Just for fun - photos

For 3 weeks I tried to get a picture of one of these terrific, 20-foot tall bamboo creations (they mark a celebration). Well, this is the best I could do; sums up my experience of Indonesia -- tradition and modernity, side by side. Oh, and the tradition isn't easy to catch.

Ganesh, Ganesh, Bali's favorite Hindu god, have I ever seen you so decorated and lovely? Only in Bali.

Fans were a great hit with the women of our group. They really did help with the heat and humidity.

The big Bali resorts, including Canada's Four Seasons, with their manicured lawns and swish lawn chairs, are to the left, just out of the picture. These men continue happily with their fishing trade. Power! They get the beach and ocean every day, year after year.

Goodbye to my not-so-swish Dili hotel room. It was in a cast-off UN bunker. Nice and clean though, and very cozy. I'll never forget the big cans of Raid and Off. I suppose in case of mosquito infestation -- and I shouldn't joke. John, another staffer, came back with something that sounds suspiciously like dengue fever, caused by those little skitters. 

Eva Airlines. A joke for my duaghter Eva; may she travel it someday. Now 3 times a week to Taipei, non-stop, as of this week! Great innovation, as the hardest part of my trip was the 4-5 hour layover in Vancouver in the wee,wee (yawn) hours.

At the nice, cheap, old Bali stopover hotel, far from the beach, but comfortable, with two frangipani trees and many water features, including a fish and turtle pond, and this pool. A real find. Thanks Edna!

Did I say how beautiful East Timor is, along with its people?

Reweaving culture needs peace

 

In Toronto now, jet-lagged and back at work, I'm still thinking about some facets of our trip.

On one of the hotter afternoons in East Timor, our group participated in a meeting held in a community near Dili, where elected district and sub-district leaders spoke to us of their hopes and dreams, and their needs. Although not our role to fulfill those needs, they all did a good job of representing their communities. Interestingly, one of the youth representatives said clearly that what the youth most wanted was a space in which to learn and practice music, visual art and dance. It always makes me stop and think to hear this clear need expressed by youth. And why not? Isn't culture what gives all our lives meaning and depth?

I saw clearly in Java  how much agriculture both is and affects culture, like culture passed from generation to generation. When the links are broken, as by the Green Revolution, it takes time and effort to recover the culture. In Indonesia's case the "traditional wisdom" movement was there to draw on, but not all cultures have developed resistance to such a high art.

Weavings on Parliamentary walls

In East Timor we experienced a culture that was literally weaving its own traditions into the fabric of the new nation. Tais, the traditional woven clothing from all parts of East Timor are featured on the Parliamentary walls.

We were also treated to a cultural night by the partners; the women in their beautiful woven thais, with golden paper headbands and armbands, all highly symbolic, danced and drummed and sang for us. We sang too, for them. Our reflection was that culture can only thrive in times of peace, and that we wish long-lasting peace for East Timor.

We met with the Alola Foundation, which preserves and develops the culture of weaving, as well as furthering the rights and development of Timorese women.

Later, we were lucky enough to meet women weavers in the Embera community we visited. Here are some of their designs:

Everywhere we went in Timor, we were greeted with Tais, some with our names, either ceremonially draped around our shoulders in greeting, or draping our meeting tables.

"Women are close to water"

"Women are close to water." This is something that one of the communities said in our first week in Java. Everywhere we visited in Indonesia and East Timor, it was definitely women who had major responsibility for collecting it, carrying it, cleaning with it, and ensuring it was available.

As I struggled up a steep, muddy hill in Sukubumi, West Java during my first days, I could not imagine spending 6 months of every year making the same trip 3 times a day with a 40-litre jug of water in each hand. Yet the women of that village do. Throughout Java and East Timor, whenever we were in the country, we saw children and women doing this difficult, time-consuming work.

Sukubumi family

Community members in rural area near Yogyakarta; they've found a solution to water woes.

Bali, that tropical paradise of the Western imagination, with its well-watered lawns and infinity pools at luxury resorts beside the ocean, has the same water problem we encountered in Java.  The water from the taps is not safe to drink. As elsewhere in Indonesia, tourists are advised to brush their teeth with bottled water.

You can swim in this Bali infinity pool beside the ocean, just don't drink the water!

In Bali we met with Yuyusa, an Indonesian environmental engineer, who has turned her talents and energy towards water issues and ecology through BaliFokus, an NGO she helped found about 10 years ago; Balifokus is associated with our partner INFID. BaliFokus started with waste issues, but recently has worked with the urban poor to have them set up appropriate technology water points. They have had to rely on their own funding to make it happen. Each contributes toward the technology, with cash and in-kind donations. Yuyusa emphasized that part of Balifokus' work is training government's revolving staff.

Jess waits with me to meet Yuyusa of BaliFokus at Jimbaran beach.

It was immediately clear to our group arriving in East Timor that access to clean water, just as in Indonesia, depended on whether you could afford bottled water. As elsewhere, we were told not to drink the tap water.

We heard various things: In its 10 years in the country the United Nations has trucked in bottled water for its staff, rather than improving water infrastructure. Someone recalled seeing bottles full of water at the UN headquarters at Dili piled as high as the second storey of the building. We saw the empty plastic bottles everywhere: most notably piled up on pristine beaches with the other flotsam.

In this village, someone got creative with all the empties.

Whatever infrastructure may have been left by the Portuguese or Indonesians has not kept up with Dili's growing needs. As elsewhere, the poor cannot afford bottled water and will they boil whatever water is available before drinking. Or not boil it, depending on time and fuel. Not boiling leads to diarrhea, which affects children most.

We brought our own water bottles from Canada, but not the stove and fuel needed to boil the water!

Over breakfast at our hotel one morning, I spoke with Bob, who was working on a National Water Policy for East Timor, for Australian Aid. He comes to Dili every couple of months from his home in England. He specializes in water and sanitation in schools, and told me a horror story of some of the schools that had been built in the last 10 years with aid money. Fully piped bathrooms where there are no running water or sewage pipes to connect to. The same inappropriate, blind "development" disasters  that big dollar "development" projects seem to specialize in. So many needs, so much money, but the money doesn't meet the local needs. Later I hear of an NGO, Peace Dividend Trust, which is advocating to the UN about the ethical use of massive international funds in small countries in crisis. One of their positions is that contractors invest in local infrastructure and staff.

Breakfast room: you'll just have to imagine Bob the water expert sitting there.

I interviewed Keryn who works on water and sanitation in East Timor for Australian Aid (the equivalent of our CIDA). Their goal is to have a water source within 100 metres of every household in the rural areas. This is an ambitious goal, and admirable, as there are currently women and children walking 1 kilometre to get water in the rural areas. They are also working on the Dili water system, but she notes that urban water coverage is considered high because people have access to wells; 30 to 40% of households have taps. The treatment plants are considered good, but the pipes contaminate water as it is delivered.

"The challenge of course, is maintenance of whatever systems are built." There are limited budgets for maintenance. Aus Aid does lots of work engaging communities in maintaining systems and making them accessible to all (democratic management). Some of this work includes conflict resolution.

They have initiated a gender equity policy in all water maintenance training, because, as Keryn says, "Women are much quicker to fix water systems because it impacts their lives most quickly."I think of all the women and children hauling water up steep hills and say "Thank you," on their behalf. As we learned elsewhere, women's time is a major issue: the time spent carrying water is time that could be spent doing other things.

It's also clear to me on leaving this beautiful part of the world, with its abundant natural resources, including water, that changing North American attitudes to bottled water is just one small part of the necessary solution -- any  real change will have to be global and include improved public water access in places like Indonesia and East Timor.

Continuity and change in Java: a few photos

Lunch at a farmer's home near Bogor, Java, including tofu and tempeh.

At the Taipei airport waiting for the flight to Jakarta I noted that the passengers were primarily young women wearing what I think of as Western dress -- exactly like the models in Canadian magazines. Fashionable knee-high leather boots were a popular option. That and the ubiquitous cellphone had me wondering what kind of culture we might meet in Java.

But it is a deeper and richer culture than I could imagine; adapting and changing, but in its own way. Here are some of the photos I tried to take of the changes, stability and innovation that is happening everywhere.

(hard to see, but worth it)

On the way to a village in Java, our driver stopped to ask directions, frequently. At one long stop we watched this woman pack up her entire sidewalk kitchen, including stove and stool, all the time chatting and laughing with the store owner. One part is hoisted on her back, another will be carried in her arms, and the final basket will go on her head. She walked away straight-backed and cheerful. Later, in an airport, leafing through a picture book, I saw a photo from the late 1800s of a woman with exactly the same sidewalk kitchen, which she carried the same way.

A family out for a Sunday drive. You see this everywhere, in multiples.

In the cities you rarely see traditional dress, unless as a staff uniform at the big hotels. But as we drove deeper into the villages, away from the cities in Java, we saw more and more elderly people, and also more and more traditional dress: like this woman's batik wrap, blouse, jacket and scarf. All kinds of variations exist comfortably side by side in the countryside, on all ages.

These handy baskets have been adapted from bicyles to motorbikes.

Bye-bye water buffalo, hello machine.

Motorbikes rule, seriously, even in this hamlet.

The closer to the villages, the quieter the roads. More people walking with harvests.

Javanese farmers, including organic farmers. At the beginning of each meeting with Javanese farmers all pulled out a pack of cigarettes and furiously smoked a few in a row (everything from Pall Mall to, rarely, traditional ciggies). When our partners hold trainings for farmers there is no non-smoking rule. My yoga friends will appreciate how easily these men sit cross-legged for long periods of time. I wasn't able to.

I only saw this form of transport used by locals in Solo, a smaller city towards East Java.

Offerings

What a trip! Three different islands on the archipelago, each defined by a very different religion, culture and history. Java is predominantly Muslim, but its own Java-style form that is at about 600 years old. East Timor became predominantly Catholic during the Indonesian occupation, as the Church offered protection to the people and their culture. And now Bali...

:

Bali is  visibly religious, in its own unique, Hindu-Buddhist fashion. Every morning and evening elegantly dressed women in traditional sarongs and lace blouses make offerings in fron of their doors, at shrines and temples, before sacred trees, at wells and other places of worship. The waitresses at the restaurant at our hotel do the same thing at the edge of the swimming pool. There are so many places of worship and they are so integrated into daily life that I am having trouble distinguishing homes from temples.

Entrance to a house? A temple?

Offering at the pool of our hotel.

 In Ubud yesterday morning I saw a woman making an offering on the hood of a Land Rover, pouring the oil on the ground at her feet. I badly wanted to take a photo, both of her and the woman I later saw carrying offerings of fruit on a basket on her head, but these are intensely private moments, if acted out in public. While waiting for a flight at the Bali airport, I saw one of the women working at the Polo store, dressed in a business suit, spreading incense through the small boutique before laying it on the small shrine at the door.

The woman in the upper LH corner makes an offering.

With Bali coffee, yum.

Monkeys at Ubud's Sacred Monkey Forest enjoying the offerings. The Monkeys are considered sacred.

Some gestures are common across religions, if done in different ways and coming from different contexts. In East Timor, Sunday Mass is a major social as well as spiritual event. Here are photos of the delegation making the offering at Mass that was co-celebrated by Development and Peace  in Dili:

John and Linda: present part of the offering.

Jess and Roberta also involved in the offering.