Ujung Pandang and Palembang: a tale of three cities
Tim - Letter from Indonesia Late July, 1998.
I was greeted by another hot, humid Indonesian day when I walked off the 737, but this time I looked at the sky in amazement. I was bathed in bright, clear sunlight, and the sky was a rich blue. So my first impression of Ujung Pandang was very favourable. Ujung Pandang is the largest city of Sulawesi, one of the bigger Indonesian islands. The city has about 1.5 million inhabitants. Compared with most places I have recently visited in this vast archipalego, Ujung Pandang is a model of peace and harmony (except perhaps for its name). The May riot epidemic which swept many Indonesian islands left the city almost untouched; there were a few episodes of stone throwing, but I didn't see any burnt-out shells of department stores. In fact, the local people say "what crisis?". Blessed by the 400% devaluation of the Rupiah and the export orientation of their crops, the farmers have never seen so much money. The car dealers have run out of vehicles, and there are charming stories of villagers buying top-of-the-line home appliances even though they don't have an electricity supply. The day I got back to Jakarta, the Jakarta Post ran a story on this, but the local stories are even more amusing. One man is going to use his fridge as a wardrobe. Another farmer, in an old shirt and flip-flops (thongs to Australians) surprised a car dealer when after a few cursory questions, he paid for a new car with the cash he had with him in two old shopping bags. Children walk the streets with fistfuls of bank-notes. The Chinese distributors we spoke to are very keen to make sure their stores and warehouses are full of goods, while in other cities the traders are rueing their burnt-down warehouses and the frozen puddles of melted plastic that used to be televisions.
But the nicest thing was being in a city where you didn't feel anyone was out to rob, scam or solicit you. I didn't realise just how much Jakarta had been getting me down. After a while, Jakarta eats at the soul. It feels like everyone is on the make; there's little other reason to live here. It's certainly not a lifestyle place. Corruption is so widespread that every time I see someone with a big house or a fancy car, I wonder what trick they are up to. I'm a rich ex-pat; if I feel like this after only two years, imagine how the poor battlers feel. And there are a lot more of them now - John Howard would feel right at home (but judging by the anti-Chinese racism, the Honourable Member for Oxley would pick up all the votes). According to government figures, the nationwide percentage of people living in poverty declined from 40% in 1976 to 11% in 1996. The official estimate is that the 1998 figure is 39.6% -- twenty years of progress wiped out in about six months. Worryingly, the figure for rural areas s 45%, so even though agriculture is the only foreseeable economic saviour in the short term, the smart money is on an even greater migration to urban centres. Oh good.
Every traffic light in Jakarta is swarming with young men playing guitars as they loom at your window, getting gradually more insistent that you give them money. Cunningly, my car is already scratched and the worse for wear, so there isn't much they can do that worries me. The aggressive young men have pushed the traditional beggars - old women, the blind and the crippled, out of the picture. The other growth sector in this industry is the child beggar. Here, the competitive advantage is youth, and the average begging age for this approach is falling fast. The limiting factor in this case is that the child beggar needs to be tall enough to be visible from within a car. It is of course pathetic, but we have all become so cynical so quickly. The only hope is economic recovery, and that, for better or for worse, is in the hands of people from the same elite that got 200 million people into this mess.
Most people I know have dramatically curtailed their travel at night. It is very dangerous to use taxis at present, and women are very vulnerable. Chinese women should leave or hire a bodyguard (which is now the primary function of drivers). A shop selling "anti-rape corsets" has moved 1000 units recently. These are metal underpants fitted with a combination lock. There are stories of widespread firearm trading - personal firearms are virtually unheard of here. However, I only know one person who travels with a gun, and he's a local. I don't know any expats who have gone that far.
Anyone coming to Jakarta who doesn't know the city should contact me for important advice.
And this reminds me of something else that seemed odd about Ujung Pandang. From the airport I was picked up by a Philips car, and the driver didn't lock the doors. HE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE CENTRAL LOCKING! And when I travelled with an Indonesian Chinese business man, HE DIDN'T LOCK THE DOORS EITHER!!!! This is strikingly casual. And it gets even more pronounced - they didn't even have 80% tinted windows that you can hardly see through.
Australians received a warning from the embassy recently to watch out for the slashing tyres attack: this is where sharp objects are placed on the road, slashing your tyres. When you stop to investigate, thieves who were following you on motorbike attack; or in a more Javanese modus operandi, one distracts you with offers of help while another robs your vehicle. Embassy advice: instruct your driver not to stop. This really happens, as do attacks from taxis where the driver stops in a quiet street, opens the boot and two armed men jump out, or the driver goes to a pre-arranged spot where his friends are waiting. I thought I was falling victim to this recently. I was taking a taxi home from work, which involves a U-turn across a busy road. U-turns are a sublime skill here, maybe it is the lomg lost tantric art of driving. I'm not mystical enough to ever attempt one myself. Anyway, as we were doing this, a motorbike was not acting at the driver's level of consciousness, and nearly hit us. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter, the motorcyclist blamed the taxi driver, and indicated this with a kick at the first opportunity. Well, my driver took this in a spirit that would not be best described as involving significant quantities of brotherly love, and I was the captive audience to a car chase at very high speed through heavy traffic; you would have thought the motorbike would have an advantage, but the skills of taxi drivers are highly tuned, and the bike couldn't get away. In desperation, the motorcyclist turned into a small street, which was completely the wrong way for me. My taxi followed it. I was getting pretty agitated at this point; my heart was racing. Was this a set-up? But eventually my driver abandoned the chase, and took me home.
However, despite all of this, the expats are coming back. I met someone at a party recently, British, teaching at the Australian School. I asked her if she was happy being in Jakarta. She looked at me, and said, in all seriousness, "how could you not be?". It's true, lots of expats people love it here. She was referring to the dream house, the maids and gardeners and so on. Fair enough I guess; it's your suburban dream on steroids, except for the barbed wire on your fence and the 24 hour security guard. Or maybe that's part of the suburban fantasy too.
So you can see that I was very excited to re-discover the real Indonesia. I can't wait to get a few weeks in Sulawesi, and travel north; drive to Toraja, the mountainous region where the locals say it is too dangerous to fly, and then maybe go by land to Menado. Sulawesi is a spectacularly mountainous island where no point is more than 70km from the sea, if my tatty tourist brochure is to be believed. Maybe I'll finally take those anti-malaria tablets I got two years ago.
Last week I visited Palembang, on Sumatra. I took part in a market visit to the private sector Philips' distributor. His daughter teamed up with me, keen to practise her English - she'd just come back from a course at UTS in Sydney. We walked all around the downtown area, visiting the crowded little shops of Indonesia's traditional retail sector. I saw a funny thing out of the corner of my eye: a MYER sign. I thought I must be seeing things. A few minutes later, around some corners and down a few lanes: bang in front of my, an indisputable, typographically identical Myer sign. Some Palembang merchant must have been very impressed with the Myer department store, a famous Melbourne icon, and decided to set up an unofficial copy in Palembang. Even the clothes had Myer price tags! It was full of people. I should have bought something, and tried to exchange it in Melbourne. The staff would have been reluctant to refund my socks with a price of "3000". A lot of people have been comparing the difficulties of Chinese Indonesians with the Jews in 1930s Germany, so there is something of a divine jest about a Chinese merchant naming a shop after a famous Jewish family, in a city recently racked by racist violence, and seeing the shop full of Muslims. By the way, Indonesian New Order foreign policy is anti-Israeli, but with all the effectiveness and impact of most New Order policies. The rationale is to offer a kind of solidarity with the Palestinians, which is a cheap way of keeping some of the noisy local Islamic activists happy. Most Indonesians couldn't care less; they have been brought up to be completely apolitical Muslims. Shamefully and disgracefully, Schindler's List was banned here, and in Malaysia. This would have to be the only Spielberg film not shown in Indonesia.
Palembang suffered a tragedy not long after the riots. Life had hesitatingly returned to the city centre, so a number of people were watching a movie in a top-floor cinema complex in a down-town shopping mall. An electrical fault set fire to the building. The security forces arrived at the scene, and suspecting a riot, they locked the doors to prevent looting. They trapped inside the building most of the people who were watching the move, and there was a very high death toll.