Sabtu
I never really had any ambition to be a travel writer, but here we go again. This time, your intrepid correspondent is making his way to Kuningan, near Cirebon on the northern coast of Java a few hours by train south-east of Jakarta.
I am currently engaged in Stage 1: getting the tickets. I am in one of five long queues at Gambir Station in Jakarta. I have been in the queue for twenty minutes and will be for another twenty if business continues as usual. There seems to be no other way to get a ticket other than to appear in person. I could pay a railway chap to jump the queue, as one has just done, but I would still have to wait about.
One ticket-box window has a sticker on it announcing that this ticket-box is especially for people who have paid for their tickets via an ATM or at the post office and can exchange the receipt for an actual ticket. The window is closed.
It is the mid-weekend of the school holidays, too, which exacerbates the situation: all the mums and dads are taking the kids back home to kampung or off on a trip to the seaside or mountains or shopping malls.
Well, twenty minutes later I handed my ticket request form to the lady and she said there were no “executive” class seats left, only “business”, which didn’t have air-conditioning: Rp 70,000 (± USD 7.70). Ah, it’s only three hours, in theory, so what the hell?
Minggu.
And it was only three hours. Yes, it was warm in the train, but the windows were open, there were ceiling fans and cool drinks. The view for most of the three hours was verdant green ricefields and edging forests. The northern coast of Java is flat. The interior mountain range was invisible from the train, veiled in cloud. Some of our fellow “business” travellers arranged themselves along the corridor on the floor, on pages of newspaper, chatting amicably. Several others had claimed the corridor in front of the toilet. Thus, getting to and into said room took some gentle, slow-motion acrobatics and friendly smiles. The room was clean, oddly enough, with a toilet bowl that provided a splendid view of the, no doubt, nitrogen-rich rails rushing by below. Flushing was by tap and little bucket. Normal.
At Cirebon, it was raining. Pouring. A deluge. We all trooped through carriages until the one that was parked beneath the station roof and alighted, dry. The station was teeming with people coming and going. We waited a few minutes for the chap who was picking us up, then drove 25 metres through a wall of rain to the ticket office to buy our tickets home. This time, because of our foresight in booking early, we scored executive class. With air conditioning. Rp 100,000 (± USD 9) each.
The drive to Kuningan, up in the mountains, took under an hour, passing through villages along a well-made road. The area was the preferred holiday retreat of senior officials of the former Dutch government, so there are still plenty of houses of Dutch design littered about, some quite splendid indeed. The scenery from vantage points was of the coastal plain, a brilliant green mat of ricefields, coconut palms, clumps of forest garden, villages, power lines, roads; a full landscape with barely a pebble unused or unoccupied.
Our hotel in Kuningan was The Grage, a relatively new edifice boasting volcanic spring water pools and spa. There seemed to be only a few other guests on this mid-Sunday of the school holidays. Out the window of the room, which was modern, large and minimalist, is an enormous volcano, in that classic inverted-V shape we know from children’s drawings. It is still active insomuch as it bubbles up volcanic mud and gases here and there. The slopes of Gunung Ceremai are a national park, home to panthers, monkeys and the like.
I am here as an observer, a student, as my work colleague escorts a representative from a United Nations agency. The agency is funding a project of ours in the area and the rep is here to see what the project is actually doing. So am I.
Senin
Coincidentally as it turns out, the news on the telly at breakfast featured stories about holy springs.
First, images of hundreds of poor citizens dousing beneath a blue pipe spouting a strong stream of clear water.
My colleague had turned the dining room telly’s volume down, arguing that people may well come here to rest their eyes with the mountain scenery but forgot to also rest their ears.
So, the details of the splashing I know not. But it looked like a barren field surrounded by village. And the citizens were definitely dousing, not undertaking a proper bath or collecting drinking water.
The next story sprang from a spring that was bubbling up clear water into a pool in the middle of a ricefield under a makeshift canopy of blue plastic tarpaulin. A few villagers were splashing themselves from a plastic heart-shaped ladle (available at all supermarkets and street markets). A grandmother in kebaya and kain sat on a bamboo platform near the blue-tarped well next to a sign that read “volunteers’ donations”.
The next spring was more dramatic and obviously holy. A handwritten cardboard sign announced that this was the holy water of a chap who was presumably a holy man. A chap in a Muslim outfit stood inside the fence looking somewhat wistful as curious onlookers peered at the camera, which panned down to a deep pit with water at the bottom. It was fenced off with blue plastic sheeting to hold back the hundreds of curious citizens. Then a cut to the object of the curiousity: other villagers splashing about under a solid stream spouting from a pipe nearby the pool. In fact, it seemed to be same citizens who had splashed about in the first scene, so I assumed this was from a different angle. I surmise that a mosque was being constructed and the workers struck water. “Probably PAM (state water supply company) pipe,” opined a Muslim friend. (For the real story as told by a proper media outlet, see www.thejakartaglobe.com, Monday July 5, “Mysterious gushing grave offers comfort, profit”.)
Water, despite its relative abundance, is a big issue. We are in Kuningan because of its watershed, which sends more than 300 cubic metres a second downhill to the city of Cirebon through a number of conduits.
And so, after a meeting with officials of the national park, district planning agency, district government, conservation groups, farmers’ groups and suchlike at the office of the national park, which was a lot of talking about political and management plans, I found myself in a village hall up in the mountains with a bunch of farmers who were going to be invited to be part of the project.
In the course of the meeting, which revolved around three mountain springs, two of which supplied clean water to the village and the other to two villages downhill, I found myself suggesting building a windmill, of the kind well-known in Australia, but out of bamboo and other local materials, to solve a water-shortage problem during the dry season. This conversation was shouted rather than spoken because of the noise of the deluge battering the roof of the hall, adding a piquancy to a discussion about a water shortage.
The curious connection with the morning’s news feature was that one of the springs near the village, nestled in a forest grove, has a myth associated with it: anyone who cuts trees within its precinct will fall ill or even die. This story, promulgated by the guardian villagers amongst neighbouring villages, is attributed with stopping deforestation in the area of the spring.
“They say they’re frightened,” confirmed the spokesperson of the group.
It’s a story as old as myth. (See J.G. Frazier’s The Golden Bough for a more-than-full account.)
As the rain bucketed down and the farmer chaps continued complaining about lack of water, I wondered what the ladies were up to, though the UN rep had been well ahead of my meanderings.
And so we soon found out by paying a visit to a women’s co-operative nearby. In a small house, a group of ten-or-so women have been running a business making cassava, banana and singkong (like spinach) and other mountain products into chips (or crisps or crackers, call them what you will, they still taste the same) that they sell to surrounding cities, including Jakarta. There’s not much money in it for the ladies, as yet, but they have ambitions to “brand” what they produce as specialist, organic, mountain delicacies. Each region, almost each village, in Indonesia has a speciality food of one kind or another. If friends know I am off to some place they’ll instantly ask for me to bring back the specialty food of the area. So the ladies are not just pissing in the wind, so to speak, with their plans and could do very well because their snacks are very tasty indeed compared to other similar offerings I’ve sampled.
The UN rep and I each ordered a sample pack of three types of cracker – banana and chocolate, melinjo (a local fruit), sweet potato and cassava – which are mixed with local spices to ensure a unique and pleasing result. And then the ladies started adding other packets, for “promotion” they later said, and I staggered out with an enormous load that had everyone falling about laughing.
Back in the car, as we drove past the mosque I noticed that the entrance gate featured two large onion-shaped domes atop its pillars. I enquired whether they were empty domes. Indeed they were, was the reply.
“Why not fill them with water for use during the dry season?” I suggested. Roars of laughter. “But it would be holy water, I protested,” which caused more guffaws.
I explained that it seemed absurd to a former denizen of a desert country that people complained of lack of water here, in the midst of the daily deluge.
“Where does all this rain go? Into a river?” I asked. “Why not divert some of it into holding tanks? Easy to do: dig holes and line them with the cement so beloved of all Indonesians.”
And then it was explained to me that “we” believe that water from springs is clean water and that which falls from the sky is not.
“Fine, so go thirsty in the dry season. Or you could get our scientist types to do some testing of the rain and spring water and compare for purity and discuss the results with the villagers. Attitudes change, especially in the face of need and even sometimes in the face of evidence.”
And so we shall see.
The trip back to Jakarta was indeed executive class, with the promised air conditioning, a telly and a steady stream of uniformed staff offering food and drinks.
We alighted at Gambir only a few minutes past the predicted time of arrival and went our separate ways.
Salam
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