-09T14:47:00.006+07:00

It’s so damn quiet here! It is quiet in its truest sense of the word. You hear nothing in the morning … nothing in the afternoon … and absolutely nothing in the evening. No phone calls to make. No web to browse. And one has to put up with 4 hours electricity per day. Well yeah, it’s a kampong in Papua. What do you expect Lian, I asked myself. I can be very stupid sometimes, can’t I? ;-).

Everyday I kept on saying the same thing to Fr Buce about how quiet the place was as if it was a new discovery of the day. In addition to Fr Buce, there are 4 others who currently live in the parish pastor’s residence namely Brother Wempi, Frater Felix and Frater Adri and Theo, the postulant. They are really nice folks! They cook their own food and do all of the chores themselves. Independent men, huh!

The isolation of the place adds up to the quietness though it is actually not as isolated as other kampongs like Fef or Seya, the place that I visited last Christmas. At least one doesn’t have to hike up for hours to come to Ayawasi. But since there is no public transport available it is pretty hard and expensive to go from one place to another. What available here is the transport (cars) run by individuals who charge the unbelievable prices which I had discussed earlier.

Thanks goodness I got myself busy helping Fr Buce with his research. Otherwise, I can’t imagine how I would survive my life here. I don’t understand how Fr Buce could stand living here for almost 6 years now. He looks like he enjoys his time here. So do the others. I guess one has to be very, very creative in creating jobs for him/herself here. There aren’t many things to do except for some church activities during Easter. In a few days I had already finished visiting most of the nearest kampongs that were accessible by motorbike. And we even rode to Teminabuan (about 4.5 hours ride). It was the longest time I’ve ever sat on a motorbike. Phew!

But that’s about it. And I had to spend 12 days here. The original plan was to head back to Sorong in March 24th. But we were stranded! Since 24th, there was no flight came in to this kampong. Probably it’s because of the holiday. It was hard to get a car (that L200) either. But we finally managed to get one on 26th. Aha, do you know how to order a car without telephone? Well, tell the whole kampong that you need a car and you wait.

Anyway, Ayawasi is actually rather nice and spacious. It’s quite cool in the evening and it rains a lot during the day. It’s a good place to get fat because you will tend to get hungry and sleepy all the time. There’s only problem though. There is no market here. So, fresh food is not always available. Sometimes some people sell vegetables but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they have chicken to sell, but other times they have nothing. If you are lucky someone may bring some pork or fish from Teminabuan or other kampongs. But you really never know when they will do that. So you cannot plan on what you are going to eat tomorrow or even today. What you would have in your table tomorrow will remain a mystery until just a few hours before lunch time. I find it amusing to guess what we would have for lunch.

Funny though that when you finally have got some food you have to cook it right away for there is no fridge (no use with limited electricity). So there are times when you have to eat pork for 4 or 5 days in a row. Therefore, Fr Buce and his households have to stock up some preserved food, be it instant noodle, canned food, or salted fish. Again, creativity would help a lot here. In spite of this situation, I actually gained weight during my stay in Ayawasi. Thanks to Frater Adri!

Life in Ayawasi - Part II

2008-04-07T15:19:00.006+07:00

Ayawasi is a kampong that is located in the “eyes” of the bird’s head of Papua Island. The people who inhabit the area is known as Aifat which is the sub ethnic of Maibrat. The Maibrat ethnic itself consists of Aifat, Aitinyo and Ayamaru.

Ayawasi plays an important part in the history of the Catholic missionary in the bird’s head of Papua. The Parish of Ayawasi is one of the oldest parishes in the Manokwari-Sorong Diocese. It covers the area such as Mare, Karon and Ayawasi and its surrounding. Ayawasi is an all-Catholic and nearly-all-Papuan kampong. The common family names here are Turot, Taa, Saa, Jumte, Tenau, Kosho, Fanataf, etc. This is considered a tough parish to manage. Besides the remoteness of the place, the people are not easy to deal with, says Fr Buce Takerubun, OSA, the parish pastor. They are very critical and are not hesitant to use violence to sort things out. And when this happens no one is spared from their rage. Not even the pastors. In Fr Buce’s words, this is what they said: “Even Jesus was killed by the Jews. So why can’t we kill a pastor?!” Wow!

Jonathan Fatem, Pr, a previous priest here, was almost stabbed with a spear when protecting a murder in the parish residence. Fr Buce himself experienced the similar thing. During his first 3 month being here, some people came to him with knife blades to protest against the building of a bridge. They wanted it to be built somewhere else. They threatened to burn the church and the pastor’s residence. Instead of being intimidated, Fr Buce challenged them to do exactly that and put the gasoline and matches before them. It worked. They took off.

I remember Fr Tromp once told me that this was a typical “game” of the locals. It is the way they communicate with each others. They shout. They scream. They threaten. But that’s basically a bluff. In response, you have to shout, scream or roar even louder, stronger, or fiercer or else they would take you lightly. Fr Buce knows how to play this game.

In addition, probably like other places in the Papua Island, the people here don’t take orders easily, not even from their own parish priest. They wouldn’t do what they are asked to do unless they see that their pastor is also doing or participating in what he is asking them to do. So it’s quite common to see the pastor carrying cements or stones in the cart or fixing the lights in the church, etc. Even the Bishop himself drove a truck to deliver some stuffs to the construction site in the Seminary. I can’t help comparing this situation with the situation in Java or Flores where pastors, monks, nuns are treated with so high of a respect that they seem to come from a different class of society.

One ex fraters from Flores who had been here before told me how he almost cried when visiting one kampong. That night, he had to sleep in a hole of a sago tree after a very long walk. He said it would have never had happened in Flores. He would have been greeted and treated with a great respect. If it had been in Flores, he might have slept soundly in a clean bed.

Life in Ayawasi - Part I

2008-04-07T14:15:00.005+07:00

We arrived in Ayawasi at 11.11 pm after 10 hours driving from Sorong. This long, tiresome ride was mostly due to the bad condition of the road. Some parts of the road do not even deserve to be called road. It was so bad that it took us 10 hours to get to Ayamaru which is only 164 km away from Sorong. That included the time we had to spend to wait for or help other cars that got stuck in the muddy road. A truly off-road experience! Luckily we’ve got a first-rate driver who seems to know the road like his own palm. Oh I so trust Oom John, the driver!

In the past, Ayawasi can only be accessed by small aircrafts flown by the Catholic missionaries (Association of Missionary Aviation). The runaway in front of the church complex was built by the missionaries. But Ayawasi can now be accessed by cars in spite of the ridiculous fare. From Sorong to Ayawasi one has to pay Rp300.000 one way per person (with no baggage) to sit in a 4x4 wheel-drive small truck (Mitsubishi L200). Should you bring lots of stuffs with you (your basic necessities or groceries that you couldn’t find in Ayawasi) you could rent that car from Sorong for Rp2.500.000. That’s one way fare! Phew … that’s a lot of money, isn’t it?

I find the transportation fare here outrageous. The local government must work harder to bring it down. To go to Teminabuan i.e. the capital of the Sorong Selatan Regency which is only 117km away from Ayawasi you have to pay Rp 150,000. That’s for 3 hours drive and the road condition is not as bad as that of Sorong – Ayawasi. In contrast, the air conditioned bus fare from Banyumas – Yogjakarta (4 hours drive) is only Rp 35,000 (March 2007). I know it’s not a fair comparison. But, neither should we take this situation for granted. The administration of Sorong Selatan should take this problem very seriously.

The absence of affordable public transport has made the prices of basic necessities in Ayawasi and nearby kampongs unbelievably high. It has made life here harder than it should be. Everything is so damn expensive here. They have to pay Rp15,000-20,000 for 1 liter of gasoline which is normally sold at Rp4,500 everywhere else. 1 bag of cement is traded at Rp135,000. Feel like eating chicken? Well, you have to be willing to spend Rp100,000 for the whole piece of chicken (ayam kampong). Meanwhile 1 egg costs Rp3,000. Phew … It’s so unfair.

Volontaire en Papouasie

2008-02-14T07:21:00.004+07:00

As I mentioned in my past posting, Renaud and Fanny are the volunteers from France who help the Sorong-Manokwari Diocese. They both teach English in Seminary Petrus Van Diepen. Renaud is an engineer who works (taking a leave now) for an automobile company in Paris whereas Fanny is a therapist for children with speaking problems.

This is their story (both in French and English):

Merci Lian pour ce blog qui permet de partager la vie d’une volontaire en Papouasie. Et merci de nous donner la parole!

Nous aussi, originaires de France, nous sommes volontaires en Papouasie en tant que volontaires MEP (missions etrangeres de Paris, www.mepasie.org).

Le depaysement est total pour les europeens que nous sommes. Un francais en Indonesie est deja bien depayse mais en Papouasie il l’est encore advantage, la Papouasie est a la fois differente comme chaque ile indonesienne possede sa specificite (nous sommes passes par Java et Bali), mais avec le plan de transmigrations du gouvernement les villes retrouvent une certaine identite indonesienne.

Ce qui frappe au premier abord, c’est la quantite incroyable d’edifices religieux : mosquees cotoient eglises catholiques et protestantes. La population eclectique indonesienne se repartit dans les differentes eglises. La Papouasie est constituee d’une population heterogene, originaire des quatre coins de l’indonesie dans les villes mais des que l’on peut s’en eloigner et qu’on a la chance de survoler cette ile immense, ce ne sont que Papous et foret. Une immense foret vallonnee que parcourent courageusement quelques pistes mais il faut souvent terminer le chemin a pied lorsque l’on veut atteindre un village.

Notre activite ici est de faire pratiquer et faire progresser des enfants en anglais, au sein d’un college catholique (petit seminaire) a proximite de Sorong, a la pointe nord ouest de la Papouasie.

Pour nous, la vie ici est comme un retour aux temps anterieurs parfois (cuisine au feu de bois, douche manuelle a l’eau de pluie, etc.). Les hommes trouvent dans la nature des aliments que nous ne saurions reconnaitre (feuilles, racines, etc.). La cuisine est aussi particulierement depaysante, systematiquement tres chargee en condiments (beaucoup d’ail et beaucoup de saveurs differentes melees), un temps d’adaptation fut necessaire a nos estomacs…

Une de nos difficultes est egalement un probleme de comprehension malgre notre apprentissage de la langue. Nous sommes habitués a une communication plus directe que celle utilisee en Indonesie… Notre bonne vieille France nous manque parfois mais nos familles y remedient en nous envoyant des boites pleines de cochonailles, chocolats et autres livres, ce qui ne fait pas notre joie seule car la communaute dans laquelle nous vivons aime aussi le cochon!

Ceci dit, en comparaison aux mythes qui circulent dans nos pays de l’ouest et dans l’ouest de l’Indonesie, la Papouasie evolue, les villes sont semblables a d’autres villes indonesiennes et les habitants de la foret sont organises en village qui ont parfois l’electricite et ont troque la fameuse gourde a penis contre des vetements (on ne sort l’attirail plus que pour les rares touristes).

Pensees de deux jeunes francais en Papouasie…

Renaud et Fanny de Colombe

Thanks a lot Lian to let us write in that blog which can make us share our life of volunteers in Indonesia, even more in Papua.

We are a young French couple (just married) and volunteers like you, for the association MEP (Missions Etrangeres de Paris, which means Foreign Missions of Paris).

Everything here is completely different from France. In Indonesia already, but even more in Papua where we have the chance to live for one year. What is surprising at first, is the high number of religious buildings of every kind: Mosque, Catholic and Protestant Churches every two hundred meters. As the result of its history, Papua is composed of lots of different people coming from all the Indonesia and believing in different religions. This melting pot can be seen more easily in the big towns than at the countryside where the population is almost a hundred per cent Papuans from the origin. We had the chance to travel in the countryside and to see this culture due to the landscape: Forest, Forest, forest, hill, hill and hill in a huge surface as big as France!!

There are several roads but I don’t know if we can really call them roads because they are very damaged. It must be so difficult to build them that the people who live won’t be invaded for a long time again! There are also some villages that you can reach only by walking for hours or days. We won’t describe this excursion because Lian already did it, but it is true that you have to be quite sportive to do it.

This excursion has been possible during our Christmas holidays. The rest of the time, we work as English Teachers in a Seminary (Catholic school which corresponds to the Junior High School) in Aimas, about 30 kilometers from Sorong. The purpose is to make the children speak English which is completely unusual and not so easy!! More over, we are not at all English teachers in France. But we enjoy it and our every day life.

This life is quite different from our French life much more comfortable. We had to get used to the food: lot of different spices and foods in the same plate with some ingredients, fruits or vegetables which don’t have any translation in French or in English because we don’t use them. We had to get used to the “Indonesian bath” with only a little cup and the water from the rain. We had to get used to the differences of cultures with the problems of comprehension and different ways of communication. The European culture is much more direct than the Indonesian culture. Sometimes, we miss France but we received some boxes from France by our families with the traditional French Saucisson, books and Chocolate….

But all those differences are not as big as we could imagine when we were still in France. In France, when you talk about Papua it is considered as the end of the world with naked people and cannibals. Fortunately for us, it doesn’t have any meaning any more so that we are still alive, dressed and more over we have got the light in our bedroom.

We recommend you to visit this region. Nice to see you there!

Renaud and Fanny de Colombe

The Fairness of Inequality

2008-02-12T06:26:00.000+07:00

We all are born unequal. That’s a fact of life. Some are more intelligent, perceptive, better with numbers while others are more athletic, artistic, better with people etc. Some were born with enough or even abundant resources while others were limited in their access to the resources. Instead of the word “unequal”, many would prefer the word “different” or “unique”. We are all unique. I used to think that way, too and I believe that everyone should and could develop their uniqueness to live an authentic life. It is then important to ensure a fair chance for everyone to do so.

But last week this fact of inequality struck me like it never did before. I use the word "inequality" because it seems to me that it is more than just uniqueness.

Starting from the second semester, the students in the seminary Petrus van Diepen, Aimas, are divided into 4 different groups. The division is based on the students’ ranks in the previous semester starting from the highest ranks to the lowest ones. The higher the ranks are, the smarter the students are. Or so it is perceived. The idea is to help the students develop themselves in accordance with their capabilities. It is expected that the smarter ones would no longer get bored when their less smart classmates take longer time to understand the lessons or to put less pressure to the latter when the former get all the questions right. Sounds like a good idea? I find it hard to imagine though how a student would feel if s/he is placed in the group of the lowest ranks. A cold fish in her/his face! What a way to get familiar with the hard fact of inequality at such a young age!

And yes, it is not difficult to see the difference. In fact, it is impossible to ignore it. I instantly noticed it when I entered each class. I started to wonder whether this was a random act of nature. If that so, how unlucky one is when nature decides that s/he should have less capacity than others. How would s/he be able to fare with others if s/he is equipped less than others? Wouldn’t it be unfair? But since when is nature associated with fairness or human conception of fairness? Oh, I'm so naïve, aren't I?

Well, I don’t know exactly how much the contribution of nature and nurture in shaping one’s capabilities. I guess it is too complicated to discuss this issue here. But I heard someone said that “Success is 90% perspiration and 10% aspiration”. In other words, what matters is not what you were born with but what you do about it. This is where characters play its roles. But, what if you were born with certain characters that would hinder you from doing anything to be successful? Some say that is why we need education because it is believed that characters can be shaped by education or trainings.

But, could education really solve the problems? Doesn’t the above class arrangement simply show that the school not only accepts but also confirms and endorses the inequality of its students as defined by the ranks? Is that how we embrace the inequality?

What really bothers me is the idea (or is it the fact?) that those with more resources would fare better than those with fewer resources. Or those who are more intelligent would have more chances than those who are less intelligent. And so on. We could have a very long list here. Hello, where have I been? Why the surprise?Again, I’m being as naïve as I could possibly could today ;-)). Forgive me.

Yes I know that it doesn’t always be the case. We could always find some people who managed to overcome or go beyond their “situatedness”. But what allows them to do that? Nature? Nurture? Again how much are we determined by what nature gives us?

Christmas in Wilderness - II

2008-01-08T14:58:00.000+07:00

We arrived in Sun at around 2pm. It took me 4.5 hours while others took 4 hours to arrive in Sun. We spent the night there. It was such a relief to be able to rest and to have a bath after that wearing trip. In the evening, we had a mass in a church/school. But that night I started to get stressed out thinking about the tomorrow’s trip. I was told that the track to Seya from Sun was more difficult. I tried hard to sleep as early as possible in hoping to regain back my energy to face tomorrow. The next morning, I woke up feeling the pain in my feet. However I had no choice but to go on walking. It was indeed a more difficult track.

Having walked for 3.5 hours (for others 3 hours), we finally got to Seya, our destination. Unfortunately I couldn’t take part in the traditional welcoming ceremony since I arrived much later than others. Seya was a lot bigger than Sun. There were some other alternative ways to Seya besides the one from Suswa. You could either come from Sire or Ayawasi (through Mosun). But both ways can only be accessed on foot. By that, I meant walking for more than 8 hours (for the locals). Moreover, should you come from Sorong, you have to drive for 12 hours to Sire and 8–9 hours to Ayawasi. Besides this difficult access, there wasn’t much water in Seya. They had to walk 1-2 km to take water from the spring. What a place to live! There must be something about Seya that people are willing to live there. I honestly couldn’t comprehend this.

According to Engel Semunya, a Seyan who now lives in Sorong, the people of Seya have moved 8th times to the current location which they found in 1993. Gosh, wasn't it still quite recent? I thought a nomadic life was something from the old, ancient times. They moved to seek for a new piece of land or a better access for water or sometimes because they fought among each other. They did fight a lot with each other. Engel could still recall how in 1993 at a very young age, he and the whole village were carrying some furnitures and stuffs to a new place.

That afternoon, an opening ceremony for the new church in Seya was held. It was then followed by the Christmas Mass led by the Bishop. The mass was not only attended by the people who lived in Seya but also by some other people from the surrounding villages and from Sorong. It was the first time a bishop ever stepped foot in Seya. I was sure that they really appreciated this gesture. Mgr. Datus Lega used this opportunity to listen to and to look for the solutions of all kinds of problems that the people in Sun, Seya or Suswa were dealing with, right from the mouth of the horse.

After the mass, the people started to dance the traditional Papuan dance called tumbuk tanah. They did it all night long until the sun rose the next morning. Unfortunately, they did it right in front of the house where I was staying. They were singing while dancing. They were so excited and so loud that I had to spend the whole of Christmas Eve with wide open eyes listening to the sound of tumbuk tanah. My plan to recuperate in order to get ready for tomorrow’s trip was doomed to fail.

At Christmas day, after the mass and lunch, some of us (Reno, Fanny, Rita, myself accompanied by my dayang-dayang and some other locals) left Seya ahead of others who would leave the next day. It was my idea. The thought of walking straight for 8 hours from Seya to Suswa worried me a lot. I was afraid that I would be unable to catch up with the rest of the group. The plan was to spend the night in Sun before heading back to Suswa the next morning. We would arrive in Suswa the same day as the others who left one day later. I suppose it would be more bearable. Apparently some of us had the same thought.

It turned out to be a correct decision. The rest part of the journey, Seya-Suswa and Sun-Suswa, felt different. It looked like my body had made some adjustments that I now could breathe evenly and place my feet swiftly and smoothly between the roots. I began to enjoy the hiking. My self confidence was building up. And I now could look around the forest, felt the cool breeze and smelt the fresh, natural scent of the leaves and earth. I started to see the beauty of the Papuan forest. During the first 2 days, I hardly ever took my eyes off the track for I had to watch over my steps.

And we finally arrived in Suswa on December 26 at around 1pm. The rest of the group arrived later in the afternoon. We all spent the night in Suswa and played cards with the Bishop. He played it really well. I lost to him, and the others, all the time. We had been playing cards in any spare time that we had during the trip. The next day, Sven, that young, cute pilot picked us up to leave for Ayawasi. But it was really the end of the Seya trip. No more hiking. No more leeches. I was relieved. I was glad I made it. But at the same time I regretted that it was over when I just began to enjoy it. I started to miss the hiking in the forest. Don’t we always miss something after it’s gone? Goodbye Seya!

Christmas in Wilderness - I

2008-01-08T14:35:00.000+07:00

I finally had a chance to taste the “wilderness” of Papua and saw with my own eyes places that can only be accessed on foot by which I meant walking for hours. Never in my life have I been to that kind of places. I joined the Bishop and some other people including Reno and Fanny Colombe, the volunteers from France, to visit and celebrate Christmas in Seya, Mare District, Sorong Selatan Regency.

We left Sorong on December 23, 2007 with that petite Pilatus. After 35 minutes flight we landed in Suswa, a small village by the river, and stayed there for a few minutes to prepare for the trip. We then left Suswa by crossing the river with a small, gawky boat. They had arranged who among the locals would help us carry our bags. God bless them! Without them, I didn’t know how I would survive the trip. I actually started the journey by carrying my own camera backpack. But in only a few minutes, I had to hand it over because there was no way I could carry it myself. I couldn’t even carry my own jacket. So embarrassing! This first part of the trip i.e. Suswa-Sun was a real challenge to me. Hey, I am a city folk. Have mercy on me ;-).

We had to hike up through the roots in the hilly, wet tropical forest and to tilt along the hillside. The forest was so dense that in some places the sunshine did not reach the surface of the earth making it damp and slippery. I slowly trekked the hill while panting, gasping for air wishing that I had exercised before. I was totally pooped.

During the whole hiking, I was literally “babysat” by 2 people whom I called dayang-dayang”. They, Frater Selvi and Om Emus, with great, utmost care helped me go through the whole hiking. They carried my stuffs, held my hands through the difficult hillside, waited for me when I needed the rest and water … and they even snatched the leeches from my legs. Gosh, I didn’t know how many leeches have glued themselves to my legs. Yuck! I could only scream for help whenever I felt something was biting my leg. They were disgusting. So these dayang-dayang were really my guardian angels. My slow pace had obviously tired them out. I felt guilty but could do nothing about it. They were jokingly (or maybe they really meant it?) offered to carry me in a cart that we could speed up the hiking. Hell no! Yes I was struggling but there was no way I would let them do that. That would be so humiliating, wouldn’t it?

I obviously became the weakest link of the whole group. I was in awe to see how little kids and some women who were carrying their babies walked fast past us. I tried to console myself with the idea that if I had been born in Suswa or Seya, I would have been able to walk like them. Yeah right!

Back to Civilization

2007-12-21T08:56:00.001+07:00

I didn’t know that it could get pretty hard to go back to a strange land after spending 2 weeks in the world that I had been so familiar and comfortable with ;-). It is never easy to let go off the attachment, isn’t it?

It’s not like I’m whining about my life situation in Sorong (or maybe I am). I actually enjoy it. I mean I enjoy being in Sorong when I am in Sorong ;-). But it’s different when I see it from Jakarta. There is this “x factor” that sets Sorong and Jakarta apart. It makes Jakarta look much more fascinating. And, it has made me not so keen to get on the airplane that took me back to Sorong on December 10 ;-(.

I guess it’s mostly about comforts or lifestyle. Or perhaps it’s more than just comforts? Perhaps it is all of those things that makes up for the civilization? (That kind of civilization that I'm familiar with?) I don't know.

But this comfort factor turned out to be quite illusive. As I landed in Sorong, things were all looking normal and not as bad as I had imagined when I was in Jakarta. Quite relieving. I guess it all depends on your options or alternatives. Had you had nothing for a comparison, then you would have nothing to complain about ... hehe. To live peacefully you shut yourself from other alternatives!

So, I come back to the place where I am supposed to be until mid 2008. That’s the plan.

One thing though … I missed some people in Sorong when I was in Jakarta. They are the kind of people that are hard to find in Jakarta.

What kind of Kindness?

2007-11-26T11:09:00.000+07:00

What is kindness? Giving away things generously? Is there such thing as excessive kindness? Would such kindness be of help to empower others? Or would it instead work against empowerment?

Remember Fr Tromp? Some people, including other local priests (who come from other parts of Indonesia) are quite critical about the way he treats the locals. He is seen as being too generous and too kind to the people particularly the Papuans. It looks like he always gives almost anything they ask of him. And this gives the local priests a hard time for they can’t afford of being as generous as he is. Besides, that kind of generosity is considered a charity which often leads to dependency. Therefore, instead of empowering the Papuan, he pampers them. Many people see him as the foremost defender of Papuans. Apparently this is also the general attitudes of other Dutch-born missionaries. It is the reason why the native Papuans like them more than they like the local priests.

I somehow agree with the above-mentioned view about Fr Tromp. This reminds me of one Catholic priest in Java who has similar attitudes. I don’t understand how you could expect people to grow if you always grant anything they want with almost no efforts. Teach them how to get what they want. Teach them the how.

But it easier said than done. Honestly I have no clue on how it is to be done particularly with a civilization as young as the Papuans. To some of them (the people in Lembah Baliem in Wamena for instance) the encounter with other people outside their culture (read: modernity) occurred quite recently that was in 1957. How do you expect them to adjust their long-well preserved way of life in such a short period of time?

Fr Tromp thinks that the best you could do for them is “being there” for them without having pretension of turning them into modern men. But how possible is that? I wonder if perhaps the phenomenologist is being too optimistic to expect that one could really bracket his/her prevailing opinions or beliefs or whatever. Wouldn’t it be like climbing out of yourself?

And would it mean that we have to let them live the way they had been living their lives? The question is could some people seclude themselves from the rest of the world in a more integrated and open society like todays society? There have been some problems with the way Papuan who had been living a life as gatherers all their lives adjusting themselves with other culture or one may say ‘modernity’. We’ll talk more about this later.

Oh, Raja Ampat! - Part II

2007-11-15T13:46:00.000+07:00

Compared to the nerve-wracking trip to Waigeo last September, the sea was quite calm this time. During that Waigeo trip, the sea got so rough that I was so certain it would eventually smash our small speedboat into pieces. With that terrifying prospect, I tried to pray (what else could one do in that kind of situation? ;-)). But, it was not easy. I was freaking out. The boat really looked like a tiny, powerless piece of wood being drifted harshly by the vast, wild, mighty ocean. Oh, ye of little faith! What was I so afraid to lose, I wonder ;-)?

Anyway, it was different this time. I so enjoyed this trip to Misool. I even sat on the deck enjoying the view of the beautiful Raja Ampat. It took us more than 5 hours to get to Misool because we also visited some kampongs in other islands like Batanta, Limalas, and Folei before we got to Tomolol, our final destination. It was actually a pastoral visit. Together with some church leaders, Fr Lewi was scheduled to visit his congregations in The Islands of Raja Ampat Regency which included the employees of a pearl farm near Tomolol.

We spent the nights in a compound that belongs to that farm. It was built on the sea. The farm also has other compounds in 5 different locations. The compound functions as the office and houses all of the employees in each location. Every morning, the speedboat takes the employees to the sea around the compound where they nucleate and tend the oysters and to the floating huts where they do their work (I don't know exactly what they do in there).

So the employees basically work and live in that compound. Once a month, they’ve got some days off when they could go to Sorong to finally set foot on the land and see other people besides their co-workers ;-). But the rest of the time, they are stuck with each other in that place. Thus, romance is obviously almost unavoidable. Two couples got married when we were there. They had been waiting for Fr Lewi to hold the wedding ceremony for them.

And it was such a modest ceremony. Ehm, maybe it’s a little bit too modest. They still went to work on the day they got married. One of the brides didn’t even have or bring her own lipstick. So, she used mine. No fancy gown. No parents. No extended family. No parties. No cakes. No drinks. No dancing. And … no wedding ring! It was just like another day. So casual. All they needed was the priest. "The worse the wedding, the better the marriage", says Carrie Bradshow from Sex and the City. Sounds like a good idea for your wedding? ;-)

Oh, Raja Ampat! – Part I

2007-10-23T14:39:00.000+07:00

The place is so magnificently beautiful that it doesn't seem real! It was like being on the other planet or in the other time. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Hm perhaps the Twelve Apostles in the east coast of Victoria, Australia might be the closest one. But those rocks in Misool, Raja Ampat are many, many times more exquisite than the Twelve Apostles.

They stand above the sea looking like the stupas of Prambanan. Despite its striking beauty, I find the place a bit creepy though. The dark green water around those rocks is too calm, too quiet, too serene, and too deep. No waves whatsoever. It gets more eerie if you are there in the dusk when you could still see the dark shadow of the rocks and feel the intense tranquility of the see. We were in one group of the rocks at around 6.30pm (we visited 2 locations)! I held my breath for being captivated and intimidated at the same time by that daunting beauty. I felt like something could just abruptly emerge from the sea. Too wild of an imagination, huh! Unfortunately, it was too dark to take any pictures in a moving boat.

The other group of rocks that we visited is located on the way to the so-called “Tempat Keramat” (Sacred Place). It is a huge cave on a small rocky island with its gorgeous stalagmites and stalactites. We could actually go through the cave with a very small boat but our boat was a little too big to do that. But I’d rather not do that because I never like caves. It’s damp, cold, dark, and mysterious. And as if it was not enough, they even put a tomb at the mouth of the cave! What an idea!

With a four-engine speedboat, it takes about 4 – 5 hours from Sorong straight to Misool. The Regency of Raja Ampat (Four Kings) consists of 4 big islands these are Waigeo, Batanta, Salawati, and Misool. That’s where the name of “Ampat” (Four) comes from. But apart from those big 4 islands, there are hundreds of other small islands. According to Meidy who works for Coral Map in Waisai, Raja Ampat actually comprises 604 islands. Wow!

To Be Continued ...

Desperately Seeking For Ketupat

2007-10-17T11:22:00.000+07:00

There are times when you can’t help being silly for wanting something so badly. Last Saturday was one of those times. I was craving for ketupat (rice wrapped with coconut leaves in a trapezium shape .. hihi ... good description?). Why? Well, it was Lebaran! It is the best time to eat ketupat.

Whenever I am in Jakarta, I always eat ketupat at Shinta’s in Tebet. But since I haven’t had many muslim friends here in Sorong, I had to tag along with others. So I went with dr. Alex, Willy, Shinta (Adonara) who lived in Bintang Timur clinic. The four of us left the clinic early at 10.30am with 2 motor bikes ready to hit the road. I was so determined to eat some ketupat that day. I was a woman on a mission.

The first house that we went to was Hari’s house who works at Yayasan Sosial Agustinus. Having waited less than 15 minutes, the host asked us to take some meal at the other side of the room. My heart leaped with joy. Oh yes!! But I didn’t find any ketupat on the table. So, I ate only a little to save some room in my stomach for ketupat that would have had later on. This was only the first house and we still had some more houses to visit.

From Hari’s house, we went to Aimas, around 30 minutes drive from Sorong. It was so damn hot of a day. The sun shone blazingly. It was scorching. You’ll be burnt to a crisp if you dare to stand in the sun of Sorong for 2 hours. Refused to get more tanned than I had been already, I equipped myself well enough for the ride. I put on my sweater, a cap, a scarf to cover my nose and sunglasses.

We stopped at the front yard of a quite nice house in the transmigran’s (Indonesian government’s program in Suharto’s era to move people from Java to other islands including Papua) area in Aimas. This time, it was dr. Alex’s acquaintance. It looked promising. Unfortunately, the host turned out to be a bachelor. There was no chance of having ketupat there. Feeling a bit disappointed, I convinced myself that the hope was still there.

Then we went to Pak Slamet’s house. Pak Slamet is Fr Tromp’s driver who picks me up every Thursday evening. I was so hopeful this time because when I told him that I would like to eat ketupat at Lebaran he said he’d have had it at his place. It was still in Aimas. But the weather suddenly changed dramatically. It started to rain heavily albeit only a few minutes. We had to pull over to find a shelter. We found Pak Slamet’s house. Having waited for quite some time, there was no sign of our getting some ketupat. So we, ehm I mean I, left the house with a big dismay. The hope was fading away now. I was losing my confidence.

We then headed back to Sorong. There was still another, the last, house to go. Trying to save my mission, dr Alex suggested us to go to a doctor’s house, before that last house, which he thought might have had ketupat ;-). Thanks! This hadn’t been on the plan. Disappointingly, we found only an empty house. And the last house also turned to be a big disappointment. The host had gone out. Apparently, my mission was destined to fail. A total failure!

It was almost 4pm. Everyone looked tired now. The weather has added so much to our weariness. It rained for 5 minutes then it stopped. It rained again then stopped. We had already pulled over 4 times during the whole ride. So much for ketupat ;-)! And I ended the Lebaran day in Sorong with a bowl of instant noodle … crying out loud!

Survive with Rp 30.000/month?

2007-10-10T10:43:00.001+07:00

How long could one survive with Rp 30.000 (USD 3.3) in his pocket? One day? Two days? One week? How about one month? Are you kidding me?

No, I am not kidding. I am dead serious. I know it is not even enough to pay for one (short) cup Frappucino in Starbucks, Jakarta or to buy lunch in Tokyo or to watch movie in the Waterfront, Capetown ;-). Well, it may be enough to buy lunch in an average restaurant in CBD area in Jakarta. But that’s only for one day or 2 days if you don’t mind eating in the basement!

Okay, here are some additional, relieving facts. Let say you do not have to pay for accommodation, food, medical and transportation (simply because you are not supposed to go out ;-)) but you have to use that Rp 30.000 for everything else: soap, toothpaste, detergent, clothes, underwear, entertainment and all other daily necessities. Is it still impossible to do? I know very well that some of you would think so. I do think it is impossible (for me) to do that.

But some people, I mean real people, have been doing it in this real life! And they survive so far. I’ve met them alive ;-). They are my students in Rumah Bina (Prep School) of Pieter Van Diepen Seminary, Sorong. Being the priest candidates, I guess they are expected to lead a very modest way of lives. They must learn to survive each month with that little amount of money. I found out later that most Catholic priest candidates must actually undergo the similar situation. It is part of their education or training process. Some told me that at least those candidates in Sorong do not have to pay for anything. In some place, the priest candidates actually have to pay some fees or pay penalties if they later decide to discontinue their education in seminary.

Alright, I know some of you might say, “hey, they should consider themselves lucky because there are so many people who do not know what to eat for their dinner tonight or do not have a place to sleep at night.” I know, I know. Still, it is quite new for me to learn that someone could actually survive with Rp 30.000 per month. I suppose with that amount of money one could only afford a very basic lifestyle. But isn’t a basic lifestyle enough? Really? I don’t know.

One thing for sure I suddenly feel so very rich.

Nothing is Too Profane

2007-09-29T18:00:00.000+07:00

If you think the church is only concerned about the after life, think twice or come to Papua. The church here becomes very much part of the everydayness. Nothing is too profane to take care of. Sometimes it even involves cultivating and selling bananas or beans ;-). That’s what Father Anton Tromp, OSA, does. Well, among so many other things of course.

He is now the rector of Pieter Van Diepen Seminary in Aimas, Sorong Regency where I spend 2 days a week teaching. He is also in the financial board of the Diocese of Manokwari-Sorong, the board of LBH in Manokwari and AMA in Jayapura, the Prior of the Augustinian Order, and many other things. But don’t expect him to be that typical bureaucratic, religious leader who is waiting to be served or who is concerned only with the after life. He is certainly not. In fact, he’s so down to earth. He does all sort of things that a religious leader in other places might be reluctant to do. I’ve seen him sitting with some students sorting out beans that they were going to sell to town. He took the broom and swept the floor afterwards. One day when we were talking in his place some locals came in with a dead boar. They caught the boar but they did not know where else to go to sell it but to him. Fr Tromp weighed it and bought it at the market price, Rp 25.000/kg.

I certainly got the impression that he’s more than just a priest there. The other day I also saw some locals who came to him to tell him about someone who had been drawn in the sea for a few days but the body had not been found up to that moment. And I’ve heard someone in Manokwari who’s having a problem with his house called him up for help. They come to him with problems, real problems to be solved. In other words, he is their actual leader. Moreover, I just heard from other priests that the people around the place love him a lot.

Talking to him about Papua is like talking to an encyclopedia. He knows so much about Papua. He said to me, “I know most of Papuan. Pick one name and I could tell you what his/her father or family has done in the past. I know all of their sins.” Isn’t he funny? But it’s probably true because he has been living in Papua for 37 years. He came to Papua in 1970 when he’s 24. He’s been in Papua longer than he had been in the Netherlands, his original homeland. He is now an Indonesian citizen.

Fr Tromp is an illustration of the role of the churches in Papua which is certainly not to be underrated though of course not all priests are loveable and serving like him ;-). The churches had been here long before the government (Indonesia) came. Papua just joined the Republic of Indonesia after the referendum (Pepera) in 1963 while the missionaries had already been here since around 1855. These missionaries were the ones, with small air crafts, who went to those remote, isolated places where no one had ever stepped foot before. They, both Protestant and Catholic, play a significant role here in Papua. In the past, the Dutch arranged that the Protestant went to the north and the Catholic went to the south. It’s all different now though I could somehow still feel the sentiment. I was asked so many times about my religion. I don’t quite know how to answer it. Faith is a tricky subject to define ;-).

On Sorong

2007-09-19T14:36:00.000+07:00

Now let’s talk about the town where I’m living now, Sorong. The town lies at the “mouth” of the Bird Head of Papua Island. There are many other small islands surrounding the town. It’s a small town with around 160.000 – 170.000 people. Nevertheless, it’s already considered a big town in Papua that has only about 3 million people living in the whole island. In the past, Pertamina owned most parts of the town. Sorong has everything that a small town normally has: shops, supermarkets, banks, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, etc. And as I said earlier, you could find almost everything here.

But honestly, nothing is really interesting or beautiful about the town. Rain that has been pouring the town everyday over the past 3 months has destroyed most of the low-quality streets and has created so many potholes. The rutted sidewalk and the front yard of most buildings or houses look dreadful. I really think that the municipal government should work harder on the cleanliness of the town. There is no sin in making a town clean, pretty and in order, isn’t it? They don’t have to evict anyone to do that, do they ;-)?

The landmark of the town I guess is what they call “tembok” (wall). Some of them call it “tembok Berlin” which I find it bizarre since there is no resemblance whatsoever either in shape, meaning or history with that historical wall in Berlin. Anyway, it’s not an official name so let’s leave it there. Tembok is a hangout place. As the name suggested, it is the wall or fence around 1-2 meters high that is built along the coastline from Lido to the harbor which is about 2-3 km long. It’s painted blue. And I find it ugly.

But that’s the only place where you could sit to watch sunset because there is practically no sand beach in town. In fact, it might be specifically built for that purpose because it looks more like a bench. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a spectacular sunset since my arrival. Probably it’s because of the weather. Young people who don’t bother with sunset could just hang out there with some friends to watch the passersby. The main attraction of the wall is probably “the food court” that is some warung tegal (hawkers) at the one end of the wall that open at night and sell variety of food like ayam bakar, bakso, soto, nasi goreng, cap cay, coto makassar, pisang epe, etc. Not the typical local food, for sure.

One thing I like about the town though is its public transport. You could get around the places by “taksi” as the locals call it though it is actually a yellow minibus (or “angkot” as known by other Indonesians). The fare is Rp 2.000 to anywhere plus some loud, very loud, music ;-). There’s no “kenek” (assistant to the driver). So, to get the door closed every time a passenger gets off, the driver pulls a rope which its other end tied to the door. Convenient! Unlike Jakarta in where everything seems to be in a rush, here you could actually take your time to get in or get off the taksi. The driver or other passengers will wait for you patiently and won’t slam the door behind you. That is never going to happen in Jakarta where the bus is already taking off before your feet even touch the ground.

But you know what the biggest problem that this town has? No teh botol here ;-). Damn! In Jakarta or other cities in Indonesia, one can easily find teh botol in every corner. I feel like I was in a foreign country … Hiks!

Bad Haircut Won't Kill

2007-09-06T15:30:00.000+07:00

I just witnessed something stupefying today! I entered the pavilion in Bintang Timur clinic where Shinta was staying and couldn’t believe what I saw in there. I’ve never seen this in my life. In there, Shinta was cutting Debby’s hair. What’s so strange about that? Well, what could possibly go through your mind when you let someone who has never had any single training as a hairdresser in her whole life cut your hair?

I couldn’t bear that thought. It took me years to finally find a hairdresser to whom I entrusted my hair. I’ve never attempted another hairdresser until now. It was like finding your soul mate ;-).

I just want to underline the importance of a hairdresser in one’s life … ergh … I mean in my life. Why? Because it is you who will bear all the consequences of every single thing s/he does with your hair. It is you who will walk with funny looking hairstyle for many months if s/he has done something wrong. And the thought of paying someone to make you look funny is utterly excruciating!

So, I nervously watched Shinta’s hands as the hands ungainly moving around the hair to perform the task. It was plain to see how inexperienced those hands were. I was trying to look for a trace of doubts in Debby’s face or anxiety in Shinta’s face. Nothing! In contrast, they both seemed so relaxed like it was a normal thing to do. I restrained myself from stopping them. Debby, a Sangir girl who works in the clinic, wasn’t bothered much with the rough looking hairstyle that she now has. And Shinta, the girl from Larantuka, appeared to be as calm as any other experienced hairstylists who just completed her work. I didn’t offer any comments. I was still in a state of shock. I later found out that many people in Sorong do this that is having friends or family cut their hair though there are actually some hairdressers in town.

But I guess I envy them for taking their hair not too seriously as most people in a different “Lebenswelt” do. It’s like they are saying to me: It’s just hair, so what? They’ll grow. There are so many other important things to worry about in this life. Bad hairdo won’t kill you, will it? Nah!

From A Distant Land

2007-09-04T11:32:00.000+07:00

I’m just being thrown to a far-away land. Welcome to Papua! I finally landed in Sorong, Papua on September 1st, 2007 after a long flight with 2 layovers (that means 3 takeoffs and 3 landings … phew!).

A new episode has just begun.

I was told by the Archdiocese with whom I flew to Papua that Sorong was actually quite big of a town. Hm, I didn’t quite believe him and I chose to play safe. So, I brought so many stuffs with me thinking that Papua was “supposedly” the least developed region in Indonesia where you could not find anything but only the very, very basic stuffs. I packed my bag like I was about to go to South Pole or Timbuktu or somewhere like that. Fortunately, they didn’t charge me for the overload baggage. But to my disappointment, I soon found out that Sorong had almost everything I needed! I could find my shampoo, my soap, my milk, my tissue there ;-). I also could easily find satay, soto, martabak, Chinese food. And, they even have KFC! Ah, there goes my exotic, tribal island! There goes my plan to use this chance of forcing myself to go on diet based on the knowledge that the food would be so plain. Truly disappointing!

Wait, but that’s only Sorong, the city, that I know only for 3 days now. The truth of the matter is I ain’t seen nothing yet for I haven’t been to those remote places, up in the mountain, or to other part of Papua which I’m sure would captivate me. So, I shouldn’t kill that hope yet ;-).

Another surprise is to see so many non-Papuan here in Sorong. Some people even told me that the non Papuan actually outnumber the native Papuan. They mostly come from Sulawesi (Makassar, Toraja, Manado), East Nusa Tenggara, Ambon, Java and I see some Chinese. But it all makes sense because Sorong, being a harbour, is actually a gate to Papua island, the “closest” to Indonesia ;-).

I’m interested to find out more about the people. It should be interesting. I’ve already heard about the heavy drinking habit and BNS (Baku Naik Sembarang) the free sex culture that placed Papua as the region with the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection. But for now, let’s hold all the judgment …

Happy 62th!

2007-08-18T19:44:00.000+07:00

There are a few things in life that we do only once a year. And I just realized it yesterday that "panjat pinang" is actually one of those things. In Indonesia, we only do it on August 17th, on our Independence Day. "Panjat pinang" is a game where groups of people must climb a betel palm tree to get the prizes on its top. The only problem is the tree is spread with oil. So, in order to win they have to work together and do some acrobatic movement. The prizes range from a basket of food to a bike!

There are some other games that are usually played on the Independence Day such as "makan krupuk" (eating crackers that are hanged in front of your face while your hands are tied), "balap karung" (sack racing) or "tarik tambang" (tug of war), etc. But unlike "panjat pinang", these other games can easily be found in any social gatherings. You cannot see "panjat pinang" on other dates but August 17th.

Why bother talking about games on such an important day? Well, why not? Why should we spend energy on a dreary topic like what makes us proud to be Indonesian. I'm afraid I'll get frustrated on trying to find the answers. The recent poll (14-15 August, 2007) by Kompas shows that 34% of respondents in 2007 are not proud to be Indonesians whereas only 5.1% of respondents in 2002 felt that way. Oh dear!

A Wild Ride

2007-08-11T15:42:00.000+07:00

Why do we hate corrections? Yes, they are bitter and painful but they also give us a chance for a healthier, stronger and further growth. Don’t they? Therefore we should actually celebrate what’s been happening in the global stock market i.e. a plunge triggered by the US credit crunch fallout over the past few weeks. The risk is now being repriced. Besides, we can’t have a bull market all the time, can we?

Well, it’s certainly easy for me to say that because I’m currently not holding any positions in any capital market instruments now ;-). Some fund managers however, whose funds are exposed to the US subprime mortgage, must be going through hell now. Yet it is still a nicer hell compared to the one that the investors are going through now.

So, it’s more of a show, a reality show, to me. I think the current situation of the global stock market should have won the prize for The Most Interesting Reality Show. So much drama and suspense. I’m willing to lose some sleep for having to stay up late, sometimes until 3 am Jakarta time, to watch CNBC. It’s been very amusing to see how the market players interpret and react to the situation. Analysts, traders, fund managers, investment strategist, academics or even central banks are all trying to figure out what’s been really happening with the market and most importantly what to do next. Sell? Hold? Or buy? They argue, they debate, they scream and they are confused. Central banks are criticized for injecting too much money or too little money or even for intervening/bailing out or not intervening the market. Chaotic!

The problem is nobody seems to know yet how big the exposure is until the dust settles. This adds nervousness to the frenzy and thus sends the volatility over the roof. It’s been a wild ride. Moreover, you cannot really trust the big houses these days. One day they say they have no exposure to the sub prime loan now but tomorrow they may say other things or already suspend the redemption of their funds.

So, buckle up! The show does not end yet.

That Bloody Microchips

2007-07-28T22:36:00.000+07:00

Imagine how the world would be if people are divided into the ones tagged with microchips and the ones without. Imagine how your life would be if you happen to be the one whose body is tagged with the microchips. Everywhere you go, whatever you do will be all monitored. Doesn’t it sound like a tale from a dusty, old book or movie? Unfortunately, it might well turn into a reality, here in Indonesia, in the land of Papua. The parliamentarians in Papua are considering a controversial bylaw that would enforce this using of microchips.

The purpose of the bylaw is to monitor the sexual behavior and activities of people living with AIDS. One of the lawmakers there calls it a “major breakthrough” to fight against HIV/AIDS. What was running through their minds to even consider such things? This is a power/state intervention to the human body. It reminds me of Michel Foucoult that explains this relation between power and knowledge in an attempt to control the behaviour of society. What’s left to a person if s/he cannot have power over her/her own body?

Let’s continue our imagination. Imagine how devastating your life will be when people around you look at you as “the other” who should be avoided. Wherever you go, you bring with you the tag of the outcast, the pariah. This is the most brutal form of modern discrimination. Having the microchips tagged you may cost you your job, your family, your friends. You may even have to live in a secluded, designated area. You stop becoming a person. In short, you lose your life.

Phew … I think I should stop the imagination here because it starts to freak me out to think of the possibility of tagging the microchips not only to people living with HIV but also to anyone that those in power would like to get rid of. That would be the most horrifying thing one could ever imagine.

I hope this is only a dream … Wake me up, please!!!

Where God Kissed The Earth

2007-07-18T00:40:00.000+07:00

I always dream to have a house by the lake with huge windows looking out to the mountains. The other side of the house, as I imagine, is surrounded by the carpet-looking paddy field or grassland. I just recently found the perfect place for that dream house. And it isn’t that far … not in New Zealand or Switzerland or South Africa which I consider among the most beautiful places on earth but it’s there in my homeland from which my ancestors come from.

How ironic that it has got to take someone else from a different land to show me how absolutely beautiful Tano Batak.

Tano Batak is in North Sumatra, Indonesia. The highlight of it is off course Lake Toba. All this time I had been aware of its beauty (or so I thought) but I didn’t realize that the beauty is so stunning until my recent visit. This time I have a chance to see it from the side which I didn’t know ever existed before. Despite the cold feet that I got when we drove down from Tele to Sianjur Mula-mula, the picturesque view really took my breath away. The scene in Tongging where the waterfall Si Piso-piso is situated is also amazingly exquisite. Rm Lili jokingly said that God must have kissed the earth once when God created it in whatever year. And that part of the earth is of course Lake Toba.

However, the view is so far enjoyed by only a few people. There are only a few tourists go visiting the place. Many would rightly say that tourism in North Sumatra is not well or properly managed. The government has not been really exploring the potentials of that region. Or perhaps they simply don’t know what and how “to sell” the potentials? Apart from the panoramic scenery, the Batak culture is actually very interesting to observe. Nice landscape would eventually bore you but interesting people would always be fascinating to explore.

But ... ah, isn’t a blessing in disguise for me? Keep it that way, the place for my dream house would neither be so expensive nor overly commercialized like other touristy places. It will remain quiet, fresh and clean. Hopefully I could still feel the kiss of God over there …

Know Thy Neighbor

2007-06-19T19:43:00.000+07:00

It is not meant for as a moral suggestion. As a matter of fact the suggestion has an economic value. And I just lost some money for not knowing my neighbor. How so?

Having moved to my apartment, I decided to sell my house in Lippo Karawaci. It was a very small but lovely house in a safe and nice neighborhood. I had lived there for 5 years before I moved to Jakarta. Actually I hardly really lived there because I spent most of my time in Jakarta (about 25km away) not only during the week but also in weekends. Just like thousands other commuters I had to commute to Jakarta every day because I worked in Jakarta. And almost every weekend I drove back and forth Jakarta since all of my friends live there. Probably it was more of a hotel than a house because I only put my stuffs and came to sleep at night. So, I did not have time to socialize with the neighbors.

Is it really? Nope, I think I just found myself an excuse.

The truth is I am not really that kind of person who likes to socialize with the neighbors. I have this kind of attitude of “leave-me-alone-and-mind-your-own-business”. I did not try to make any efforts to get to know any of them. Too lazy to have small talks. It is also the reason why I chose to live in an apartment now. Is it really a typical attitude of city folks? I hope only a few people in Jakarta have that kind of attitude. I’ve learned my lesson ;-).

Anyway, I then contacted a property broker to help me sell the house. It took her almost a year to find a buyer with the price that I wanted. And to my surprise, it was my neighbor who bid my house. They wanted to buy the house for their daughters. Why didn’t they call me instead? Well, how on earth they could get my number if I have never had talked to them? And when I put the house on sale, I already had moved to the city.

So, get to know your neighbor. If it’s not for a moral reason, at least you may save some money. They could be your potential buyers. It had cost me the brokerage fee for not knowing the people who lived next to my house ;-). Not good enough for a reason, huh? Sounds too calculating? What if I say that I actually felt bad for not knowing Pak Johan and Bu Yulia who turned out to be very nice people? Okay ... that sounds better.

Befriend The Darkness

2007-05-31T18:51:00.000+07:00

Last night I got a text message from a friend about something that got me thinking about it the next day. At first, I was not that interested because it was such a cliché question. I used to think about this question long time ago but kind of forgetting it now. Many philosophers have been asking the same question: what makes us happy? Aristotles, hedonists, utilitarists, etc. are among them.

Here is the conversation:

He, 10:40 pm
Could you say one reason why we should be happy in this life?

Me, 10:54 pm
A lot: instant noodle when it’s raining, lying down on grass field facing up d sun, long talk with a friend, surprising emails or calls … etc. Hehe, not serious?

He, 11:07 pm
They r temporary. U wont lie down on d grass field all year, or have a surprise call every day. Just one thing as a reason 4 us to be happy in this life … (?)

Me, 11:17 pm
I don’t thnk theres ONE thing that could make people happy permanently. It’s a combination of many thgs and has more 2 do with our state of mind.

He, 11:32 pm
If this is so, d one thing we seek after is d happy state of mind: how we perceive this life. It depends on d state of mind, not things in d world.

Me, 11:42 pm
Yeap. Maybe the correct word is not ‘perception’, too idealistic. It should include our attitude, approach towards life. Why asking? Seeking 4 happiness? Hehe

He, 11:57 pm
Why asking? Doesn’t Heidegger say question is d piety of thinking? I am practicing it. Life isn’t that interesting but that’s why it is interesting to think about it.

Me: 12:11 am
Really? I thnk life is soo intrstng that’s why it is interesting to thnk abt it ;-). Full of unpredictable thngs, mystery, irony, anxiety, unspeakable moments … Sometimes despair, pain, boredom color it. But they make life more intrstng. It’s a truly great work of art.

But when I was writing down my last message I actually forgot that I myself had been too focused on goals or targets (no matter how authentic they are). I thought achieving the goals would make me feel happy and enable me to escape the gloomy, depressing, disturbing emotions or state of mind such as despair, anguish, agony, boredom. Unfortunately, they are a fact of life. They are parts of life. Instead of running away from them maybe I should befriend them. Oriah Mountain Dream perfectly says it in the Invitation:

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

Hot Money and Simulacrum

2007-05-27T09:45:00.000+07:00

How exactly the stock price or exchange rate is determined? There are some models and theories out there but I don't think there has been any single theory that could accurately determine the price and thus predict the price movement. Maybe there will never be. The capital market would be so boring if there was such a model ;-). Let us keep the mystery going so that the analysts have many things to say or revise.

Perhaps Kant is right about the noumena behind the phenomena. The so-called fair market value can be viewed as the noumena which according to Kant cannot be possibly known. Price which should reflect the fair market value seems to live in its own world. As I mentioned in my recent article in Ecosoc, hot money, depending on its size, may turn the price into the signify which gets disconnected from the signified i.e. the fair vale as described by Ernst Cassirer, the Kantian philosopher.

Are we talking about what Baudrillard called simulacrum that is the world of symbol which gets entangled from the real world where you can't tell the real apart from the signs or the symbol? I still believe that though the symbol may wander off the reality for sometime, it cannot go that far. There will be a market mechanism that alllows a correction to occur bringing the price back to its fair value. But which fair value? How do we tell that the price has returned to its value? Here, we are back to the problem of determining the fair value.

Gee, this reminds me so much of the discussion between realism and anti realism in philosophy. One could end up being an objectivist or a relativist or somewhere in between i.e. "I am this but ..." kind of approach. It is always safe to be in the middle, isnt it ;-)?

I personally think that we could somehow "know" the fair value or at least get near it. It could also be just a consensus among the market players but the consensus is always based on something i.e. what they believe the fair value is. The market is not all that anarchic ;-).

Phew ... I have never realized how close the capital market and philosophy can be ...

This is what I wrote in Ecosoc blog :

The hot money phenomenon in Indonesian capital market has prompted a debate over the possibility of another economic crisis. Hot money is the very short-term fund from overseas that is invested in liquid instruments such as capital market instruments or foreign currency. Is the worry justified?

Considering the fact that the foreign reserve of Bank Indonesia is currently at its high record (USD50 billion) many believe that Indonesian government would be able to manage the would-be huge money outflow while keeping a crisis away from the economy. However, I would argue that the possibility of another crisis is just a matter of degree of the magnitude of the real problem itself. The fundamental problem of the hot money itself is often being played down. Even at a normal scale, hot money would create enormous volatility in the financial market especially that of the emerging market because of its size and its short-term period of investing.

Hot money would not only increase the volatility or fluctuation of the prices but would also disconnect the prices from their underlying assets these are the fair value of the companies (for stocks and bonds) and the countries’ economy condition (for currency). It is as if the price became the signify that engaged in its own world, the world of symbol, isolated from the signified i.e. the underlying assets as described by Ernst Cassirer. The signify is supposedly the symbol, something that represents, the signified. But according to Cassirer the signify could then create its own structure and values which are no longer attached to the signified. Is that what happened with the superior performance of the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) lately? Has the JCI turned into the signify that is disconnected from the fair value of its underlying assets?

Theoretically, the stock prices, aggregately represented by the index, should reflect the fair value of the listed companies. However in reality the price does not always accurately mirror the fair value due to the nature of the price determination or price discovery itself. But in normal situation, there prevails in the market a mechanism that allows correction to happen “guiding” the price back to its fair market value. What exactly this fair value and how it is determined is another discussion. But we could say here that when the price is getting too high it will be “forced” to come down and vice versa. It’s a matter of timing. However certain situation might arise that the correction is being put on hold. This would result in an even bigger correction than it should be. The liquidity shock stemmed from hot money is one example of the situations. Instead of moving in accordance with the changes in fundamental conditions of the companies, price is now largely moved by the liquidity.

Let us take JCI as an illustration. In May 23, 2007, JCI set its highest record at 2.104 after previously creating new a series of high records. For the first 5 months of 2007 (up to May 23) JCI has grown by 16.6%. Meanwhile, the economy only grew by 5.4% p.a. for the first quarter of 2007 or 1.35% for 3 months. We obviously could not do a par-to-par comparison on the index and the economic growth because the index or stock price is based on the ongoing-concern assumption. But the discrepancy between the index growth and the economic growth in itself has been already quite big. It is even bigger should we consider the JCI past performance in 2006 that stood at 55% making it the 3rd best performer worldwide after China and Russia. Therefore, the 5-months performance in 2007 cannot be the continuation of any correction that should have happened in 2006. This discrepancy might even get worse if we take into consideration the problems in real sector that has made the real sector fall behind the financial sector. JCI seems to have been pulled off its root i.e. the fair value of the companies.

It is therefore plausible to argue that Indonesia is currently experiencing a bubble. This bubble phenomenon apparently is not the monopoly of Indonesia. Some other Asian countries particularly China are undergoing similar situation. Shanghai SE A Share Index grew phenomenally by 112% in 2006 and 56% for the first 5 month of 2007. But perhaps China should be seen as a different case from Indonesia. The bubble here in Indonesia is due to the hot money inflow flooding the market with excess liquidity and the effect of the US stock market performance. According to Bank Indonesia (BI), the central bank, in April 2007 around Rp 45 trillion foreign funds are invested in SBI (a sort of treasury bills), Rp 77 trillion invested in bonds and Rp 5.6 trillion invested in stock. BI also estimates that a total of US$10 billion (Rp 90 trillion) of short-term funds may leave the country any time from now. This amount comprises US$1.5 billion in SBI, US$5.5 billion in bonds and US$3 billion in stock. It is a huge amount for Indonesian market. The average daily trading volume of stock in Jakarta Stock Exchange in 2006 was only around Rp 2 trillion and the average daily trading volume of bonds in SSE was about Rp 3 trillion. This small trading volume is corresponding to the small market capitalization. The market capitalization of the Indonesian stock market now is ranging from Rp 1,200 – 1,400 trillion and the market capitalization of the bond market in 2006 was around Rp 470 trillion. It is considerably small compared to other stock market in the region. For instance, the market capitalization of Hong Kong stock market in the end of 2006 was US$ 1,715 billion (Rp15.435 trillion) and the Singapore stock market was US$ 393 billion (Rp3.537 trillion). Accordingly, it is easy to see how the hot money would affect the market with the size as small as Indonesian.

So, should we just sit there and watch the bubble burst out by itself? The current monetary system does not leave much room for the government to mitigate the risk i.e. the liquidity risk. Under the current system, the government has a limited control on the flow of funds coming in and going out of the country. Hot money is the phenomenon of the free market with the free-floating currency regime that indicates how vulnerable the financial market of a country can be. The most vulnerable of all is the emerging markets. Hot money put our financial market and economy at the mercy of the foreign (hedge) fund managers with million of asset under management.

Regardless of whether the phenomenon of hot money this time will trigger another crisis similar to the one in 1997 – 1998 or not, a huge and short-term funds flow could drift the prices away from the fair value of their underlying assets and thus create instability in the financial market and possibly the economy. The hot money flow ought to be kept in check. It is certainly not an easy job but obviously something has to be done.

The "Creative" Nothingness

2007-05-23T01:16:00.000+07:00

I have got some interesting questions from Emanuel Bria, a Whiteheadian from East Timor ;-), in regards with my previous posting “Welcoming the Nothingness”. They are so intriguing that I decided to put the answers in a new posting.

I never really think of comparing Heidegger with Whitehead. So I am not sure if I could answer the questions correctly because first of all I don’t know much about Whitehead’s thoughts. Secondly, I am still very much confused about Heidegger’s thoughts. Thus, answering these questions is like walking in the dark … marching into the realm of Nothingness ;-) …

1. The idea of lethe as a "movement", reminds me to Whiteheadian "Creativity". It has no ontological status but "there is" (quite paradoxal isn't it?). For a thing to exist two conditions are necessary (1) Physical pole; (2) conceptual one. And "Creativity" has neither of them. How about this Heideggerian "lethe"?

Lethe = creativity? Well, let’s see what Whitehead said in Process and Reality about creativity: "It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity. . . . The many become one, and are increased by one."

The catch is on the word “creativity” which suggests a process of creation. I have some questions about this. What is this "complex unity"? Is it something different and new from the “many”? Are the many and the one are of the same genus? What is the relationship between Creativity as the ultimate principle on the one hand and the many and the one on the other hand? I am not clear either with what “there is” here means and whether we could compare it with Heidegger's explanation about Being as “there is” in On Time and Being.

Meanwhile, Heidegger described lethe as a horizon from which things/beings emerge and to which beings rest. So it does not create beings or make it appear. It is actually Ereignis that allows beings to appear within our field of vision (see Discourse on Thought). This Ereignis appropriates Being and beings to their own most. If lethe then appears as a “movement”, it is, in my opinion, because of this Ereignis.

So, can Ereignis be associated with Whiteheadian Creativity then? I am not sure because Ereignis does not create something new, as the one come from the many as in Whitehead’s thoughts. It simply appropriates (Being and beings). Unfortunately there is not much can be derived from Ereignis except that it appropriates. This is so typical Heidegger to say of something as if it was already very clear while it is actually not ;-). But let’s say we accept what he said about that for the sake of argument. In From Enownment, Contribution to Philosophy, he said Ereignis is actually Being that holds sway. To compare it with Whitehead's thoughts, we need to be clear about the nature of Creativity and its relationship to the one and the many.

What Ereignis appropriates is the so-called belonging-together (Zusammengehörigkeit) of Being and beings. Being and beings are not the same, not of the same genus obviously if we could even say that, but they belong together. Between Being and beings there stands this famous ontological difference that forever cannot be bridged. In contrast, the one in Whitehead's thoughts comes from the many.

2. From your example about the shift in perspective of the idea of Being, can we say that "lethe" is similar to the moment of unknowness? If yes, then the category applies here is epistemological rather than ontological. Am I right?

If it is asked how we know that lethe “exists”, then yes it might be an epistemological issue in a sense that we know something is never fully disclosed when it "appears" differently throughout history. But this is where the importance of time in Heidegger’s thoughts sets in. It has got to do with the meaning of Being as presencing with temporal character as opposed to presence which is traditionally understood as something ever-present, constant, unchanging. Being discloses itself (or we can say Being gives itself) in an epochal way. By saying this Heidegger was injecting a sense of historicity to the meaning of Being.

Therefore, it is not simply an epistemological category because (at one point of time) there is no telling about what there is to know or yet to know or whether we could know it or not. Being is hidden not because we have or do not have knowledge about it but because it is the way Being discloses itself. It discloses itself in history which Heidegger called the history of Being. This way, Heidegger is saying goodbye to the never-changing, absolute, Idea of Plato.

This is as far as I understand ... or misunderstood ;-)

The Being-Thrown of Ayn Rand

2007-04-18T00:41:00.000+07:00

I was quite startled to find out that a 1991-polling placed Atlas Shrugged as "the second-most influential book (after the Bible) for Americans". Atlas Shrugged is one of Ayn Rand’s novels. Seriously? Are Americans that capitalistic, individualistic?

Ayn Rand is not an economist but with her philosophy which she calls objectivism, she is described by one article as "the modern fountainhead of laissez-faire capitalism.” She is also described “as an impassioned, uncompromising, and unapologetic proponent of reason, liberty, individualism, and rational self-interest."

She fervently criticizes altruism. For her, the highest form of happiness is fulfilling one's own dreams, not someone else's – or the public's. She sees man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

It is usually very easy to attack too-radical-thoughts. I am not going over details about her philosophy for I have not read much of her books. But perhaps by reading her books (mostly novels) we could understand Americans much better (a smiley sign here). I seldom heard her thoughts being discussed here in STF Driyarkara or in Indonesia. Perhaps they don’t regard her as an important philosopher as the Americans do.

I have not read Atlas Shrugged though I have the book at home. I also have The Fountainhead. My friend Dede has given me those books ages ago. He even gave me The Fountainhead twice because he forgot that he actually has already given me that book once. I must have looked like I desperately needed to read the book. Do I look like an “objectivist”? Or do I look like a lost capitalist who needs to repent?

But I have read Anthem, Rand’s other novel. In that book, she criticizes communalism, totalitarianism, and at the same time passionately promotes individualism. However, I find that her criticism is rather too extreme. She is overdoing it. Perhaps it has got something to do with her life experience. She was a Russian native who ran away to the States years ago when Russia / USSR was still very much a communistic country. Her extreme reaction against communism, totalitarianism and her strong beliefs in individualism are therefore understandable.

Don’t we all always think or philosophize from our situatedness, our being-thrown-in-the-world? This is how I perceive later Heidegger as a rather too-extreme “correction” to early Heidegger after the Nazi event. But does it mean we are always determined by our situatedness? What does this determination mean if so?

Welcoming the Nothingness

2007-04-06T13:25:00.000+07:00

Aren’t we all afraid of standing before the nothing or shall we say it nothingness? We, the so-called modern people, love to get ourselves busy in order to escape from the quest about the nothingness. But in Heidegger’s thought, nothingness is very crucial. Heidegger’s preoccupation with the nothing become an important theme that bridges his early and later work and serves to characterize his unique approach to philosophy [Basic Writings, 93]. But wait the minute, how could we deal with or question the nothingness if it is nothing at all? What is nothingness? Is it even possible to question the nothingness?

First of all, the nothingness is not the “not thing” or the negation. According to Heidegger, we know the nothingness when we are anxious. The nothingness is revealed by anxiety. In Being and Time, Heidegger says that anxiety is different from fear in a way that the object or cause of anxiety is never clear and definitive. We get anxious when standing before something dark, mysterious, or unknown. However, dealing with nothingness is actually the same as dealing with Being, says Heidegger because “pure Being and pure Nothingness are the same” [Basic Writings, 110]. Interrogating the nothing - asking what and how it, the nothing is – turns what is interrogated into its opposite. The question of the nothingness puts us, the questioners, in question. It is a metaphysical question. It is a question about Being.

We know how important the term aletheia which basically means the openness, disclosedness or unconcealedness of Being to Heidegger’s thought. It is impossible to talk about aletheia without talking about “lethe” which is the hidden, the concealed, the undisclosed part/aspect of aletheia because the word aletheia itself consists of two words these are “a” and “lethe”. This lethe is what remains hidden when Being is disclosed. Consequently, Being is never fully disclosed. Whenever Being discloses or gives itself (or appropriated by Ereignis), at the same time Being also conceals or withdraws itself. Heidegger even claims that what is concealed is more original than what is disclosed or unconcealed.

Then how do we deal with nothingness or the nothing? In Being and Time, Heidegger calls us to question Being. However in later Heidegger, apparently the more appropriate action or attitude is to welcome or to be friend with the unknown, the mystery. Nothingness is not something that we could or should conquer by disclosing everything or by grounding everything to reason. With mystery Heidegger refers to something that is beyond our calculative, representational thinking. How do we do it? We should be waiting in silence, contemplating about what closest to us and most importantly letting being be (Gelassenheit). With this, Heidegger is saying goodbye to philosophy of willing.

Ah, sounds so mystical. Though he refuses being labeled as a mystic saying that mysticism is a flight from thinking, his later thinking and his “closeness” to Meister Eckhart, one of the great German mystics, tell us otherwise. But whatever the label is, I think what Heidegger is trying to do is to give room to the unknown, the mystery which the modern people tend to ignore or even dislike. I myself hate being in the dark not knowing what's going on. I don't like the uncertainty. But life is so full of mystery, uncertainty, the unknown. We are already thrown into that kind of life. Guess, we just have to make peace with it by welcoming the mystery as the interesting element of life.

Happy Good Friday!

For The Next Two Years

2007-04-01T14:44:00.000+07:00

For the next two years, Warsun will have to take care his only daughter, Rola, when Yuni, his wife, is in Singapore to work as a foreign domestic worker. Yuni is currently still doing the training in Jakarta. Warsun does not really like that idea. Why is that? “Because I will have to do all of the chores. I will have to wash the clothes. And, I will have to help my mother selling the mendoan”, said the 37-years-old man. Life is not easy when the wife is not around, isn’t it Mas Warsun?

But it is not all exciting either for Yuni who had worked in the Middle East three times before trying her luck in Singapore this time. Of those three times working in the Middle East, only once she managed to bring her salary home because two of her ex employers there did not pay her salary after all the hard work she had done for them. She said the family that she worked for in the Middle East got houses as big as a football field and had so many family members. Did those employers get busted for not paying her salary? You bet they did not.

Nevertheless these experiences never stop her from trying again. In fact, she is still very much determined to work overseas. To her, being a successful foreign domestic worker is a matter of luck. It never occurs to her that it is her right to get protected, to demand the salary she earns. Perhaps she has never heard that by law (UU No. 39 / 2004) the government is obliged to protect Indonesian migrant workers while working overseas. Apparently, many foreign domestic workers from Pekaja, Kali Bagor, Banyumas also subscribe to this point of view. Their only hope is to be lucky that is they get good employers. They do no have so much faith in the government, don’t they?

So despite her painful past experiences as a foreign domestic worker, Yuni has set her mind to go to Singapore. Given her education level (junior high school) and Indonesian high unemployment rate, being a foreign domestic worker does not seem to be much of an option to her. She basically follows the examples set by people around her like her own mother, her mother in-law, her relatives, her friends in the village who had gone overseas to work as foreign domestic workers. As a part-time construction worker, her husband does not make much money. Her husband’s mother, with her mendoan business helps them with their daily meals and housing. But obviously they also have other needs and Yuni who had once earned money on her own feels the need to have her own money. They have already sold the motor bike that they bought from her only one-time success working in the Middle East. They need money now. Yuni said she wants to use the money to renovate the kitchen, to pay for the bills, to pay for Rola’s education and buy other stuffs. So it’s time to go.

Unfortunately for the next two years Yuni will have to leave Rola at home, her daughter who turns 8 this April and already misses so many years being with her mother. I am not sure what Rola really feels this time. Yuni first left her when she was 4 months old. But she is big enough now to feel and understand the absence of a mother. Perhaps Rola hates the situation. Or perhaps she is growing accustomed to not having her mother around. But for Yuni, it is a dreadful situation. The guilt is so much to bear. But I don't know what else to do, said the 24-years-old woman quietly.

The sad thing is, she is not sure when she will stop doing this because the money she earns will only be enough to feed her family for maybe 2 or 3 years apart from the renovation. She will have to work 253 days per year (she only gets 1 day off per month in Singapore) for the next two years to bring home Rp 17 million (US$ 1,900) after taking into account the 8-months salary deduction. She knows she will need to do at least another period after the current one. If only she knows how to manage the money into a productive/income-generating activity, maybe 2 periods are enough. But for the time being, Warsun has to wash the clothes for the next two years …

Glossolalics

2007-03-19T18:45:00.000+07:00

Thomas Sheehan of Stanford University coined the term “glossolalics” (analogous to alcoholics) referring to the addiction to terms / glossary by the so called Heideggerians. Oh I like the term! It perfectly pictures the overwhelming difficulties one is having when dealing with Heidegger’s new or newly invented terms. It is so overwhelming that Sheehan cynically said that Heideggerians tend to pay too much attention on the glossary: “Heideggerians seem to have abandoned philosophy to become a glossolalics who think the same thought without need of speech and babble the same speech without need of meaning”. He even added that it was not only the outsiders (non-Heideggerians) that did not understand what we (the Heideggerians) were talking about, “there is a growing suspicion that we don’t either.” Oops!!

Though Sheehan’s comments really nail the head, the Heideggerians are not to be blamed. I think it is simply inevitable because Heidegger’s main ideas are centered around those new terms: Being, Dasein, Ereignis, Geviert, Gelassenheit, Austrag, Abgründ, etc. I believe the problem lies not so much on the new terms themselves because anyway Heidegger still uses human languages despite his efforts to find the originary meanings of the words. He digs up some ancient Greek words and creates new German words. The thing is he hardly gives clear, distinct definitions of the words. Even if he does, the meaning often changes or being redefined throughout his scattered essays or writings. This has created so many interpretations over the ambiguous meanings.

He, of course, realized this difficulty. He defended himself calling his works not “works” but “ways”. But these “ways” have given me hard time. So not only one has to deal with ambiguous meaning of the words but s/he also has to figure out these confusing ways of Heidegger. And things are even harder for someone like me who has to write her thesis in Indonesian. I wrote a thesis on later Heidegger focusing on Dasein as the clearing site of Being to find out about the relationship between man and Being. Since I have never seen any books on later Heidegger written in Indonesian, I had to find or reinvent new Indonesian words, new terms. Believe me, this was a tremendous task! Moreover, I do not read Heidegger’s works in German. Well, even if I did, I don’t think it would have been so helpful because the words are not the everyday German. I often find different English words for the same German word because they were translated by different translators. I got lost in translation.

After a long struggle, I managed to finish my long overdue thesis two weeks ago. It took me almost 4 years to finish it before I get kicked out of the school, STF Driyarkara. I was supposed to sit for the exam next month. Well, I don’t care about the exam. I hate exams. I am just hoping that my Indonesian terms do not stray way too far from its original meaning. In fact, I do not dare to ask whether they express what Heidegger really meant with those terms. I try to focus more on Heidegger’s ideas instead of those mind-boggling terms. But I am afraid I just joined the forces, become the glossolalics myself. Do I really know what I write? So what is Being? Who is Dasein?

How Much Money Does She Actually Make?

2007-03-12T12:57:00.000+07:00

Her name is Sumirah, a mendoan seller from Pekaja, Kali Bagor, Banyumas. She makes the best mendoan (snack made of fermented soybeans or known as tempe) I have ever had in my life. But she does not quite know how much money she makes. Or so I thought ... perhaps I was wrong ...

I went to Banyumas, the hometown of mendoan to accompany Chi Yin, a journalist from Straits Times Singapore, to write some reports on domestic migrant workers. We were staying at Sumirah's house because her daughter in-law, Yuni, was leaving to Singapore to be a domestic worker that week.

Sumirah wakes up at 2 am in the morning to make mendoan so that she could sell them at around 5 – 6 am. This morning session will last at about 8 am. She would then start the second batch of mendoan making at around 2 pm which would normally end at around 5 – 6 pm. As a business owner, she has already established her loyal customers who are basically her own neighbors. Every morning and evening they come to her kitchen. The transactions take place in there. Her other customers are the school kids. In the morning, Yuni takes the mendoan to the kiosks near the schools. Yuni also goes door to door to sell mendoan. As she is now in Jakarta doing some training to be a TKI in Singapore, the mother in-law would need someone else (and that would be her son, Yuni’s husband I suppose) to do what she used to do. The business must go on, mustn’t it?

In between those 2 sessions she sometimes helps her husband taking care of some plants like chilly, peanuts and tapioca in their small piece of land. Sumirah usually ends her day in front of TV before going to bed at around 9 pm. There goes her daily activities, 7 days a week. She hardly takes a day off because a day off means no mendoan which means no money for the day. This is not something that she can afford because she is the breadwinner to whom the whole family including her son’s family depends on. She has to work every day, 10 – 13 hours a day, 7 days a week. Besides mendoan, she also makes other kinds of snacks like bakwan (fried vegetables), tahu isi (tofu stuffed with vegetables), meniran (rice cooked with coconut milk) or buntil (tapioca leaves cooked with coconut milk). They all taste so good.

Fired with the spirit to start up a microfinance program soon, I could not help but wondering how much money she actually makes after all the hard work. So there I was sitting in her kitchen asking her questions about her business. The mendoan (and other snacks) was priced at Rp 250 each. To find out about the revenue was an easy task. Her daily sales turnover was Rp 140.000. The problem arose when I asked her about the cost. She could not tell me. So I tried to calculate the cost by listing down the main ingredients which consisted of tempe (fermented soybeans), flour, some spices and coconut oil. Then I asked her the quantity and the price of each item to multiply and add them up to get the so called “cost of good sold”. To my surprise, I found out that the cost exceeded the revenue. Instead of making money, she actually lost money.

I told her about my finding and she just smiled at me. She did not seem to be bothered. Perhaps she thought I was just a smart-ass city folk who had no idea about this mendoan business. Or perhaps I simply got it wrong. I had a feeling that something was wrong with the information she gave me. It must have been either the coconut oil or flour. 10 liter of coconut oil or 10 kg of flour a day was rather too much for her sales turnover. Even if they were for 2 days of consumptions, the number would still be red.

It was such a simple calculation. Yet I could not figure it out. Where does my 10 years working experience as a fund manager go? This time I hope my calculation is wrong because otherwise she would need to increase the price. She actually mentioned to me about this possibility saying that people sold mendoan at Rp 500 in the nearest town. However she dares not to do it because she would lose her customers. But why bother doing business if you are losing money? So I really hope my calculation is wrong.

Anyway, she has been doing her job for 2 years now. She wouldn't survive that long if she keeps on losing money, would she? Well, perhaps I should have gotten up at 2 am, watched her doing her thing and done my own calculation. Too lazy, though.

Know Your Status!

2006-11-30T18:24:00.000+07:00

That's what he said in that campaign. "I know my status, what about you?", he challenged the audience. Yes, Rodrick knew his status long time ago. He has been living with HIV for 16 years. That status has changed his life forever. It wasn't easy in the beginning as he admitted. Definitely not. It took him years before finally accepted his status. He made peace with life 6 years ago.

Knowing our status i.e. whether or not we have HIV/AIDS is certainly a frightening, heart-wrecking thing to do. But living with HIV/AIDS without knowing it is far more terrifying. We could endanger our loved ones. And I guess the most terrifying thing of all is to let others know that we have HIV/AIDS. Rodrick has been through all those stages. He even takes thing further by deliberately telling people everywhere about his status in order to help them. He is now actively involved in Treatment Action Campaign, or known as TAC, an organisation that raises awareness and helps people with HIV/AIDS to get proper treatment.

Rodrick is the first HIV positive person I have ever met. I did not expect to see someone like him. He was nothing close to what I imagined how someone with HIV/AIDS should have looked like. He is so full of life and so fun to be with. He is also an excellent public speaker! Though sometimes he gets annoyed quite easily ;-). Rodrick shows me that HIV or AIDS should not stop someone from living a normal life or enjoying things that life offers. He loves dancing. He likes partying. He took us to some parties. We chilled out in Long Street, Capetown. He also cooked for us when Marina and Gladman, my beloved host family, threw a party. He does get tired quite easily but he certainly knows how to enjoy life. He wants to come to Indonesia. Someday, Rodrick! In short, he's living a normal life.

I am sure there are stages in life that one has to go through before accepting things that they cannot change. Those stages can be very difficult. And, those difficult, trying stages can be very long. Life may not be the same again but it is not the end of the world. I know this is easier said than done. But perhaps, like other kind of hardship in life, it would give us a chance to grow stronger and wiser. Perhaps it would also inspire others like what Rodrick has done to many and certainly to me. Dankie baia, Rodrick!

1 December 2006 is AIDS' day

Samora Woman

2006-11-26T23:23:00.000+07:00

It was one afternoon in Samora, a township in Western Cape, South Africa. I was sitting, waiting for the TB & HIV/AIDS campaign to start when this lady with her long, bright, pink skirt caught my eyes. Samora is a place for black South African. It's less than half an hour drive from Capetown. Apartheid has long gone but surprisingly people are still flocking based on their colours. Certain areas are dominated by white people and others are dominated by either black or coloured people. I hate using this term but you cannot help it when you are in South Africa. Somehow colours seem still matter to them. But I guess this area segregation is mostly due to the economy conditions and the land/property prices. Many black people could not afford houses in expensive areas. So, Samora is a "black area". And, you don't just go and wander around in areas like that. It is not safe, so I was told. I wasn't really afraid but Rodrick, that loving HIV/AIDS activist, watched over my back closely while we were there. He never let me off his sight. Well, it is always wise to listen to the locals, isn't it?

Viva Condoms

2006-11-05T00:56:00.000+07:00

Yes, it's a picture of a condom. For those who recognize it, yes it is the national flag of the Republic of South Africa (RSA). It was one of the many interesting posters about HIV/AIDS that I saw in day hospital in Mitchell's Plain, Western Cape, South Africa. I was startled to see how candid and straightforward that poster was. One could also easily spot other interesting and creative posters, billboards, pamphlets or other campaigning tools for fighting HIV/AIDS in the streets of Western Cape, in the buildings, public places or even churches. Another billboard on the street says "HIV/AIDS loves skin to skin". They must be really serious about fighting HIV/AIDS. How could they not be if approximately 5,3 million out of 43 million people of South Africa are currently living with HIV/AIDS?

But, a condom wrapped with a national flag? Aren't they being a little too serious about it? A national flag is a symbol of a country. It is associated with respect, heroism, nobility, pride. There are even certain rules and regulation on how to treat the flag that one may get punished for violating the rules. And, what is a condom? A condom symbolizes a very private matter between 2 individuals which is not much talked openly in public i.e. sex. In this case, a condom is a symbol of protection from getting HIV/AIDS. So when a condom and a national flag are put together what exactly does it tell us? Firstly, an immersion between a private and a public matter just took place. Condoms now become a public issue. Secondly, it simply shows how serious the people of RSA that they are all, as represented by the flag, involved in dealing with the HIV/AIDS problem. I don't even dare to dream of seeing such kind of poster in Indonesia. Why?

It goes without saying that condoms mean sex. In many countries like Indonesia, sex is very much still regarded as a taboo that any discussions about it are better kept tightly in the closet. One may argue that it would be far unnecessary to make such a poster here in Indonesia because the percentage of people who are living HIV/AIDS is almost nothing compared the RSA. The official number indicates that there are only about 130,000 people out of 225 million who are HIV/AIDS positive. Also, the majority of people living with HIV/AIDS here in Jakarta got infected through drugs injections instead of sexual intercourse. But the figure, like other (official) figures, is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps we should stop deceiving ourselves that we would never be like any African countries when it comes to HIV/AIDS. (Or other issues like environmental destruction, poverty, hunger, etc.) What makes us so special that we think we will not be like them if we do not start taking things seriously?

Nevertheless, I agree that perhaps that kind of poster would be way too provocative for most Indonesians. The socio-political cost to have that kind of poster hanging in public places would probably outweigh the benefits. There is a possibility that it may even rouse a social unrest should the conservative, puritan groups decide to blow up the issue. So, the question is how the Indonesians do the campaign about sexual diseases? It is certainly a problematic issue in itself. There are always other benign, subtle, tactful ways of doing the campaign but we could not possibly talk about preventing sexual diseases (particularly HIV/AIDS) without involving condoms in conversation. The thing is, promoting condoms to unmarried couples or teenagers might be seen as endorsing free sex. In country like Indonesia where sex is firmly tied with morality, this would raise some problems. Some people may argue that condoms would be unnecessary if only people stay faithful to their spouses. Yes, but there is a "big if" in that argument. If all people behave the way they should, the world would be so free of problems. Last time I check, the world is not like that. Another reality check shows that a lot of singles and teenagers in Indonesian big cities are no longer the way they used to be years ago.

Promoting condoms in Indonesia is obviously not an easy thing. It has a lot to do with cultural and moral values. But should we blind ourselves with false hope that everyone is so religious and of high moral standard that s/he would never do pre- or extra-marital sex? Or should we start seeing the face of reality and deal with it? The point is not about having that sacred red-and-white flag wrapped a condom. It is about the attitude in dealing with the problems. Would we dare to claim that we have been truthful and realistic in dealing with the many problems that we have as the South Africans are doing with HIV/AIDS?

Nelson Mandela : "Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it, because [that is] the only way to make it appear like a normal illness."

Being Thrown

2006-10-21T00:59:00.000+07:00

So I am here ... but so what?
How would I be otherwise?
Who else could I be?
Who could tell if there are other tales?

What's left but walking the chosen path
in a realm that is most obscure to logic
whose edge shaping the silhoutte of life
that has been forever longing
to be fulfilled and understood

What's left but dancing to the rhythm
that rips the will off its stiffness
delivering it to the game of life
that has been eternally yearning
to be played and savoured

So I am here ... but so what?
And so what ... if I am here

Li- Jakarta, 21/10/06