Indonesia travels

Photodocumentation and some final words

2007-09-22T15:35:00.000-07:00

A map showing my journey through Southeast Sulawesi -- flying into Kendari via Makasar from Bali, taking a boat to Bau Bau, then driving to La Bundo Bundo, going to Rumba Rumba via Kendari by boat and van, and then Rumba Rumba to Ampeua via Kendari and Bau Bau by a van and three boats.

“Bali”
Documentation of the many incarnations of the gamelan performances, the streets of Denpasar, and the monkey forest.
http://yale.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061064&l=c00c8&id=304898

“Jungle Training”
My first week with Operation Wallacea was spent doing jungle training in the Lambusango Forest. Our first days’ hike took us through six streams, which was an unwelcome site after we had all been cautioned against “Monkey Feet,” a sort of trench foot that comes of having perpetually wet feet that afflicted the jungle training group that had ventured out two weeks prior. We were not daunted by the rivers by the fourth day, and fortunately none of us got monkey feet.
Our first camp site was set up with hammocks and mosquito nets and waterproof bashas for each of us. It rained and the camp became a muddy mess. It was unfortunate that my group’s fire was positioned along a major point of circulation--we collected large puddles around our fire site. We never did succeed in lighting a fire without our guide’s help. Wet wood is hard to deal with and our skills with the all purpose parang (a knife for cooking, chopping, gardening) were feeble enough to prevent us from cutting into any larger pieces of wood that would have some chances of being dry, and sometimes feeble enough to merit three stitches.
We helped our guide build a ratan shelter at the second camp site out of trees and ratan. Ratan is a ferocious plant with spikes down the center of the stem and in two rows along the sides of the stem and with fine spines along each of the palm leaves, but it is very useful for making waterproof roofs, baskets, and bracelets, maybe even for telecommunications.
We returned to the hammocks for the third camp site. The first camp site was cleared of all trees except those that were most logically available for hanging up hammocks. We had to pick our own trees at the third camp site. Somebody’s tree fell down in the middle of the night.
Each morning we went on a bird walk and each night we had a lecture from Henry about the forest. The five “sexiest” animals of the Lambusango forest are “hornbills, tarsiers, macaques, cuscus, and anoa.” I have seen all but the anoa, frightening enough for the guides to climb a tree when seeing one, elusive enough that people coming to the forest for ten years have spotted an anoa bottom running away once.
http://yale.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061143&l=e656c&id=304898

"La Bundo Bundo”
I stayed in and around La Bundo Bundo for four weeks returning each Wednesday night and staying Thursday, but venturing out one week to a node camp by a village called Sumber Sari and another week to stay at a farmhouse owned by La Musalili, a guide who also owned a house in La Bundo Bundo.
The family I stayed with had a mother Nia who owned a shop where everything could be found so long as you asked – thread, envelopes, pens, chocolate, petrol, garlic. Nia was involved in all sorts of entrepreneurial activities—there was a market of second hand clothes from the big city from various decades for a week and someone came to sell cosmetics.
She had a little baby named Iful, who may have learned to walk while we were there. He was very efficient at skidding around the floor with his asymmetric crawl and had a true awe of the universe.
There was a twelve year old boy named Fadli who sometimes stayed in a nearby village to go to school and sometimes was in La Bundo Bundo. There was a party one night that could have been his graduation ceremony (that’s what someone said) to which the head man was invited and lots of other people and Fadli bowed down and touched his head to the hands’ of the men of the village. We witnessed the death of a chicken for the occasion. Fadli drew some pictures of birds for me and he taught me Indonesian-by-drawing and we played chess. He started to ride a motorcycle while I was there.
There was a man who worked in Kapontori 14km away. He used to be a geogrpahy teacher and would recite various figures of American History: “ Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson” as well as dates of significance. Now he is head of some division in charge of the Lambusango Forest. He taught me how to say “I have a great brain” – “Saya punia ontok pintar”.
Our house ran a generator for some time in the evening and people gathered to watch the soap opera on the television (the theme song could be heard in Kendari and Rumba Rumba) and to play dominoes in the well-lit living room.
In La Bundo Bundo I took a bird identification course. We spotted 70 species of birds, 30 of which are found only in Sulawesi.
http://yale.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061149&l=d93cd&id=304898

“Rumba Rumba”
A place of very friendly people and itchy itchy spots and sickly sickly kittens and pearl farms and great great adventure.
http://yale.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061190&l=4523c&id=304898

I don’t know why so many Indonesian words have repetitions
Sometimes plurarity – “anak””child”, “anak-anak” “children”
Sometimes extremes – “pagi” “morning”, “pagi-pagi” “early morning”
Sometimes confusion – “hati” “liver” (according to the phrasebook), “hati-hati” “careful”
Sometimes built-in, like these place name – “La Bundo Bundo”, “Rumba Rumba”, “Bau Bau”, “Wangi Wangi”
I have taken to repeating English words too.

“Ampeua”
We each had our own rooms and a bathroom with pleasing light from a skylight and mosquito nets with lacy patterns of giraffes eating from trees – luxury.
http://yale.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061193&l=6af1b&id=304898

"Flora and Fauna"
Birds, beautiful iridescence, spiders, seed pods. Nature is the best artist
http://yale.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061204&l=463d9&id=304898

2007-08-29T06:22:00.001-07:00

For those of you who have not completely abandoned checking my blog despite nearly seven weeks of inactivity. I have my first internet access since Bali (apparently Operation Wallacea does not have internet access).
There have been many fascinating experiences -- too much to report -- so I will start with the most recent events. I am just spending a night in Kendari on mainlaind southeast Sulawesi after spending the last two weeks in Rumba-Rumba in SE Sulawesi and the five weeks before that in Buton. I am en route to Kaledupa (one of the Wakatobi islands) tomorrow via a couple of long boat rides.

I was in Rumba Rumba with the rest of the bird team - Nicola Marples and Dave Kelly supervise the project and are both English though they live in giants. They are both over six feet tall which means that most Indonesians come up somewhere a little over their waist (I am already towering above most Indonesians). There are four other students helping out - two from the US (Arianna and Larissa), one from England (Louis), and one from Ireland named Keith. And there is a whole crew of people to help us Henry (a bird guide from Java), Tasman a guide from La Bundo Bundo (the town where I was staying off and on for the five weeks previous), two drivers, Doctor Bakti (from Jakarta), and a local guide from Rumba Rumba named Junaid.
For the first week I was going out with Keith and Henry at 4:30am to record the dawn chorus and than joining the rest of the team for mist netting from around 6:30am to 10am.
Then we have a long period of inactivity till 3pm which has given me time to practice Indonesian, play scrabble, and watch and play lots of chess. All of the forest guides play chess and the whole town of La Bundo Bundo as well as most of Rumba Rumba seems to play, but only the men. I have what I call chess "practice" with Henry and Tasman (a name given to dignify consistent losses) and sometimes even more theoretical lessons with Dave Kelly who is unbeatable by any of the Indonesians (and whose father played blind chess - aha genetic consistencies). There is also a lot of card playing which I am less of a fan of.

We stayed in the headman's house and the house next door -- an invasion which I don't really understand how it is arranged. Somehow they liberate four bedrooms for us to sleep in and all sleep in one room and they cook meals for us (always fish and rice with variations - noodles, eggs, sauces, and pineapple and watermelon). I have been having rice two and often three times a day everyday since departing Bali seven weeks ago. Even though they get paid, hosting us is a level of generosity and inconvenience that I can not imagine would ever occur in the US. I think we are the first non-Japanese foreigners to come to Rumba Rumba in remembered history. The Japanese come to buy the pearls they farm in the bay right off of the coast. The head man has eleven children ranging in ages from six to women who seem to have children nearing six years old themselves. There are always masses of children hanging about -- playing marbles, climbing in the truck, running to and fro.
The women of the house have taken a great fondness to me, which they don't really show to any of the other students or Dave and Nicola. I don't quite know why this is.

Possibilities:
1) My name is an international name which I am quite grateful for and everyone in the town seems to know it before I have seen them (whereas they cannot pronounce the 'th' in Keith).
2) I have dimples ('lesum pipi' cheek holes) and one of the doctors in La Bundo Bundo who I would spend time with and who is from Sumatra said "Indonesian men like dimples"
3) I have attempted to speak Indonesian with them which often involves drawing maps and making pictures of family to establish relationships. I really enjoy spending time in this way though I think it has given the impression that I have a full understanding of Indonesian and they will just talk to me in Indeonsian and I won't understand anything, but try to look agreeable anyway (perhaps a bad idea).
4) I smile and laugh a lot since that's what Indonesians do and everything is better when you do. When we went to the wrong net site and Tasman carried a whole bunch of bamboo poles the whole way he just laughed, whereas I can see the same situation being met with annoyance or cursing by another culture.

The women will often pat me and say who knows what to me (it seems friendly) and took me on a tour of their village walking arm in arm (women holding hands with woman and men holding hands with men often in a very sensual way is the norm here). I felt even more of a spectacle than the normal walk to the pier or appearance out of the house. Larissa has been asked for her t-shirts and sleeping bag and sleeping mat and shorts as "ole-ole" (which we eventually figured out to be souvenirs). Which has made for a strange contrast (I was only asked for my sandals on the last day). Everyone wanted to have photos taken with us and we will send the prints later.

We had two occassions for "species accumulation" venturing out of the usual brush habitats where we catch white eyes and sunbirds and babblers and monarchs and other generally small and twittery things ("Tomi-Tomi" in La Bundo and "Cu-Cui" in Rumba Rumba they are called).
The first expedition was Henry, Junaid, Dr.Bakti, Keith, and me. We began around 6:30am and didn't get back till 4:30 foraging new paths through the jungle. Have some moderate navigational challenges in navigation (we go up a cliff, we go back down the cliff, we cannot see the sun so we consult the GPS). The journey included a lot of crouching under bamboo groves, gripping onto trees going up rather vertical hill faces, climbing down huge rocks, through a dry river valley, going across some rivers (some by wading others with bridges constructed by Junaid), a dramatic fall down some rocks by the doctor (he just laughed though it looked painful), encounters with a plant that had a burning sensation even the next day), a wash in a stream, and a long walk through towns near Rumba Rumba where four foot holes in the road were being filled in by tractors. Lots of hornbills sited since there were lots of huge trees. "Chapek, chapek" "tired, tired" they said when we got back. Junaid smiled the whole way, but he two was tired. I think we must have walked/climbed over 20km. A real jungle trek (and the most extreme).

The second expedition was with Henry, Junaid, Dr. Bakti, Louis, and me in a little little boat across the bay (perhaps about six inches from the top of the water to the top of the boat, it did have an engince though). Henry warned that if the boat was too tippy we should jump in so our equipment didn't get wet. It threatened rain and we were thoroughly splashed the whole way there, and I closed my eyes since the salt water stung them, and my foot fell asleep and I was worried that my already pathetic swimming would suffer from an incapacitated foot, but we didn't tip over. A thrilling sea journey. We spotted some large White-bellied sea eagles and flocks of Sulawesi Crested Mynahs and the doctor and Junaid caught some fish.

Much adventure and I am surprised that I am one of the more robust participants. Who would have thought?

I start journeying home in one week. Aha!

Flora and Fauna

2007-07-11T05:10:00.000-07:00

Went to the monkey forest near Ubud where monkeys roam freely in a park with temples and come and sit on you and feast on bananas. My third encounter with a Wayan, who was a monkey keeper, and also a painter. I bought a little picture with some Indonesian birds from he. He says it's for good luck.

Chickens roam freely in the streets ("Avian flu" I say, Agus says avian flu is not a problem, but to worry about malaria). There are also roosters in woven baskets along the roadsides ready for cock fighting at the tempels.

A new fruit - salak, which has a prickly sorto of skin and which is like garlic in that it is waxy and comes in cloves, but tastes sort of sour and like pineapple.

Anna amongst the tourists

2007-07-11T04:24:00.000-07:00

I have yet to resolve the issue of uploading photographs.

I report on the excitement of July 9th. The taxi driver who I met the night before took me around all day to touristy sites, which were interesting to see, but also made me appreciate just walking and wandering all the more. I am not sure of his name, which is pretty bad since there are only four Balinese names given in order of birth (Wayan to the first, ___ to the second, Kuta to the third, ___ to the fourht, and Wayan to the fifth and around again). I believe his nickname is something like Agus, though. He calls me Arna (a fault of my introducing myself with the American a like 'that' instead of Ah-na) and includes my name in most sentences: "Nice rice paddies, Arna," "Sorry, Arna, but I am already married" (a comment that was not solicited by a marriage proposal on my part).

1) Good conquers evil
First I went to a Barong performance, full of tourists in attendance. It is one of the traditional dances accompabnied by gamelan where the barong (a good spirit) triumphs over the radanga (sp?) after the radanga possesses various royalty and servants and a son is about to be safriced. The radaange takes on the form of a bird and a warthog at various points. There was a strange end where all of the servants of the barong commit suicide and appear to be eaten by the barong. I asked Agus and he said that that was a Christian ending (language barriers could be at fault for this explanation however). Agus said that eveyrday there is a new group of gamelan players and dancers and that the gamelan performers only get paid around Rp15000 a performance and go and work in the rice fields after.

2) Hello Kitty
We went to a batik shop where you can look at women applying waxes for various batiks (they do the dying at home) and then they try to sell you batiks (in US dollars). The batiks were a strange mix of island pradise scenes, Sitas from the Ramayana, and one even had some Hello Kitty's on it.

3) Silver
We went to a silver making factory which was a family operation where they all make silver jewelery (starting from 100% silver, mixing it with copper to make 92.5% so that it is hard enough to work with, hammering it into a plate, cutting the plate into strips, pushing the strips through various graded holes to make wire, and using the wire to form beads used as filigree (sp?) which might be peligree(sp?) in Indonesian). Along with earrings and bracelets and necklaces they make amulet cases for carrying a baby's umbilical cord so that the baby can wear it until they are 2 months old for good luck.

4) More is less
We went to a large gallery displaying work by Balinese artists. I would say the best work was traditional depicitons of the Ramayana stories with very densely pact masses of people. One's impression of the "modern art," was severely diminshed by the fact that several copies of one piece would be hanging right next to each other. Wayan who was giving me a tour said "Do you understand this? I don't understand this." He was from Ubud and his father was a painter. It seems that being an artist is an employment much like any other, not some angsty calling.

5) Persistent peddlers
We went to Kintamani which is right by the volcano quite far north in Bali (the whole island is very small). Agus took me to a retaurant full of tourists with a scenic view of the volcano, but really if you look out the window you see women who gesture frantically at you trying to sell you batiks or foldable chess boards.

6) The rice paddies
We stopped at a rice paddy that seems to be THE rice paddy to stop at even though there are many many lovely terraced paddies. As soon as I got out of the car lots of children tried to come sell me this and that and I could hardly close the car door when I wanted to leave. A man working at a stall near by (who wanted to sell me a happy buddah carving) said that 100 people work in the terraced fields that are maybe 200 feet across. They have 2 harvests a year and only 500kg per harvest. Labor intensive!

7) Coffee shop
Taste testing of Balinese coffee and giner tea. Surprise, surprise they try to sell you things.

8) The monkey chant
I went to a performance of the monkey chant designed for tourists this is the Rama (?) and Sita story and something with a golden deer. Again a memorization feat! Men of many ages sat in a circle chanting and sometimes singing, waving there hands and then lying back on each other in a circle. The finale is a man who walks into a pile of flaming bananas scattering smoldering bananas all over the stage and then sitting in them. Ayaiyai.

Enough merchandise I say!

Hearty gamelan

2007-07-09T05:02:00.001-07:00

Unofortunately, I have yet to coincide having my camera cable with an internet opportunity so so far not many pictures, but hopefully the stories will soon be embelished with visuals.

I went to the Budaya Arts Center yesterday, which a woman behind the desk insisted was but a ten minute walk and five minutes by public transport. I walked in a fairly slow, extra sensory observation sort of way, but I still don't think that accounts for the hour that it took me to get there, just following one road.

There were thousands of people there, and I think I observed a total of four other white people, so I felt rather a spectacle the whole day, which made me nervous even though everyone was very friendly. Many people, especially children, at the arts center and in the street would say "hello," "what's your name?," and try to sell me things.

The arts center is having a one month long festival. It's a carnival atmosphere with many street vendors of clothing and food (cotton candy and popcorn seem to be universal carnival foods, but there was also basko - a noodle soup, various fried things, little spring rolls that were cut up and put in a paper cone, "pizza yummy," some sort of beverage concocted from various posionous looking green jellies, and corn on the cob). There are various amphitheaters with ongoing theatrics.
All of the performances had a full crowd and for many of them I had to stand around peering unsuccessfully over people's shoulders before finally some people left and I could see. People of all ages, and mostly families were there and while people talked through most of the performances, overall people were a very attentive, uncritizing audience.

1. Flat horses
The first show I saw involved first a group of girls, then men, then four little boys, riding flat horses and whipping them accompanied by a gamelan gong and drums, a narrator that seemed to be mostly saying something like "giddyup", and a reed instrument called a suling which sounds rather like a bagpipe, but I believe is a reed instrument with a funny mouthpiece (picture to come later). I beleive it was a Ramayana story since there was later a defeat of two monkey monsters and a 2D wild pig.
I was impressed by the level of memorization required of everybody. This awe is probably in part from the fact that while the dances and music are very repetitive, I don't understand the patterns organizing them, but I think it is nevertheless a feat for six year olds to perform a thirty minute piece (in unison, where any flaws in memorization are sure to stand out).

2. A social dance -
There was a social dance where girls and young women were in costume and men from the audience of all ages would come and dance and try to seduce the woman as she would coyily and coquettishly escape their advances. At points either the woman or the man would grab some bit of shrubbery from the floor and symbolically beat the other into submission (this bitting with a branch also seems to be a big part of the Ramayana story and the barong dance). There was also a lot of laughter from the audience, the cause of which I was not always certain.

3. Encounters with hokiness -
I then saw a "multimedia" perfromance that appeared to be put on by a school. I saw both a rehearsal and the final performance. There was a gamelan orchestra, which was at times joined by three electric guitars, there were dancers that seemed to be performing a fusion of traditional balinese dance (quirky squatting feet that turn in and out and which I find strikingly similar with the picture of the first performance of the Rite of Spring, hyperextended fingers that twitch back and forth, and very animated eyes) and more hokey who knows what (running with black scarves, a romantic staring into the distance and holding up of one's palms through the mist, a Busby Berkley (sp?) circle laying down and lifting up and down one's legs), and there were two young men painting on a canvas at one side of the stage. The performance seemed to be afflicted by a Riverdance syndrome, where the director played the central romantic figure as well as the enlightened one throughout.
In keeping with this subtitle, another great presence at the fair were people in teletubby costumes and ~3ft inflattable tubes with telletubby heads on the end. Why?

5. The dueling gamelans -
At night there were thousands of people in the audience for a performance where two gamelan orchestras sit on the opposite sides of the stage and take turns performing long numbers.
Throughout the day I have been impressed by how alive the gamelan tradition is, there seem to be many orchestras with members of all ages, there are fusion affairs like with the electric guitar and on Balinese radio, and there were thousands of people in the audience of the dueling gamelans. It seems that gamelan orchestra are a classical tradition that is thriving, unlike the western classical tradition. Anyone care to contest?

I don't think I've seen a single angry person - what with young children banging parents and adjacent families on the head with empty water bottles (and teletubby tubes) and theatrical assembly that involved the frames for canvases falling apart (people only laughed) and people driving half the time in the lane of oncoming traffic and appearing to almost collide with the scooters that form the majority of the transport, I would think there would be much more cause for disagreement.

2007-07-07T04:31:00.000-07:00

I have arrived safely in Indonesia after quite the extensive travel, but all went according to plan.

There are little offerings in origamied palm fronds everywhere, even a whole collection in the visa checkers cubicle at the airport.

I encountered a nice British man at the airport who helped me in my negotiations trying to procure my boarding pass from Denpasar to Sulawesi. In fact he comes to Indonesia annually to study butterflies. Nature people already! (In regards to Andante Richard's comment, perhaps he knows of the effects of butterfly urine).

I am not used to so many friendly people, and don't know how much I have been ripped off by miscalculating the decimals in conversions of rupiahs to dollars. Does 100,000 rupiah = $10 or 10,000 rupiah = $10? Alas, I may have paid ten dollars for a phone call. The first taxi driver wanted to pick me up on his motorbike in the morning (much smoother than his bosses taxi) and the taxi driver I have ridden with to find an internet cafe, since my hotel appears to be near a bunch of plant nurseries, but not really near anything in the way of eateries, is currently waiting for me to take me to a dining spot as I compose this e-mail.

There is also a gecko in my hotel room.

A little bird told me

2007-06-20T14:18:00.000-07:00

burung kecil : bird little

I shall be studying a close relative of the Wangi-Wangi white eye, a bird found by Nicola Marples and others on Wangi-Wangi island off of Southeast Sulawesi, which is part of a region of Indonesia known as Wallacea which marks the boundary between Asian and Australasian fauna and which is named for the evolutionary biologist Alfred Wallace.

The white bellied Wangi Wangi white eye is held up for comparison with the lemon bellied white eye. Is it a new species or merely a subspecies? Is it descended from castaways of another island or is it an escaped pet? Mysteries, mysteries...