Tourist Slogan

I have sometimes thought that Indonesia should adopt the following tourist slogan:

“Indonesia: where small things are big and big things are small”

In our travels here, all the amazingly large things we have seen are relatively small things(walking sticks, beetles, bats, moths, rats) and all the amazingly small things we have seen are relatively large things (Javanese hippos and rhinos, Sumatran elephants, Indonesian people).

The validity of this observation was confirmed again this week as we visited Kalimantan (Borneo) for a 4 day tour which involved flying into a very remote part of the island (Pankalan Bun) with 27 others from our school and taking 6 small river boats (about 30 feet long and 8 feet wide) up into an Indonesian national park. During the trip we saw the world’s smallest species of ape, the Gibbon (see picture below), and what had to be one of the world's largest ants, the Bull Ant (sorry the picture just didn't do it justice, so I didn't post it) .

 

Gibbon outside an information center- while it looks like a monkey, notice that it has no tail



The name of the National Park was Tanjung Puting and it protects orangutans and also serves as a rehabilitation center for some of them to transition back to the wild, which accounts for their friendliness. The remote park borders a river, which has spawned a scenic river boat industry where locals charter out their small boats so visitors can easily traverse into the park to view all the exotic wildlife, which, in addition to lots of orangutans, includes proboscis monkeys, wild boars, hornbills, kingfishers, sun bears (didn't see), spotted leopards (didn't see) and crocodiles. Here are some pictures of our trip:



Eric on a boardwalk with Orangutan

Proboscis Monkey-  notice the large nose (males have even a larger one)



River boats, called Klotaks,  heading up to the national park.





Neil, hanging out on the bow of our boat


Borneo has the reputation as one of the most distinctive and unique ecosystems in the world, and it didn't disappoint as we were amazed by what we saw.  In fact, we just scratched the surface as we heard about many other scenic travel options on the island that we will never be able to visit.  Sadly, Borneo's abundant native environments are under tremendous pressure as its resources are easy pickings for opportunistic people seeking quick profits from cutting down forests, planting palm oil plantations, extracting coal, natural gas and oil. To multiply the tradegy of this is the reality that most of the money earned from these sales will not help develop infrastructure, education and health care on the island but will flow to Jakarta and points beyond (China, Japan, South Korea, Europe and North America).

Sadly, this was easily observed as we flew over the island on our way in and on our way out. 

Advent Travel

Most holiday travel, we know what to expect. We decide where to go, buy a map and travel book and start highlighting, talking, emailing and calling. This Christmas break, however, we took up our maid’s three year standing offer to visit her village for a few days. She had described it to us as very poor and very remote—she also told us that no white people had ever visited her village. When we repeatedly showed her a map of Java, she couldn’t really point out where the village was. Not knowing much else, we left on December 17 for a two night visit. Here is what we found:

  

• A very scenic village (probably about 100 houses) tucked into a valley in the cool highlands of south central Java . You can it see its approximant location on this satellite image as it is just north west of the larger village of wadasmalang ( http://mapcarta.com/25102430 ). Most of the people subsistence farm (corn, rice and cassava for crops as well as goats and chicken for meat). The little money earned in the village comes from a surplus of the crops they raise and money that flows in from villagers sending earnings back home from the cities that they have migrated to.

Picture above is the village view from a rock outcropping that we hiked to, below is a street in the village. 

   

• The warm hospitality of a family that greeted us. With only limited knowledge of Indonesian, language was a larger barrier than it usually is as most villagers spoke primarily Javanese, not Indonesian (yes, they are slightly different languages). Therefore, we just smiled, laughed and listened through our maid’s interpretation.



The welcome wagon

  



The sister Hope always wanted.

 


Everywhere we went, people wanted to shake our hand

 

• Children, children and more children. We had lots of fun with all the kids in this village as we played soccer, read books, played “bebek, bebek, ayam” (duck, duck, goose), shared candy and just batted balloons with them. Play is a universal language.



"duck, duck, goose"

 

Neil on the local soccer pitch

 

Eric batting balloons with kids

  

Our maid's dad wearing a "hand me down" from Neil

  

In addition to my thoughts above, other questions also swirl around my head:

• What is progress? On one hand, people here seemed happy and they were certainly living sustainably and their simple lifestyle resonated with me. They have a lot more than others (and some of them) think they do. On the other hand, people here have very few choices in life, most importantly in healthcare, vocation and education—but also in smaller choices to learn music, visit places, study drama, play sport or learn about other things and places. Is there a way to gain more choices without losing the simplicity? 
• What will globalization and rising incomes take away and give to this village? Indonesia is on its way up economically. More money and access to media will forever change this village as larger Asian and Western cultures break in. Undoubtedly, good things will happen because of this—but what will be lost?
• What would Christian faith look like in a place like this? While generally a good place, evidence of misplaced fear, deception and superstition certainly exist here. How would the transforming story of God’s Love enhance the beauty of this place?

Hopefully, these questions won't keep me up too much over the next few weeks of vacation.  Have a Merry Christmas.  Next stop... Kalimantan (Borneo)!