Krakatau Day Trip

Krakatau Islands (circa 2000)

This past weekend my friends Chloe, Simon, Rob and I learned that if you’re willing to hit the road at 5am then it is possible to have a complete, unhurried, outstanding day trip to the Kraktau volcano islands! I’ve been wanting to do this for years, especially after I read Simon Winchester’s history of the Krakatau explosion in 1883 and its aftermath (including the birth of Anak Krakatau island in 1927).

We took the toll road west all the way out to the Krakatau Steel Industrial Wastelands Park, and then caught a Banten provincial road along Java’s west coast, arriving in the sad beach resort town of Carita at 8:30AM. At a roadside warung beside a river, we drank a quick coffee and bought some durians, then hopped onto a speedboat that our guide chartered for us (more on our excellent guide below).

The boat trip to the Krakatau islands out in the middle of the Sunda Straits took another hour and a half.   The weather was just hazy enough that we couldn’t see Krakatau from Carita, and once the islands emerged on the horizon we could no longer see the mountains and shoreline of western Java.

Foolhardy Pine Trees

A small grove of pioneering tree species and other plants has grown on the black sand eastern shore of Anak Krakatau island. That’s where we landed and registered our visit with the park rangers posted there. Just a few meters down a leafy path, and the ascent quickly begins in earnest. The only growth on the slopes are the foolhardy pine trees, impressively sturdy, but there were probably more dead tree stands than living, as they die en masse with each major eruption that blows hot gas and lava their way. The hike up did not take more than 30 minutes, and we enjoyed stunning views that set the steep dark gray slopes against scorched trees, green lowlands, blue ocean, and the neighboring islands. In front of us, Anak Krakatau’s cone towered above like a pyramid.

Anak Krakatau's volcano cone

Anak Krakatau is currently active, so we were not allowed to climb up to the top, but there is an older caldera rim that our guide called “Level One,” and that was actually a perfect place to stop, rest, take pictures, and then explore.

In the gully between the older caldera rim and the huge cone there are sulfur deposits that look like light patches of snow. We walked down “Sulfur Avenue,” littered with steam vents and lava rocks that could only have been hurled out from the newer caldera way up above us during eruptions. Simon observed that many of the rocks were fresh arrivals because we could still see the crater-like dents where they landed or the tracks they left in the ash as they rolled to their current positions.

These pictures here are all from our walk down “Sulfur Avenue.” (Complete set of pictures, including some of Rob’s and Chloe’s pictures, are collected HERE at my flickr site.)

 

Burning Descent (Chloe's photo)

After exploring around for another half hour or so, we started back down the hot slope. My feet burned as the black sand sifted through my sandals; the faster I tried to slide down the slope the worse my feet were burning (ow! ouch! Oh no no OUCH! OMG OW ADUH GANTENGNYA PACARKU AUW!!!!11!), and for a few scary moments I thought I might get stuck until I realized that a slow step-by-step descent kept the sand *beneath* my sandals instead of in them.

Back on the boat, we circled around Anak Krakatau, and saw the barren landscape across the vast majority of the island. Rocky lava shores encircle nearly the entire island except where we first arrived.

 

After circling around, we took the boat over to Rakata Island, which was part of the original large Krakatau Island before it exploded out of existence in 1883. We parked on a small beach where some fishermen had made their camp and ate our boxed lunches. During lunch we had the unsettling experience of getting harassed by a monitor lizard (biawak). Every time we chased it away, it came back, and when we poked it with sticks and rocks it would thrash its huge tail as if trying to betch slap us. Another first in a long day of surprises… every other time I’ve seen monitor lizards they would scramble away from people, but this one must have been familiar with the tour lunch routine, regularly getting leftover scraps.

Biawak (monitor lizard) on Rakata Island

After lunch, we went snorkeling near where we ate, but I was actually more interested in the floating sheets of pumice rocks that surrounded us while we were swimming (another first!), and I collected some to bring home as my Krakatau volcano souvenir. Less appealing was the floating plastic trash, which even got caught in our boat engine on the ride home. Our guide said it comes from Lampung province at the southern tip of Sumatra.

Anak Krakatau Eruption (Chloe's photo)

On the boat ride home, we saw dolphins! And then, while I was jotting some notes from the day into my phone, Chloe grabbed me to point back at Anak Krakatau, fading away into the haze, and we saw a huge belch of volcanic ash shooting up into the sky. Eruption! We missed it by just an hour or so… good thing it didn’t happen while we were at the Level One caldera poking around the sulfur crystals, “moon rocks” and steam vents.

I think we all agreed that the whole day was a smashing success by any standard. I am grateful to Chloe who found our tour guide and planned the trip for the rest of us. The tour operator Chloe found is based at Jalan Jaksa in Central Jakarta, called Krakatau Holiday. The owner of the company, Thommy Samba, who grew up in the Carita area and speaks excellent English, was our capable guide. He packed our meals and lots of cold drinks, chartered our car and boat, handled the park visitation permit, and took us up to the volcano. Krakatau Holiday also organizes tours to Ujung Kulon National Park (and more!) just south of Krakatau, another big to-do on my Indonesia travel list. If you can get a group of friends together to share the cost of one of these all inclusive tours, Krakatau Holiday has my recommendation!

LINK TO FULL FLICKR PHOTO ALBUM: KRAKATAU ISLANDS TOUR

Southeast view of Anak Krakatau (as we headed toward Rakata for lunch)

Book Club: Kedai 1001 Mimpi by Valiant Budi

I stumbled upon Valiant Budi’s Twitter feed (@vabyo) thanks to a recommendation from another Indonesian writer who mentioned that his stories from Saudi Arabia were the funniest serial tweets she had ever read. Too many Indonesians abuse Twitter to give lectures (so called kultwit, or kuliah twitter) to their followers, but when he was working abroad @vabyo mastered the form to tell wildly hilarious stories under the banner of Arabia Underkampret (a pun—plesetan—of Arabia Undercover), about Indonesians living and working in the Kingdom. Every two days or so, another installment of @vabyo’s Arabian Underkampret would unfold in a series of 140 character length “chapters” over the course of about an hour. In real life, Valiant Budi was working as a barista at an international coffeeshop in the city of Dammam. With self-effacing humor and linguistic wit, @vabyo’s stories on Twitter described Saudi society as seen through the eyes of foreign workers from Indonesia.

Book cover for Valiant Budi's "Kedai 1001 Mimpi" (front and back)

my copy... signed, kissed, delivered!

Upon his return to Indonesia last year, Valiant wrote a travel memoir based in large part on the stories he already told on Twitter, his personal blog, or facebook. My signed (and kissed!) copy of Kedai 1001 Mimpi: Kisah Nyata Seorang Penulis yang Menjadi TKI arrived in the mail at the beginning of May. I haven’t settled on a fair translation of the title, but for now I’m going with the utilitarian but decidedly less catchy “Shop of 1001 Dreams: The True Story of an Indonesian Writer who Worked Abroad.” Each chapter recounts a series of short vignettes, partly reflecting its Twitter origins, making the book easy to pick up at a free moment and read quickly. I don’t think I could do Valiant any justice by recounting his experiences in detail, but there is plenty of shock and outrage, leavened with enough wordplay and humor to highlight Valiant’s absurd circumstances in the Saudi Kingdom

The parts of the book that I consistently enjoyed were Valiant’s “translation” moments. Throughout the book, Valiant interacts with Saudis (of course), Filipinos, Indians, Americans, and several fellow Indonesians. Among non-Indonesians, Valiant is probably speaking English as he mentions several times that he only learned how to say a few work-related coffeeshop words and curse words in Arabic. He must always translate these interactions for his Indonesian readers, or translate Indonesian for his foreign interlocutors in Dammam. Here is what Walter Benjamin says about how signifiers relate to the signified in translation:

“While content and language form a certain unity in the original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of the translation envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds. For it signifies a more exalted lan­guage than its own and thus remains unsuited to its content, overpowering and alien. This disjunction prevents translation and at the same time makes it superfluous.” [from "Task of the Translator." Emphasis mine on those awesome metaphors.]

The “ample folds,” the yawning gaps between language and content, “overpowering and alien,” that prevent translation are the source of Valiant’s humor. He starts by noting the common challenge that speakers of Tagalog and Sundanese face when distinguishing between the consonants “p” “f” and “v,” further complicated by Arabic mispronunciation of the consonant “b.” For the rest of the book, the voice of Valiant’s Filipino supervisor Albert, who speaks to Valiant in English, is written in Indonesian, sometimes in English (as below), with this particular Tagalog speech impediment that Sundanese Indonesians from Valiant’s hometown of Bandung frequently experience themselves. Every speech act by Albert turns into sitcom-style slapstick:

* Albert is trying to say “finance” but says “binans” instead. Binan is Indonesian slang for “gay.”
** Valiant has slipped the speech impediment into his narrative voice.
*** Note that the first two lines combined, and the third line, are each less than 140 characters.

In another scene, Valiant awakes from a nightmare in which he explains it was the first dream he had in the Arabic language, but with English subtitles: “Yes, I saw English text on the screen of my dream!” (p.371, my translation) Valiant wrote all of the dialogue and description of the dream in Indonesian, so the reader is receiving the complete transcript of Valiant’s dream, translated twice (first into English then into Indonesian) from a language (Arabic) that Valiant himself does not understand!

In my favorite “translation” sequence on pages 307-309, a customer walks into the coffeeshop and asks Valiant to translate several text messages written in Indonesian. They were sent by an Indonesian woman working as a domestic laborer in Saudi Arabia, and apparently in a romantic relationship with the customer because Valiant realizes that she has been sending him lyrics from her favorite popular Indonesian dangdut love songs. The customer shows Valiant four different text messages, and with embarrassment and exasperation, Valiant provides the translations in awkward English:

Okelah kalo begitu	Okay if you said so
Eh eh, kok gitu, sih?	Eh-eh why is that, though?
Lelaki buaya darat, BUSET! Aku tertipu lagi!	Land crocodile man! Damn! I was fooled again!
Gantengnya pacarku, Auw!	Such a handsome my boyfriend… Auw!

Valiant lies when he is asked to translate an Indonesian text message for another customer:

Dasar lo tukang berzinah! Moga-moga buntung penis lo!

You’re such a good man. May you and your family always be blessed.

I haven’t even touched the “overpowering and alien” scenes (from an Indonesian perspective) of Arabian sexuality, alternating between deep repression on the one hand and hyper-perversion on the other. Then there are scenes of conspicuous Arabian wealth wielded by people with unparalleled combinations of stupidity and arrogance. The realities of extreme discrimination faced by foreign labor in Saudi Arabia, particularly by women working as housemaids, are touched upon as well. Finally, there are many scenes of religious hypocrisy, the likes of which are sadly becoming more common here in Indonesia. Valiant recounts all of these scenes based on either his personal experience or the experiences of the Indonesian friends he met there. Apart from the hundreds of laugh-out-loud moments (the LOLZ or wkwkwkwkwkz depending on your slang preference), these stories reveal some of what lies beneath the Kingdom’s carefully managed public image as the Muslim world’s pious caretaker of Mecca and Medina and global supplier of oil. For Indonesians, Valiant’s book surely makes them proud and grateful of their home country and then think twice about the so-called “arabization” of Indonesian Islam. (Hundreds of appreciative Indonesian reader reactions can be found on Twitter by searching the hashtag #kedai1001mimpi)

My critique: Valiant’s book presents dozens of short vignettes, loosely tied together by the chronological arc (arrival, culture shock, acclimation, outrage, revenge, escape) of his time spent in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. I recognized quite a few of the stories from his Arabian Underkampret series on Twitter. Here is what I learned: it’s not easy to jump genre from serial tweets (or even blog posts) to long form narrative. Serial tweets impose a strict rhythm (140 characters or less) on internet communications. The #hashtag, which @vabyo uses as much more than just a topic or category marker in his tweets, is an important part of that rhythm. @Vabyo uses hashtags as a reflexive counterpoint to his stories, moments when the narrator comments upon his own storytelling, with brilliant comedic effect. Furthermore, each episode was an event with dozens if not hundreds of @vabyo’s followers reading along in real time, anticipating and savoring the arrival of the story’s next sentence every few minutes. Readers could reply in real time, sometimes asking for more details and receiving @vabyo’s answers. The temporal and prosodic qualities of Arabian Underkampret are not easily transposed into prose. First, the hashtag method of reflexive self-comment disappears, losing some of the delightful cognitive dissonance that they offer. Second, @vabyo’s efficiently descriptive, alliterative, rhyming tweets become oddly overwhelming after Valiant links and revises them as sentences on the page. Third, Valiant loses track here and there of certain promising narrative threads introduced in one or two vignettes, but without follow-up. For example, we never found out why coffeeshop customers from Riyadh are extra-arrogant compared to average-arrogant Saudi customers in Dammam. We also never find out if Valiant ever took up Eldo’s offer to try private pole dancing for paying Saudi customers. I wonder if @vabyo would answer that question if I asked him on Twitter?

Confucianism Gets the Short End of the Joss Stick in Hanung Bramantyo’s “?”

In one of the opening scenes in Hanung Bramantyo’s new film “?” (“Tanda Tanya,” or “Question Mark”) we meet one of the main characters, Rika, who is busy cleaning up and organizing the shelves in her bookstore. I don’t remember her exact words, but she says with exasperation to her friend Suryo who stops by at closing time, something to the effect of: “The novels are in the self-help section, the school books are in the business section, and worst of all… these pulp romance novels [Rika holds up a paperback with a sexy scene on the cover] are in the children’s section!”

With these few lines Rika has summed up the whole movie for us with a cute metaphor. The multi-faith, multi-ethnic characters in “?” live in an old tempo doeloe nostalgia-inducing downtown neighborhood of Semarang called “Pasar Baru” (“New Market”). Pasar Baru is like Rika’s disorganized bookstore, and the characters are the books, who try relentlessly to classify and organize each other onto their respective book shelves (by religion, ethnicity, gender and family roles), but always come up against the messy realities of everyday life that refuse simple classification. Ironic that Rika complains about her disorganized books because her story poses the most confounding and stigmatizing situation of all (like pulp romance in the children’s section) for her neighbors and family: Rika is a recently divorced single mother who is unapologetically yet haltingly in the process of converting from Islam to Catholicism. Janda murtad! Apostasy!

The characters’ melodramatic stories of faith and family, love and death, take place in present-day Indonesia, specifically throughout the year 2010, which is to say their mixed-up lives are set against the backdrop of increasingly intolerant black-or-white religious discourses. The film begins, climaxes, and ends with scenes of headline-grabbing religious violence—all in Pasar Baru no less—that sadly and too easily overshadow the small acts of tolerance, consideration and accommodation that nearly all of the characters make, with plenty of personal struggle, for one another. Here is the promotional preview clip:

Hanung Bramantyo has produced this film as a statement in favor of tolerance in a diverse society, and the film is sparking a lot of debate on social media that generally embraces the film’s message, at least on the surface. A quick search for #TandaTanya on Twitter yields a lot more favorable than negative comments. But of course, a small number of religious purists are able to hijack the debate and denounce the film making absurd statements and fatwas peppered generously with shallow understandings of words like haram, sesat, murtad, pluralism, and kafir to describe it. They say it’s a hate piece against Islam, as if there were no crass depictions of intolerance among the Catholics and Confucians, as if there were no positive images of Islamic faith and practice, as if we can safely assume that the depictions of violence were committed by Islamic extremists. Hanung addresses these silly one-track diatribes point by point here, so I’m not interested in addressing further the strange and disruptive influence of just a few adherents to Indonesia’s majority religion so dangerously insecure and uncomfortable with everyone else around them.

Although I should probably question my methods, I tried to do a little score-keeping throughout the film to see who gets the short end of the metaphorical joss stick. The main groups depicted are Javanese Muslims, Javanese Catholics, and Chinese Confucians. One character from each group dies violently in the film. We witness one conversion from Islam to Catholicism, and another from Confucianism to Islam. If we want to zealously police the boundaries of organized faith—keeping our bookshelves in order so to speak—then we might consider conversion into a faith as a net gain, and conversion out of a faith as a net loss, or a metaphorical death, for each faith community. By my count, the Confucians in the film lose two characters, the Muslims lose one, and the Catholics come out even.

Ironically, it’s the Chinese-Indonesian family in the film that makes the extra effort to accommodate the Muslim majority in Pasar Baru. They keep a separate set of dishware and cooking utensils at their restaurant for the customers who don’t eat pork; they gently remind their Muslim staff that it’s time for prayers; they cover the windows and do not serve any pork during Ramadan and then stay closed for the major feasting holiday at Ramadan’s end. It is the elderly Chinese couple who own this restaurant that stand out as compelling moral anchors of accumulated day-to-day wisdom and tolerance in the film, no doubt born from necessity living as a persecuted minority for generations in Java. They remind me of the wise old black women and men that show up in so many Hollywood films. (to be fair, there is also a wonderful young ustad and an elderly priest who each give wise counsel to their congregations throughout the film) For all that wisdom, in service of some greater communal good in Pasar Baru, the Chinese characters are rewarded with an unequal share (per capita, let’s say, for emphasis) of death and departure from faith. The film ends with a secular celebration of the New Year (2011) for everyone in Pasar Baru—its community reconstituted and at peace once again—plus an affirmation of the human capacity for change, to continuously struggle for what’s right for oneself and one’s community based on heart and faith… but there is little evidence to suggest that any deeper change has occurred. The categories that organize the people in Pasar Baru remain in tact, and the religious and ethnic minorities have made disproportionate and requisite sacrifices in order to keep it that way. Rika’s book store? Still in business!

The Aceh Governor’s Election Heats Up **

After months of speculation the leaders of the GAM conglomerate—here defined simply as the combined leadership of KPA (Komite Peralihan Aceh, or the Aceh Transitional Committee, which lobbies on behalf of GAM ex-combatants) and Partai Aceh (GAM’s local political party, which won the 2009 legislative elections)—held a press conference and released a statement on Sunday 6 February 2011 announcing their candidates for governor and vice-governor in the upcoming executive elections in October. The statement, signed by Muzakir Manaf (head of KPA and Partai Aceh, and senior commander of GAM combatants during the final years of the conflict) made six points:

1. The KPA leadership meets routinely to evaluate the peace process, security, development, and the political situation in Aceh.
2. The leadership agrees that the peace and security situation in Aceh—Alhamdulillah!—remains conducive although there are minor exceptions “here and there.”
3. The leadership agrees there has not been a significant advance in Aceh’s development in light of the available resources.
4. In advance of the 2011 executive elections, KPA is evaluating possible candidates, especially those associated with Partai Aceh, but looking for coalition opportunities with other political parties.
5. For the governor’s race, Partai Aceh will not join in coalition with other parties, whereas for a number of districts and municipalities, Partai Aceh remains wide open for coalition opportunities.
6. KPA nominates Dr. Zaini Abdullah and Muzakir Manaf as Partai Aceh’s candidates for governor and vice governor respectively for the 2012-2017 period.

Muzakir Manaf

There had long been speculation that the nomination would go to Dr. Zaini Abdullah, the Foreign Minister for GAM’s government in exile in Sweden and the older brother of Hasbi Abdullah, current speaker of Aceh’s parliament. The surprise was in choosing Muzakir Manaf, who never professed an interest in running for office and preferred to focus on his lucrative post-conflict business opportunities in Lhokseumawe. Earlier rumors suggested that PA/KPA would choose Aminullah Usman, a former banker, reminiscent of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s choice of Boediono for his Vice-President.

The loser here, it would seem, is Aceh’s current governor, Irwandi Yusuf, who was hoping for Partai Aceh’s nomination, but will definitely run for reelection nevertheless. Adding insult to injury, during the press conference Muzakir Manaf called on Irwandi not to run, so that the GAM conglomerate will speak with “one voice” in the next election. That’s extremely unlikely, since Irwandi still leads most polls in a race that for the moment unofficially also includes the current Vice Governor Muhammad Nazar, the rector of Syiah Kuala University Professor Darni Daud, sociologist and human rights activist Otto Syamsuddin Ishak, and the former bupati of Aceh Utara Tarmizi Karim. The Zaini-Muzakir ticket might be a game changer if PA/KPA can get their rank and file—and their effective field operation—to fall in line and get out the vote.

Within hours of the KPA/PA announcement, the supposed spokesperson for Partai Aceh, Tgk. Ir. Linggadinsyah, issued a fierce rejection of the Zaini-Muzakir nomination. Linggadinsyah accused the senior KPA/PA leadership of nepotism and rejected their anti-democratic approach to the nomination, claiming that 20 out 23 district level KPA/PA leaders do not support the Zaini-Muzakir ticket, and vowing their continued support for Irwandi. Linggadinsyah’s statement should be taken with a grain of salt, however, and not just because he has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Irwandi. The next day Muzakir Manaf called Linggadinsyah an illegitimate spokesperson for PA using the loaded religious term haram (meaning not just “illegitimate” but also “forbidden”), because he was relieved of the job three months ago! Beside Muzakir Manaf stood Darwis Jeunib, the KPA district commander from Bireuen, who was supposedly one of Linggadinsyah’s 20 local commanders opposed to the Zaini-Muzakir nomination but said he had no foreknowledge of Linggadinsyah’s protest and would never disobey KPA’s commander, apparently throwing his loyalty to Zaini and Muzakir. Welcome to the latest chapter of the GAM conglomerate’s long history of internal rifts.

Governor Irwandi Yusuf

For his part, on Monday (7 Feb 2011) Irwandi told journalists that Muzakir Manaf must have been joking when he asked Irwandi not to run, because just two days prior Manaf told Irwandi privately that he should run for re-election, adding that “Muzakir Manaf is one of my fans.” Then with a backhanded rhetorical fluorish, Irwandi indirectly cast aspersions upon the KPA/PA leadership by suggesting that if Muzakir Manaf really said Irwandi shouldn’t run for reelection, he hopes that the public doesn’t interpret the statement as a lack of confidence or an inferiority complex on their part when they have to run against him. Then, by SMS to Serambi and other newspapers in Aceh, Irwandi responded to KPA/PA’s statement that there hasn’t been any significant development in Aceh:

“Regarding Aceh’s development, even the blind can feel the difference. Orphans can rejoice, their misery has been reduced. The sick can laugh, Aceh’s prestige has gone up in the eyes of Jakarta and the world. Moreover the terrorists in Aceh are grieving, and there’s so much more that can be asked to the ex-combatants: Who is easier to meet? Me or ‘them’?” — Aceh’s Governor Irwandi Yusuf, by SMS to journalists in Aceh

Partai Aceh Terbelah

Irwandi doesn’t have to explain who “they” are because everyone knows about the longstanding fault lines within the GAM conglomerate. KPA/GAM held their press conference at the home of Meuntroe Malek Mahmud, who heads “old GAM” ever since Hasan Tiro became too infirm to continue his movement for independence. Since the peace agreement, Malek Mahmud has moved back to Aceh, and is most likely the inheritor of the title of wali nanggroe since Tiro passed away last year. Together with Zaini, these are the Sweden guys who have come home to take (what they assume is) their rightful place at the highest levels of power in post-conflict Aceh. They do not get along with Irwandi, who in 2006 won the governor’s race because he was quite frankly closer to the young generation of rank and file combatants during the conflict. They mobilized for Irwandi and defied all observer expectations at the time when he won. For all his shortcomings, Irwandi is correct when he states that he has been more accessible than the detached leadership in Sweden, who by all accounts make imperious decisions and do not feel the need to answer for them.

This is why KPA/PA’s strategic decision to recruit Muzakir Manaf as the candidate for vice governor could be a game changer. As the former commander for all of GAM’s ex-combatants, Muzakir Manaf is one of a small handful of leaders within the GAM conglomerate who could bring the younger foot soldiers in the movement together with the old GAM leaders to speak with “one voice.” Even if Linggadinsyah was correct when he said that KPA/PA leaders out in the districts are unhappy with the central leadership in Banda Aceh, Irwandi loyalists will have to think twice if it means they have to campaign and vote against their former commander.

This is only one week’s snapshot in an early phase of the election cycle. Maybe KPA/PA are only testing public reaction. We can expect many twists and turns in the coming months, particularly as the other candidates start to formally campaign. Both the 2006 executive elections and the 2009 legislative elections were preceded by dozens of violent events, rampant money politics, and massive voter intimidation. It will be interesting to see how much this pattern repeats itself in 2011 as post-conflict Aceh slowly gets comfortable with its transition to peace and democracy.

** I have seen no articles in English covering these latest developments in the campaign for Aceh’s 2011 executive elections. This post summarizes information I found on several websites. The following articles were particularly helpful, and I thank Taufik Al Mubarak in particular for giving me his permission to summarize the news and analysis I found on his blog:

• Taufik Al Mubarak:  “Aceh Usung Zaini Abdullah”
• Taufik Al Mubarak: “Soal Calon Gubernur, Suara PA Terbelah”
• Taufik Al Mubarak: “Partai Aceh Terbelah”
• Serambi Indonesia: “Irwandi: Muzakir Manaf Itu Cuma Bercanda”
• The Globe Journal: “Muzakkir Manaf: Linggadinsyah Juru Bicara yang Haram”

Edit 19 June 2011:  For an update on these issues, please see the excellent International Crisis Group report titled “Indonesia: GAM vs GAM in the Aceh Elections” published on 15 June 2011, plus my notes on the ICG report posted HERE.

Reflections on the Recent Religious Violence in Indonesia

On Sunday (6 February 2011), a mob attacked the home of a local leader of the minority Islamic sect Ahmadiyah in the remote area of Cikeusik in Banten province. There is terrific coverage in The Jakarta Globe, the New York Times reported on it as well, and there are gruesome videos on youtube documenting the violence. The outrage on the Indonesian Twittersphere and facebook was pretty amazing and there was a protest by civil society groups at Bundaran HI yesterday, because this is just the latest in a long string of attacks against religious minorities in Indonesia over the last couple of years. But Indonesian leaders responded with sadly typical and embarrassing statements. The Indonesian president “regrets” what happened and ordered an “inquiry”, the Indonesian Minister of Religion blamed the victims, saying that Ahmadis were proselytizing and brought it upon themselves, and Banten’s governor said she hoped the incident would encourage Ahmadis to realize (insaf) their heresy and return to the rightful path of Islam. She even said that her government is sending religious outreach to the Ahmadi community in Banten to help them achieve insaf.

Now, even as I’m typing, in the district of Temanggung in Central Java province, Front Pembela Islam (FPI, or the Islamic Defenders Front) is attacking and burning down churches, at least three of them. For preliminary coverage in English, click here and here. On Twitter right now, there is good coverage if you follow hashtags like #Temanggung or #TMG

The protests and critiques have been eloquent, and I have very little to add but my support. Instead I’d like to quote in its entirety a kultwit (kuliah twitter), or a set of serial tweets, that my friend Daniel Ziv (@DanielZiv on Twitter) posted mid-day yesterday. His Twitter timeline is often full of biting sarcasm directed at Indonesian politics, celebrity, and society, but yesterday’s meditation on religion in reaction to the violence in Cikeusik, was serious and clearly from the heart. Before it gets buried away in the ephemeral Twitter timeline, I thought I would reproduce it as a complete text, with abbreviations removed. Each line was a separate tweet from Daniel:

Some reflections on yesterday’s [6 February 2011] awful attack on Ahmadiyah sect and what it reminds us about religion.

A passive government bears plenty of blame for the attacks on Ahmadiyah, but we allow far too many excuses for religion itself.

The tragic Ahmadiyah attack is a textbook case of religion’s dog-eat-dog nature; a primitive, medieval pissing contest.

Senseless, irrational things done in the name of something ‘sacred’ are immune to criticism, even by government.

If bicycle riding, atheism or jazz music caused this much evil and injustice, those activities would be immediately banned.

But religion’s inherent self-righteousness and claime to ‘absolute truth’ allows it to get away with anything.

From India and Iran to Ireland and Israel and Indonesia, violence is committed by religious groups. Those are just the countries starting with ‘I’.

“But REAL religion doesn’t tolerate violence,” we’re reminded. Must be a lot of ‘unreal’, deviant religion out there.

Far too often, asserting one’s religious identity involves not inward-looking faith, but one group’s singling out “the other.”

It’s time we recognized religion for what it is: a human social construct, a mix of folklore, culture, myth, heritage, history.

Religion is not the word of God, because there are too many Gods and too many religions for this to be possible.

If we were content with religion as culture/heritage, it could be beautiful. When it’s peddle as “absolute truth” it is dangerous.

One’s religion is entirely random, as accidental as one’s language, communal history and place of birth.

Met a young woman who’d just converted from Islam to Christianity. “So you decided that for 25 years you followed the wrong book?” Her: “Yes.”

Christopher Hitchens famously said: “Religion poisons everything.” Far to often, the faithful prove him right.

Tons of well-meaning believers don’t use religion to impose evil. Tragically, they are a far-too-silent majority.

Religion is too often driven not by faith but by blind faith; not by human morality but by herd mentality.

Faith can and should be deeply personal and introspective, but religion everywhere is externalized, arrogant, coercive.

Religion is mostly a reflection of society’s insecurities. We outsource our anxieties to a “higher entity” when we don’t know how to deal.

Religion is a lazy solution to identity: it sidesteps human complexity and independent thinking, offering rules and structure instead.

Religion co-opts self-evident human morality, re-brands it and makes it exclusive. The ultimate marketing scam.

Here in Indonesia, religious attitudes of “pasrah” and “Tuhan yang menentukan” are the greatest obstacles to our development.

Thanks for listening, Next week (if anyone is still following me) I shall tweet about atheism, which is not a religion.

People complain about the silent Muslim majority that allows this violence to continue. That is part of the problem, and I notice it daily, but I think it’s appropriate to note that Daniel’s kultwit was retweeted by hundreds of his friends and Twitter followers; he received lots of positive and very little negative feedback. I chose Daniel’s tweets because they were in English, and they go out on a limb beyond Indonesian politics, but there are plenty of well-informed and respected Indonesian public intellectuals that are speaking out too. I think it’s more than just a silent majority of Indonesians failing to speak out against this latest trend in religious violence. In addition to religion’s sacred and dangerous potency that Daniel identified above, there are those who leverage it as a tool for their own ends. It’s a chess game of power politics playing out systematically across the archipelago, using brutal zealots and religious minorities as pawns. It’s the potent combination of religion and power that explains why milquetoast President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his ministers, the police, and the legislators in parliament do not act to protect victims of violence, why public servants like Minister of Religion Suryadharma Ali and Minister of Information Tifatul Sembiring are able get away with statements that blame the victims, and why the majority of Indonesians remain silent in the face of so much outrageous inhumanity.

Does Egypt 2011 = Indonesia 1998 ?

Two days ago I was dutifully watching the Rachel Maddow podcast while eating breakfast, and during her coverage of the revolutionary events in Egypt, Dezant said to me: “It’s just like Indonesia in 1998.” I checked online to what extent others were making a similar comparison, and for the most part the comparison is restricted to the Indonesian media. On Twitter there are hundreds of Indonesian tweets making the comparison, “Egypt 2011 = Indonesia 1998,” variously infused with nostalgia, fear, excitement, humor, and prayers.

The surface comparisons are compelling. Two iron-fisted dictators known for choking human rights, both in power for about 30 years, ruling a majority-Muslim country, overthrown by massive and electrifying people-power protests considered unimaginable a mere weeks before they erupted. Both dictators respond with brutality, the reform movements claim their martyrs, and then, one hopes in the Egypt scenario, both resign in shame, ushering a new era of democracy. A few days ago, imagining that kind of hopeful outcome for Egypt seemed unlikely, casting Indonesia’s oft-criticized transition to democracy in a far more fortunate light.

But as soon as you dig into the details, the comparison becomes difficult to sustain once you start to account for so many moving parts behind the scenes that propelled these movements forward. As my advisor reminded me by email: Vice-President “Habibie did a damned good job of holding things together” when he succeeded Suharto and became Indonesia’s third president in a constitutional and orderly fashion. The military never formally stepped in to assume power, and Habibie graciously abdicated after the newly elected parliament made it clear in 1999 that they would choose a new president. Indonesia’s reform movement was messy, disappointing, and spasmodically violent in far-flung parts of the archipelago, but it’s hard to imagine a better outcome during those crucial years of transition. It’s also hard to imagine Egypt following the same path.

I’m not a close observer of Arab politics, much less Egypt in particular, but there is plenty of material online this week to provide a quick introduction. I found this article, “Why Mubarak is Out” by Paul Amar, helpful enough to realize that Egypt has its own complicated path to democracy, with a long list of internal and international factors that will determine the outcome:

“This is a very twenty-first century regime change – utterly local and international simultaneously.” — Paul Amar

For me this is all a counterpoint to the histrionic broadcasts, in the USA in particular, arguing that Egypt will follow a path like Iran’s revolution, resulting in some kind of Islamo-fascist regime that will destabilize the Middle East. There is much to suggest this is not the case. The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak’s favorite bogeyman to justify his autocratic rule even though they long ago renounced hardline violent insurgency, didn’t appear in Tahrir Square until at least a week into the protests. As I just heard Ulil Abshar Abdalla say on Indonesia’s TV One station, what’s happening in Tahrir Square is primarily (but not exclusively) driven by a frustrated urban middle class. And Egypt’s military leadership, allies with the USA, most certainly wouldn’t allow an Islamist regime.

So just when I had consigned myself to the relative unimportance of this comparative case study, along comes this article by Thomas Carothers in The New Republic, which makes the case that if you’re going to “grasp onto political analogies to help get our bearings” at times of “unexpected but momentous political change in distant countries,” then you would be doing yourself a favor to look at Indonesia’s reform movement instead of Iran’s. And then during an interview with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on last night’s Rachel Maddow show, Albright herself (at 5:50) recommended Indonesia as a more worthwhile comparative case study with Egypt instead of Iran. Maddow then referred to it as the “Iran–Indonesia Continuum” of outcomes for Egypt’s revolution.

“I think something that has not been mentioned is the example for instance of Indonesia. Suharto who had been a dictator was ousted in the late 90s and he was replaced by a moderate Muslim secular government. You know people talk about the Iran model but there is the Indonesian model.” — Madeleine Albright on the Rachel Maddow Show, 3 February 2011

Madeleine Albright on The Rachel Maddow Show, 3 February 2011

Watching Madame Albright speaking clearly and forcefully about this I realized that as long as we’re talking at the level of “models,” as long as we’re grasping for “political analogies,” it is extremely important that the Indonesian analogy gets put out there into the marketplace of ideas (beyond Indonesia, of course, where everyone is well aware). Indonesia’s regime change will not predict Egypt’s, but it’s an aspirational outcome that helpfully opens up the continuum of possibilities in ways that are decidedly less scary.

2010 in review + 2011 in preview

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health (written by wordpress, then edited down a bit by me, with the 2011 addendum at the bottom):

Crunchy numbers

A WordPress helper monkey made this abstract image inspired by my blog stats.

In 2010, there were 14 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 19 posts.

The busiest day of the year was May 17th. The most popular post that day was “Obama the Menteng Kid” Hits the Big Screen at Lightning Speed.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, blogs.indonesiamatters.com, flickr.com, kopyor.livejournal.com, and twitter.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for obama anak menteng, obama the menteng kid, beatty a shadow falls, serambi aceh, and obama as a kid.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1. “Obama the Menteng Kid” Hits the Big Screen at Lightning Speed May 2010
2. About Jesse November 2009
3. A “Shariah Police” Operation in Banda Aceh May 2010
4. Book Club: A Shadow Falls in the Heart of Java February 2010
5. Should Aceh’s Religious Leaders Demand an Apology from Serambi Too? February 2010

Attractions in 2011

So I averaged just a bit over one post per month. I’m going to try and do the post-a-week-2011 challenge!  I enjoyed writing my Emmet Otter post a few weeks ago, so I’ll probably write about more things than just Indonesia and Aceh stuff. Stay tuned…

Emmet Otter’s Corporate Class Warfare Christmas

Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas sans Kermit

When my friend Adia put up the bloopers reel from Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas (1977) on facebook yesterday I had a nostalgia rush and asked Dezant to download a copy of the children’s special for us to watch together on our laptop. I was living on Algonquin Road in Schenectady the first time I saw it, so that was at age seven when I was in second grade (1978). I saw it every year after that up through high school, then maybe once or twice in college to share with my younger siblings. By far it’s my favorite holiday show, not least because there is no Santa Claus and no Baby Jesus, but more importantly because this is Jim Henson fast approaching the peak of his creative genius (The Muppet Movie, duh). The premise is simple: in a small river town populated by otters, bullfrogs, muskrats, foxes, and possum, the widow Ma Otter and her son Emmet make the best of it living in poverty. They get into a Gift of the Magi-style plot twist as they prepare to perform in a local talent competition, and in the process learn the true meaning of Christmas or something like that. Along the way they sing a bunch of catchy and heartwarming songs written by Paul Williams. The bad guys are the members of The Riverbottom Nightmare Band, whose performance antics strike me as a cross between KISS and P-Funk. Henson’s muppets row boats in real water, ride bicycles, and one even swims and spits water. I just had to share this touchstone from my childhood with Dez…

But the version we watched was not the original cut! The original version I remember was introduced, narrated and concluded by Kermit the Frog who cheerfully escorts us into this new community of muppets on his bicycle. We never got to see him crash his bicycle and flip headfirst into a signpost!

What we saw last night was like a painting without a frame; Kermit was completely cut out! Other scenes were edited down, some songs had extra verses too. This was when some youtube and google investigations proved useful. It turns out that when Disney bought the rights to all the well-known and beloved Muppet characters, they took Kermit with them but not the cast of EOJC. When the Henson company, or its distributor, went to release a DVD, they either had to pay a royalty ransom to Disney for the use of Kermit or do some creative editing. The outrage among original EOJC fans is palpable when you look at the user reviews on amazon.com These fans are really stickin’ it to the Man on amazon’s EOJC product review page:

“SENSELESSLY BUTCHERED!!!!!!”

Those corporate hacks stole our childhood memories! I share their pain, but apart from the butchering of Kermit, the editing gets more interesting when you start paying attention to the small bits of dialogue that were cut and song lyrics that were added. A quick search on some Muppet fan forums yields a line by line analysis saving me lots of work I would have never done myself. Two examples are revealing. After Ma and Emmet sing a funny song while rowing to town about their fat grandmother and all the potential uses of her parachute-sized bathing suit, they get into a serious conversation about their poverty in which they compare their poverty to the fish in the river. Then Emmet asks what they’re going to do for Christmas this year if they have no money. This talk (bold-faced in Edit 1 below) is all edited out. Then they face an insulting encounter with the town socialite Gretchen Fox when Ma Otter delivers Gretchen’s laundry to her river dock. The exchange is left largely intact in Edit 2, but with a crucial loss at the tail end of the conversation (again, bold-faced in Edit 1):

After “Bathing Suit”:

Edit 1 (in bold is cut out of Edit 2):  Emmet: “Say Ma, that sounded pretty nice!” Ma: “Nice? I should say it did, Emmet. Why, you can hear the fish applaudin’!” Emmet: “Oh…I think you’re right! Maybe I should pass the hat!” Ma: “Pa used to say, ‘If you pass the hat to fish, all you get is a wet hat!’” (both laugh) Ma: “Still…I suppose the fish have just about as much money as any of us this year…” Emmet: “Couldn’t have much less. Ma?” Ma: “Mmm?” Emmet: “What are we gonna do about Christmas this year?” Ma: “Ohh…better lean into that starboard oar – there’s old Gretchen Fox on her dock waitin’ for her laundry. Ooh, she looks friendly as a pole-cat today!” Gretchen: “Well, it’s about time you got here!” Ma: “Same time we always get here.” Gretchen: “Yes. You’re late every week. And last week when I opened the laundry parcel, there was a scorch-mark on one of the sheets!” Ma: “Ohh, well, maybe I can knock off a little bit on the price…I, er…?” Gretchen: “You certainly shall. Remind me of that when I pay you – next week. Ta.” Ma: “Well, I got the bill right he…here – and since it’s three days ’til Christmas I’d really appreciate it if…you’d…fall off the dock.” (Emmet laughs) Emmet: “Way to go, Ma!” (Ma laughs) Ma: “Yeah, well sometimes you gotta talk tough to these people.” Will: “Yup, that’s tellin’ her, Alice!”

Edit 2:  Emmet: “Say Ma, that sounded pretty nice!” Ma: “Better lean into that starboard oar – there’s old Gretchen Fox on her dock waitin’ for her laundry. Ooh, she looks friendly as a pole-cat today!” Gretchen: “Well, it’s about time you got here!” Ma: “Same time we always get here.” Gretchen: “Yes. You’re late every week. And last week when I opened the laundry parcel, there was a scorch-mark on one of the sheets!” Ma: “Ohh, well, maybe I can knock off a little bit on the price…I, er…?” Gretchen: “You certainly shall. Remind me of that when I pay you – next week.” Ma: “Well, I got the bill right he…here – and since it’s three days ’til Christmas I’d really appreciate it if…” Gretchen: “Ta.” Will: “Yup, that’s tellin’ her, Alice!”

“I’d really appreciate it if… you’d… fall off the dock.” In the original, Gretchen probably never heard this bit of Ma Otter’s quiet backtalk, because she has already said “Ta” and walked away. Instead, Ma Otter’s resistance (“sometimes you gotta talk tough to these people”) is removed altogether, and instead Gretchen Fox cuts Ma off (“Ta”) while she is begging for payment three days before Christmas. The editors must have decided that Ma Otter’s backtalk is rude, but it’s perfectly OK for Gretchen Fox to sadistically withhold payment to a poor family until after Christmas.

As they row their way back home from town at sunset, Ma and Emmet Otter sing another song, one of the best in the show and a useful plot-setting device, about how everything will be all right as long as there’s no hole in the washtub (because Ma Otter can still scrape a living by washing clothes for her snotty neighbors). In the edited version I watched with Dez, they added two verses that weren’t in the original (see bold-faced in Edit 2):

“Ain’t No Hole in the Washtub”:

Edit 1:  Ma: “…I’ll be there to treat you to a soothing back-rub!” Emmet: “When there ain’t no hole in the washtub!”(instrumental) Wendel: “Hey, Emmet!”

Edit 2 (in bold are the additional lyrics):  Ma: “…I’ll be there to treat you to a soothing back-rub!” Emmet: “When there ain’t no hole in the washtub!” (instrumental) Ma: “Lunch with the upper-crust, Dinner at the club, High on the hog when there… Emmet & Ma: “…ain’t no hole in the washtub!” Emmet: “Watermelon gardens, Berries on a shrub, Cookies in the kitchen…” Emmet & Ma: “…when there ain’t no hole in the washtub!” (instrumental) Wendel: “Hey, Emmet!”

In the previous conversation, the editors took out Ma and Emmet’s sad meditation on poverty casting their lot with the fish in the river, but they went out of their way to insert lyrics that allow Ma and Emmet to fantasize what waits for them in their future (“lunch with the upper-crust, dinner at the club, high on the hog”) as long as they have a washtub that doesn’t leak. They too may be as wealthy as Gretchen Fox someday if they wash enough clothes for the wealthy. This is a mystification of the American Dream on steroids.

The hack job performed by these editors is quite a useful metaphor for demonstrating just how much times have changed since 1977. It’s no longer appropriate to show the poor trying to make sense of their condition during the holiday season. Nor are the poor allowed to complain about it when they’re obviously getting screwed. They just need to work hard and focus on their dreams for a better future… in happy verse.

Speaking of happy verse, I had a great time watching some of the Emmet Otter fan clips uploaded onto youtube. Here are some of my favorites:

A bluegrass band practicing the Bar-B-Q song at home:

A solo acoustic guitar performance of the Riverbottom Nightmare Band’s song:

A thrash metal version of the same song (the bear’s refrain is the best):

A banjo player plays the barbecue song and explains how he likes to play it for his son:

Every Emmet Otter fan has their own way of paying homage to this holiday classic. This tongue-in-cheek interpretation of the corporate class warfare messages that have crept into the DVD version currently on sale is mine.

Remote Ethnography in Post-Conflict Aceh, Indonesia

"Remote Ethnography in Post-Conflict Aceh, Indonesia" Harvard University Asia Center, Southeast Asia Seminar Series

On Friday at 12:30 PM, I will be presenting this talk at the Harvard University Asia Center as part of their Southeast Asia Seminar Series.  This is a draft chapter of my dissertation, and I am soliciting feedback after the talk.  Open to the public.  Please attend if you’re in Cambridge.

Book Club: A Certain Age

Book Cover for "A Certain Age: Colonial Jakarta Through the Memories of Its Intellectuals" by Rudolf Mrázek

I have been struggling with the strange kind of fieldwork I did in Aceh for the past few years and how to both acknowledge that strangeness and write about it. Rudolf Mrázek’s new book, A Certain Age: Colonial Jakarta Through the Memories of Its Intellectuals, doesn’t solve the problem, but it gives me a toolkit of methodological and theoretical possibilities for the task. “Speed and lightness over the mud and dust define the city and this observer of the city as well,” Mrázek writes in the book’s preface, and in the role of the observer he conjures up Walter Benjamin’s flaneur, but with a rushing twist. He is not just an idle passerby, doing a series of household interviews in Jakarta, sampling his informants like one might browse paintings in a gallery before moving on to the next. There is also an element of compulsive flight, as if Mrázek was never too comfortable getting into the lives of his informants (“keeping my distance from my subjects, my passing by, the burden of my method”); in fact one might find comfort in the moving on, and Mrázek quotes Sartre: “he knew that it was possible for him to make his escape at any moment with the flap of the wings.”

In spite of, or rather because of his methodological burdens (which inspired in me an awesome sense of déjà vu), Mrázek’s data still generates “cognitive sparks” all through the book. With their words, solicited by gentle prompts from Mrázek, his informants produce historical landscapes located in the noisy present of the interview. Fragments from the interview transcripts that recall memories of youth during the colonial and revolutionary era are recomposed, in vivid collage. Rescuing these fragments from the “dustbin of history” (these are, at heart, informants that the vast majority of Indonesians today have no knowledge of) is intended to disrupt the logics of modernity, nationalism, and progress. And it’s a delicate effort, because if you get into these fragments, if you touch them, the fragments either crumble apart or crumble you, leaving us with only a momentary rupture, just a fleeting glimpse, of what modernity looked and felt like in another age, exposing its illusory effects in the present.

But there are redemptions to be found in the refuse. The trick is to find the unexpected tangential points where your fragments meet your informant’s serendipitously. During my work in Aceh, I had several moments like these that resulted in productive and complicit engagements. (A-ha! I could write about this!) And here Mrázek introduced me to a French anthropologist I had never heard of before named Marc Augé, who writes about “non-places” and the anthropology of “supermodernity.” A non-place lends itself to generic memories at best; they are typically spaces of motion and travel, such as airports, stations, vehicles, hotels, mobile offices, and refugee camps. These are the spaces in which humanitarians work, and this resonates strongly with my experience working in Aceh. Like the flaneur, we are always passing by, checking in and then out of non-places. That makes the serendipitous and tangential touch with the Other much more difficult, but, when it does happen, so much more memorable too.

Mrázek likes those meetings even more when they are fraught with tone deaf misunderstandings: “Misunderstanding is another word for the rhythm with which the only true reality forces its way into the conversation. The more effectively a man is able to speak, the more successfully he is misunderstood.” In so many ways, I think my fieldwork was characterized by misunderstanding, sometimes willful, and other times, for lack of trying. A memorable encounter does not translate into an effective one. What would it be like if we thought of humanitarianism not as “supracolonial” but as “supramodern” or maybe just “supermodern”? That brings the industry down to earth without losing that awesome sense of mobility that so strongly characterizes humanitarians and their work. We could set aside debates on “mobile sovereignty” and focus instead on just the “mobile,” the blasé sense of just “passing through,” where perceptions are blunted to the point where we no longer see the “meaning and differing values of things…in the constantly moving stream of money.” In order to be noticed (Mrázek quoting Georg Simmel), “people have to exaggerate their personal element in order to remain audible, even to themselves.” We may be touched by our informants in unexpected ways, but the filters that mediate those encounters inevitably leave us “touched away” from them, and more than likely leave them misunderstood.

More than likely... a misunderstanding.

And so as I try to collate and make sense of my overwhelming piles of data, I have to figure out who and what remains audible through all that noise. I have to identify the tangential meeting points of productive engagement and misunderstanding. Upon retrieving a memorable voice, or recalling a tangential meeting point, I need to acknowledge the mediating distortions (exaggerations or otherwise) in my data that made retrieval and recall possible at all.  To bring this all to life and render it sensible, I have to describe ethnographically the “non-places” in Aceh where I spent the majority of my time that prevented me in specific ways from ever really getting to know Aceh as a memorable place.