Posts tagged indonesia

(I’ve been having connections issues so these are lagging behind, I think it’s best to not attach a day number from now on)

I lived in Indonesia for the first 10 years of my life and I was really looking forward to finally being able to see the house that I grew up in. It’s been 17 years since I had seen the place, heck I don’t even really know where it is nor how to get there. My uncle was kind enough to drive us over there so we made the trip from the hotel in Jakarta to ye olde neighborhood of Taman Manggu Indah.

In terms of miles the place is not very far from our hotel (10-15 miles) but if you know anything about driving in Indonesia you’ll understand why it took us about 2 hours to get there. To make things worse, my dad wanted to take the older route instead of the freeway because he wanted to see if the road was still there. Apparently asking the neighbors upon our arrival was not an option.

So really, this road is *BARELY* wide enough to fit 2 cars going in opposite directions and it is also packed with motorcyclists trying to jockey for passing positions alongside the cars. Furthermore, the road is currently being “improved” because it kept getting washed away by floods. This improvement involves building a new road on top of the old road but a foot higher. I’m not done yet. This is done in lane s-e-g-m-e-n-t-s so imagine a 2 lane road where all of the sudden 200 feet of the right lane is suddenly 1 foot higher than the entire road. There are no ramps at the ends of these segments, perhaps some rocks placed here or a broken plank there, so cars have to sloooowly drive up and over a fargin foot vertical and down a foot vertical on the other end! While this is all happening in 1 lane, the other lane is free to move about avoiding motorcyclists, carts, pedestrians, and children playing on the road. But sometimes, the raised segments are just too high to drive over (consistency is for sissies, this is Indonesia!) so they have to block one lane and divert the other lane through the drivable area for a period of time. Gosh, this is so hard to explain so I think I’m just going to stop. Long story short, the people managing all this flow of traffic through a single lane does so by yelling. No radios, no lights, no flags. Chaos ensued and we were stuck there with like 20 motorcycles surrounding is, no cars were able to move for a good 20 minutes.

How does this make any sense?

A majority of Indonesia's populace live well below the poverty level. I saw this boy collecting trash from the street and lugging them somewhere. Not in the frame is his helper, who I assume is his sister, who is probably about 6 years old.

I think I spent too much time writing the paragraph above, forget it. It was just chaos.

When we finally got to our destination I could hardly recognize the house. Though there are people living there, it was pretty much dilapidated. You can see the effects of all the flooding that’s happened over the past 17 years (When I lived there, ankle high dirty flood water IN THE WHOLE HOUSE is pretty much an annual disaster). Additionally, the house had been poorly maintained by the people living there. We can’t blame them, we don’t pay them and they’re there so the house is not abandoned. It was somewhat heartbreaking.

Front of my old house. That cement cube thing in front is where trash is manually picked up via cart. Sometimes the trash is burnt. The coconut tree on the right was lower than the roof of the house 17+ years ago.

I spent some time walking around inside the house to take pictures and I remember it being much bigger. I guess everything feels bigger when you were younger. I was a bit sad because the current place is nowhere like the picture I’ve had in my head for the past 17 years, it’s akin to finding out santa claus is not real.

My old room, I believe that's a full sized bed on the floor... not sure. There used to be an AC unit above the window.

Dining area + door to the back terrace

I must have been 6 or 7 years old when, through my mischief and watching too many cartoons, I lit this coconut tree on fire. Back then, the leaves were about level with the roof of the house and in my panic to grab the garden house I stepped on mooshy dog poop (still warm) barefooted.

We had also met with old neighbors and friends from the area, everyone commented on how tall I am (I’m not very tall, 5’10) and it was nice to see them. As we were leaving, I had an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards my parents who took the risk 17 years ago to move the entire family to the US. Leaving a country that they’ve spent their entire lives and built their house in, leaving their jobs, good friends, and family, that took a lot of courage. They’ve always said that we moved so my sister and I can receive a better education and, though I’ve believed them, I guess I was never exposed to the reality of ‘had they not’ until now. I feel so fortunate and I really thank my parents for that.

This cat did not welcome me