I’m not a big fan of the call to prayer. Every corner of every kampong has a mosque and yet drive on any major road in Java and you will undoubtedly pass boys and girls in their Muslim dress standing by big gallon drums waving fishing nets collecting money for the building of yet another new mosque. And no mosque is complete without the biggest locally available loudspeaker which is always turned on full volume and invariably pointed in the direction of where I happen to be ‘trying’ to sleep. Actually I’m so used to the noise that I can sleep quite comfortably, even during Ramadan when the prayers run non-stop accompanied by the beating of drums and firecrackers that are set off to ‘remind’ people that it’s time to wake up.

Television during the fasting month is a mixture of celebrity Dangdut concerts and T.V. serials with actors dressed in Jilbabs and Arab smocks delivering moral messages on how to be a good Muslim. Even commercials cash in on what kind of toothpaste and shampoo a good Muslim would choose and this year, a phone by Bakrie especially for Muslims which has an alarm that automatically rings at the five daily prayer times. It irritates me in the same way commercials at Christmas time used to irate me back in Oz. For my family though it’s pretty usual. They say price still determines their choice of toothpaste more than any other factor.

Idul Fitri comes at the end of the fasting month and everybody visits neighbors , friends and relatives to ask for forgiveness of last year’s short comings and snack-out to make up for calories lost during the fasting month. About 70% of the population make a pilgrimage back to their parent’s kampong. Roads across the nation are jam packed. Buses and ferries are over-loaded, trains and planes sold out and absolutely anyone bar no-one who has access to a motor bike is on it with two or three friends on the back. I dread going anyway at this time of year. It’s usually quite nice just to stay in Jakarta and enjoy the strangely deserted roads around the city. But this year Yayang insisted we take her parents and Jessy and brother Harry down to Cilegon to visit her sister. I convinced her to wait at least a day and it paid off. There were virtually no cars on the notoriously jammed toll road to Merak port and we made record time to Kipit and Hasuri’s humble farm house.

Kipit and Hasuri live on 300 square meters with their three children, in a dirt floor house next to a chicken coup which provides a substance living. They have a television, that we gave them and a motor bike and 40 chickens and that’s about it. I have never seen them miserable or complaining – not even the youngest. It never ceases to amaze me.

Cilegon was at the end of the dry season when we arrived. Each year it looks more and more barren. Farmers are not prepared for the effects of global warming. There has always been ample water for crops for generations until now. Most people in the kampongs these days have access to a television either at home or at one of the neighbors. They know of the word ‘Global Warming’ but have no idea of the ramifications or how to prepare for it’s impact on their livelihood in the years to come. I remember reading in a travel guide somewhere , Lonely Planet I think , 15 years or so ago, about one traveler’s account of Java. He predicted with the rate of deforestation and overpopulation as it stood then, Java would become a desert by the year 2010 in a manner much similar to how the Egyptians turned a once fertile land along the Nile into eternal desert. By my own personal accounts of increasingly long dry seasons , I fear he may be right – at least as far as Cilegon is concerned.

Having said all that, I still enjoy going to ‘The Gon’. It’s very peaceful at Hasuri’s piece of dirt. The days are bloody hot but at night there’s a cool breeze and the smell of wood coals from the kitchen. It’s far enough away from the city lights so you can see stars in the night sky. The family sit together on the back porch drinking tea and laughing at simple stories. For them there is a real sincerity in the festivities at Idul Fitri. Sharing, forgiving and just being with family. Prayers are simple, there is little mention of God or any ‘holier than thou’ that goes on. I am totally relaxed and blend in with little special attention aside from the odd comment or two from the young kids on what a long nose I have.

It’s a real tragedy what the September 11 bombings have done for the image of Islam. Terrorism , Fanaticism , brutality are too often associated with Islam by people from the West who have little experience with the religion other than what they see on news broadcasts about Iraq and Afghanistan.

Indonesia plays host to two-thirds of the worlds Muslims. I was watching a fascinating documentary about a shipwreck off the coast of the Maluku islands on Discovery the other night. The ship was six stories high and overloaded with porcelain bowls from China that were intended for transportation of Spices back to the Arab world. The ship sank over one thousand years ago. One thousand years ago Indonesians were trading spices with Arabs and Islam was introduced to Indonesia. The religion was less than 500 years old when it first arrived here. So Indonesia does in fact have pretty good claim as to what defines Islam. It is often misconstrued that Islam was forced upon these humble animistic peoples by Arab ‘missionaries’ but the majority of Indonesian Muslims have interpreted this religion from their hearts in their own Eastern style.

It’s not my cup of tea. I had a go at ‘masuk Islam’ (entering Muslim faith) It scored me a lot of points with my in-laws and for a while I was happy to attend afternoon Friday prayers and meet members of my community on an equal, spiritual level, but like my disappointment with Christianity in the West, I was frustrated by the dogma , the repetitive sermons and the mis-interpretations of what it means to be a ‘good person’. I don’t believe one has to pray to God in a church or in a mosque to be a better person and stand a better chance of peace in the ‘afterlife’ I believe it’s your own actions and how you treat others that determines what kind of person you are.

There is nothing sinister about the Indonesian Islam I have experienced firsthand.

There are a few small minority Fire-brand groups in Indonesia who get a lot of media coverage. Amarozi and the Bali bombers were actually from a poor village background and were trained by a Malaysian group that preys on the financial hardship of vulnerable Indonesian villagers in order to spreads it base for political strength across Asia. Most Indonesians are aware of what’s going on here but are reluctant to openly speak out against it. It’s simply not their nature. But with the increasingly biased way ‘Islam as a whole’ is being presented on global news, maybe it’s time the real majority of Muslims – the ones that live in harmony in Indonesia – stood up to give their story and be counted.

It rained on the night we were in Cilegon. Hasuri told me he’d get around to fixing the leak in the roof before the wet season set in.

Thought I’d add some poetry to this blog and keep it varied.

John Popper is one amazing dude. I consider his lyrics poetry rather than ‘blues lyrics’.

I’ve got a couple of live DVD’s of this band. Great music – mind-blowing harp from the big man.

‘Whoops’ is a pretty heavy song probably written after a not so ‘high’ session. It could almost be an anthem for this generation – my generation anyway – or was that another band ? What ? Who ?

‘We’re cutting down the air we breath’ – it’s that simple. We’ve been that stupid. whoops would suggest we may be too late. Well I like to be optimistic, so I’m willing to punt that bamboo might just save the planet.

Here’s the poem…

Whoops

Music & Lyrics: John Popper

Have you ever seen an atom
Little bits of everything floating by
Take a good look at them
Collectively they compose all you
see including your eye

Brilliant puzzle
A living Rubix Cube we think we
can figure out and solve
But we’re just monkeys
Scratching our heads trying to open our ears
To a chord that just won’t seem to resolve

And we call it wisdom
Yes intellect in our truest sense of the word
You see for us security means a harmony
According to only what we have heard
And this along and nothing less
Will ease our heart and our mind
In the hopes that in feeling free we’ll reach paradise
On that hilltop we’re still trying to find

But the possibility exists no
matter how scary it may seem
That paradise was once the world
and it wasn’t just a dream
The earth was our heaven and we
didn’t know there were rules for
us to break
And maybe now we’ll find out too late
what a clever hell we can make

Whoops
Whoops

In this corner
Weighing in at almost every weight imaginable…
Life, and all that surrounds it
And in this corner
Weighing in at well, not really very much of anything;
A very sound and user friendly idea
On finally bringing that pesky mountain to Mohammed
[ Find more Lyrics at www.mp3lyrics.org/wAc ]
Gentlemen at the sound of the harmonica
solo you may come out fighting

Take a look at the horizon
Quiet and still
You know there used to be bison
Gentlemen you may fire at will
They say this land won’t go to waste
But you gotta wonder how
You know we’re chopping down the air we breathe
As fodder for the cow

That’s right so we can eat well
Yes and starve to death
And say there’s nothing we can do
Because we really don’t want to do a goddamn thing
Look I’m shrugging and so are you
We can imagine the straightest of lines
But our fingers can’t control the pen
And it’s this frustration that yields relief
As we say we’re just mortal men
And that means we get to torture a chimpanze
And infect him with disease
Because he screams just like a human child
While we study his desperate pleas

But the possibility exists no
matter how scary it may seem
That paradise was once the world
and it wasn’t just a dream
The earth was our heaven and we
didn’t know there were rules for
us to break
And maybe now we’ll find out too late
what a clever hell we can make

Whoops
Whoops

While we’re on the subject you
know my conscience hurts
And it will not go away
So please concoct me some pill I can take
While I think of something clever to say
So I can look in my mirror made of polished glass
And find no need to cringe
And forget that sinking feeling I’m a dinosaur
Out on his drunken last binge

…from fossil to fossil
Dust to dust
I’ll see you all in the earthy crust

Whoops
Whoops

whoopsoundfile3

Yayang’s mum and dad and sister Ani and her kid Vivi and cousin Rina were over for the week-end.
It really is a god send for me that Indonesian’s have such a close knit family structure. At 10 months, Jessy can be a real handful, so it’s great to have family around to keep her entertained.

On Sundays I have the Jakarta Post delivered to my house. I don’t subscribe to the rest of the week because it’s too depressing. Sunday’s paper is a leisurely read though. Simon’s column always gives me a laugh. On this Sunday there was a front page article about the Kemang Festival. Vivi spotted a clown on stilts in the accompanying photo, so we decided to make a family outing out of it and head down to check it out.

The theme for the Festival was ‘Green Kemang’ in an attempt to raise public awareness about the environment. The main road in Kemang was closed to traffic and stalls lined the streets. There were a couple of bands playing and the usual loud MC yelling enthusiastically into a microphone. A few ‘Green’ stalls here and there , which was encouraging to see but I felt they were a little lost on the idea of how to ‘Green’ Jakarta. A couple of young nice looking Uni girls were handing out WWF brochures showing people how to conserve energy – the usual ‘turn your lights off to reduce the Green house effect’ thing.

It’s not really fair to criticize because they are making an effort. I wonder though, I they feel futile in their efforts, like I do, when you consider the rate at which forest is being cut down and the powers-that-be that you are up against should you wish to protest.

There were a number of Bamboo-styled bins along the streets demonstrating how to separate organic waste from non-organic waste. I noticed a street scavenger who was probably delighted by this concept as she only had to go through the non-organic bin to find her recyclables without having to ferret through the mouldy muck.

The BIKE TO WORK community were there as well. Pioneering warriors for clean air on an uphill battle.

A twenty minute stroll up the street was about as festive as my camp wanted to get though. One things for sure ; mid-day in Jakarta is hot outside. If you bike to work, you’d want to leave early.

The humble folk of Kemang seemed to be enjoying themselves though. It never ceases to amaze me how the kids over here seem so happy despite the hardships they endure on a daily basis.

I grew up in the late sixties / early seventies. The hippie revolution was just coming to a close. The war was over. John Lennon was spreading power to the people. Aids was an un-known, gangs (and tattoos) were only for the really really mean guys – not for school kids. My mum and dad weren’t really into the ’scene’. They may have smoked the rare joint at a party, but no flares or tie-dyed jeans in the cupboards. Just Business magazines and science books. My uncle and aunty on the other hand were die hard hippies. Uncle Paul had side burns a mustache and cool brown sunglasses. He went knee boarding at Wamberal beach. Aunty Lindy had hair down to her knees, was always laughing and to me  epitomized  ‘hippie’ They went kayaking and drove half way round Australia in a  Kombi  van. I thought they were so cool. Growing up, I was always waiting for the next wave of the hippie revolution. The next ’sleep in’  ,  ‘woodstock’ , people-power movement. It never came  and i wonder if it ever will.

Today’s generation is faster and more intelligent than mine. What we could have done with broadband internet connection in those days. Social networking is really a great thing. But i wonder how many people actually USE it , and how many just try to make a fast buck on the logistics of it all.

I just signed up for Celsias. it will be interesting to see what they get up to. On Facebook I have the Lil Green Patch application.

It all seems a bit glossy to me. In my day (sounding old now) if we were concerned about something, we’d stick it to the man. Protest outside the oil company offices, even camped out on the lawn in front of parliament house once. I’m pretty sure we got noticed enough to piss a few people off and at least stop and think. I wonder just how far these application things go though.

You know. I’m very skeptical about this ‘Save the rain forest by using an application’ scheme actually. how much impact are they having on the rain forests of Indonesia ? Where exactly did they save 36 million sq feet ? I’d really like to know how they do that in countries such as Africa and Indonesia where forests are being felled by the kilometer daily. These guys are linked to PayPal so you can contribute money, but are they linked to WWF ?

Forests play a huge part in the equilibrium of things. Multinational companies and third world governments who don’t give a rat’s arse about the environment have direct control of the world’s biggest , last remaining rain forests. Schemes like this one can create a false sense of security. “Phew, well I’m aware of the problem and I did my bit today by feeding seeds to the virtual Macaw !” The slash and burners of Sumatera would be laughing. It’s nice to be happy with my friends on Facebook , send a cute little apple seed doll (or pay for and exotic frangipanni) but it spooks me a bit. shouldn’t we be getting angry ? These forests don’t just grow back at the click of a mouse. When they say a square kilometer of forest is lost every day, they’re (WWF – I guess ?) talking about 100 year old trees.how about I send you an orangutan carcass. Or some elephant tusks ? At least it’s more realistic. I’m going to take a look into these Lil Green Patch people and see what they’re really all about – if the are legit, i’ll be happy to support and promote them. I’ve started my own blog about the environment btw.

indogreenies.com I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with it. I’m living in Jakarta Indonesia and i see the real shit that goes down, or burns up, first hand. It’s frightening. Really. most people in the safe house of the western world have no idea how bad the situation really is until they’re flying over it on the way to a holiday destination. “What’s all that smoldering field down there ? Shouldn’t that be forest ?”…….

It might well be the theme song for Indonesia in the dry season.

My first posting in Indonesia was in a small Kampung (Village) called Jabung.
Jabung is miles from nowhere. Way out in the scrub. They have tigers and elephants roaming around out there.
I was sent to check on a cattle feedlot project (now there’s some serious green house gas generation right there for you, but that’s another story for later.) I know jack about cows. I’ve milked one once and been chased up a tree by a pack off young bulls, but that’s about as much experience I’ve had with them. I landed the job through connections and because I had some high school Bahasa. When I found out there was only one person who spoke broken English in Jabung, I wished I’d paid more attention in class. 6 months in the scrub was a good teacher though and I learned to speak the lingo pretty fluently and more importantly got a good handle on local customs and an insight into Islam.

When I first arrived here, I was still in my pro-active student 20’s. Australia had just entered a period of almost fanatic environmental awareness. Supermarkets were introducing green hessian bags to replace the plastic ones, all houses were being issued with new ‘wheelie’ bins with dual compartments for recyclable waste and there were nation-wide restrictions on the use of water and hours for burning rubbish. (Now any type of back-yard burning without a permit is strictly forbidden)

You can imagine my horror to walk down a main street in Bandar Lampung one afternoon and see people happily attending their small road side fires consisting of raked leaves and the occasional car tire. Lampung is actually a pretty clean city, all things considered. They have even one national awards for being a clean city. Compared to Jakarta it’s a relatively small city in the south of Sumatera. Burning off is a way of life. Daily routine. The introduction of plastic bags and bottles, not long before I arrived here hasn’t helped things. In Lampung they burn them. In Jakarta they are happy just to let them pile up on the roadside or clog the gutters and sewers eventually contributing to annual floods.

Floods happen in the wet season. This is a tropical country and things do grow. Drop a seed in the ground and by next wet season you will have a small tree. At least that was a common expression since anyone can remember. Now things are starting to change. The buzz word in everyone-who-learns-Englishs’ vocabulary is GLOBAL WARMING. By the end of the wet season there is a lot of foliage , leaves, grass, lying around. So the logical conclusion, come Dry season is to burn it. Makes room for planting veggies, helps drive away the mozzies and while you’re at it get rid of the household trash which consists mainly of plastic bags from the warung or supermarket. One bag per item. I’ve watched check-out girls put an individual apple, already in a plastic bag, into another plastic bag – purely automatic force of habit. “What about the environment ?” I ask. “Have a nice day Mister, you are very handsome.” They reply…..

Now, the dry season of 2007, in Java at least, where I’m based, was really, really dry. Longer and drier than expected. I saw coastal regions , such as Cilegon ; parched brown land, the grass had not only died but completely vanished. Coconut trees were dying. Actually dying from drought. Something that puzzled local farmers. Sure it gets hot in the dry season but the coconut trees are usually ok until the first rain. Farmers burn what there is to burn, for cooking and to clear land for the next harvest. This is what they have been doing for centuries. In Jakarta they burn as well. Maybe because some of them were farmers who came to the bright lights to look for a better life and were never able to leave. Others, to get rid of rubbish. Yet more others to pay homage to the Bee Gees and simply burn baby burn.

How much does this impact on the environment ? For the last month I have been unable to sleep at night because of sinus trouble. I’m worried about my little girl. I go outside at 2 in the morning and the whole place is shrouded in a haze of smoke. I’ve tried talking to the neighbor who maintains a small banana patch and does a fair bit of burning. Kindly, he has resolved to do his burning during the day and put out the fire before he goes home. The problem is everybody is burning. The drivers of the local minibuses end their daily shift and stop at a roadside warung for a game of cards and kretek cigarettes. Invariably, one of them will pull an old spare tire out of his mini bus and throw it on the fire to smolder for the next few days.

How do I get through to them ? “Excuse me, oh yeah Hi there. Um, I live down the road and my bedroom with my little baby inside, is full of smoke. We can’t sleep.” They will ask me to sit down and join them for a cigarette. I said to a man I met on a work site once. “I gave up smoking a year ago.” He looked puzzled and simply asked “Why !” I have to be careful in how I approach this. It may seem I’m accusing the drivers of a bad deed, over which I am angry at them and this might cause them to ‘loose face’. In such a situation they may retaliate by burning more tires or simply punching me in the face. More likely the first , as I’ve rarely encountered violence on a personal level in my twenty years here.

Yes smoke and pollution are pet hates of mine. The most frustrating thing though is watching campaigns in western countries on “How you too can save the environment !” Turn your light out at night and stop global warming ! What difference is it going to make ! I am living in a city of 20 million people. That’s more than the entire population of Australia. And people are setting fire to what ever they can lay their hands on. We have SuperMalls with enough florescent lighting to power a small country town in Australia. And the lights are on day and night.

Blog number 2. It didn’t take me long to get into paranoid power drive. Solution ? To me it’s obvious. Education. Awareness through government campaigns on T.V. just like we had 20 years ago. “Do The Right Thing.” But who will step up to the plate ?

Picture from Third World Smoke Alarm – Time

I aim to use this blog to chronicle some work I’m involved in regarding the development of bamboo products.

I’ve also just had a baby. Well my wife did the baby having part, but it makes me a daddy and has given me a re-newed sense of responsibility toward the environment.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when it comes to Indonesia and the environment. Indo Greenie ? Are you kidding me ? This place is an environmental disaster ! A glimpse into the end of the world even ! ‘Kiamat’ as they like to say over here. The standard of air quality here went way off the radar past ‘Hazardous’ years ago. You can still see a meter that was set up to measure air quality under the overpass down by Gambir train station. It was turned off a couple of years ago – probably because it only ever showed the worst possible rating. About the same time the government launched a ‘Blue skys’ committee. Their motto “In search of….”

It’s easy to get frustrated and upset with just how useless the whole situation seems here. And it’s easy to criticize. But where does it get us ? Ask Keely. Solutions and positive ideas are what Indonesia needs most at the moment. International assistance and bucket loads of funding probably wouldn’t hurt either.

For Jessica’s sake, I’m going to try and do less whining and try to initiate some positive threads in this blog here. The first step is awareness. So here it is people. The Indo-Green scene. As I’ve seen it first hand for the last 20 years and counting. Be aware. Beware even !