Last week I went to accompany David to do some filming and documentation of the life cycles of Bamboo Andong in Malang. Dr.Subagiono is super keen to get involved in our project and had offered to show us around some of the bamboo forests and community nurseries in Malang.

It was the end of the long dry season , so not much going on in terms of the latter.

We flew into Surabaya ; Indonesia’s second biggest , pretty much tree-less city, and took the toll road up to Malang. A very pleasant drive albeit the long traffic jam alongside some kind of retaining wall. I noticed a huge plume of smoke billowing from above a lake in the distance. Subagiono informed me it was the notorious ‘Lapindo disaster’. We stopped to get a better look.

We climbed to the top of the four meter high embankment and were greeted by a handful of ‘make-shift’ guides, victims of the mudflow, who were offering tours, DVDs and factual accounts of the disaster. The ‘mud lake’ stretched out for miles. A fair bit of work had gone into holding it back before it consumed the railway linking Surabaya to Malang. It has already absorbed one major highway and 16 villages along it’s route. I was told the lake covers some 300 hectares and it certainly looks about that big. Nearby from where we were standing was the tops of a couple of brick houses and a couple of bubbling pools. (Take a look at my short video embed.)

Reports state that the disaster occurred when Lapindo Brantas ; a private company belonging to Bakrie, the current minister of public welfare (there’s irony for you !) , was drilling for gas. The Banjar-Panji 1 borehole disrupted a limestone shelf which was under pressure and gas and mud began to spurt out…and then spurt some more…and more and more… This occurred on May 28 2006. Two years later efforts to plug the hole have failed and the mud continues to flow.

There’s a lot of debate about Lapindo. The company of course says it was a natural disaster linked to an earthquake that happened two days before in the center of Java. Subagiono, who has lived in Malang all his life says that the volcano constantly blows fine black sand into the air. I noticed this on the roofs of many cars in the rural areas and wondered just how refreshing the fresh air in Malang actually was.
So maybe mother nature did have something to do with it. A team of Geo’s from the UK sent in to study the disaster don’t think so. There’s a good read about the whole fiasco over on WIKI

At the end of the day it’s the displaced villagers who lost out the most. There are some pretty poor people in this part of Java. They are even the brunt of a lot of TV serial humor ; Orang Jawo. They are a humble bunch that seem content to get by day by day on next to nothing. Indonesia is in the’ ring of fire’ , volcanoes and earthquakes all over the place so the people of Porong will probably plod on deservingly of whatever assistance the government and Mr Bakrie may or may not decide to give them.

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