Twilight in Kuta

by David Nesbit

  5

  The General’s Story

  Neil has been, shall we say, known to me, or on my radar at least, for many a year now, and the balance of our friendship, relationship, cooperation – call it what you will – has shifted considerably more than once over that time, but, basically, and he might not agree here, he has mainly been beholden to me during the vast majority of our years together.

  Yes, our conjoined tale makes for interesting reading, but before I really get into that I guess it is prudent for me to start at the beginning and fill you in with at least some perfunctory details regarding me and my background.

  I was born in Surabaya, the capital of the province of East Java, in 1959, and lived there as well as other places until 1996 when I finally moved lock, stock and barrel to Jakarta, where I have remained ever since. In between, I spent some considerable time moving around (for reasons that may or may not become clearer later) but always returned to my

  base in Surabaya.

  I am of mixed heritage – Chinese Indonesian and indigenous Indonesian – and, as will also perhaps become clearer over the pages that follow, this has proved to be both a blessing and a drawback. My father was indigenous and my mother of Chinese descent

  Some elaboration regarding citizenship and heritage matters in Indonesia is perhaps called for before we progress much further. As the results of a ‘mixed’ marriage my parents both suffered to a degree through the ‘years of living dangerously’ in the mid-sixties, when there was a reported coup attempt by the Indonesian Communist Party, who allegedly attempted to seize control of the government in 1965. Their attempt failed and the communists were promptly outlawed and anything remotely ‘red’ looking either banned or persecuted. This included people of Chinese origin.

  There followed a period of murder and mayhem in Indonesia whereby anybody suspected of having communist tendencies or sympathies had very real reason to fear for their lives. Both my parents had family members who simply disappeared during this time never to be seen again. It was by all accounts the most horrible of times.

  One of the by-products of this so-called coup attempt was that people of Chinese origin were deprived the same rights as indigenous Indonesians. This meant they found it very difficult, if not impossible, at one stage to secure employment or education for their children. They weren’t allowed to own property or to even have ‘Chinese-sounding’ names and this led to my mother being re-christened Elizabeth Mary Chantmo, and my own name being changed from Xien Chan to a more acceptable Henry Chantmo. This was as, my father told me, many Chinese people based in Surabaya chose deliberately ‘English’ sounding names for themselves and their offspring in an attempt to crook a nose at the authorities.

  Other by-products of this discrimination included mixed-religion marriages being forbidden, the state of Israel as well as the religion of Judaism no longer being officially recognized, and atheism and agnosticism also no longer being official options for citizens.

  It was further announced that with immediate affect, all adults would need to register for an identity card and on which they would need to state which of the five approved religions they followed. These were: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Confucianism was outlawed due to its perceived popularity in communist China. Finally, Chinese language schools and courses were banned and Chinese writing symbols forbidden. Some of these rules remained in force for over fifty years.

  In 1967 the government went so far as to set up a committee to discuss the Chinese Problem or Masalah Cina as it was known in Indonesian. Possible solutions debated included the forced repatriation to China of all people of Chinese descent, and when this was declared ‘impractical’ other solutions were sought instead. It was decreed that Indonesia would attempt to find ways to take advantage of the economic and business skills of the Chinese-Indonesians whilst ensuring they were no longer in a position to uphold economic dominance.

  As years were put between the so-called coup and the present, discrimination against ethnic Chinese continued on one hand, whilst perceived economic inequality existed on the other. A system of belief bordering on myth sprang up that ‘the Chinese’ were all rich and were squirrelling away the wealth of the country whilst employing indigenous Indonesians in less than salubrious working conditions. As time progressed, an uneasy kind of truce existed, but with racial undertones that would one day again bubble over and cause internal mayhem.

  Anyway, this was all still to come as I continued my education and became a young man.

  My early education was uneventful and reasonably happy until the time of the aforementioned aborted coup and the ‘years of living dangerously’ epoch that followed. My father worked as a civil servant in the land transmigration department and by all accounts was well liked and respected by his colleagues and business associates. This meant when the racial instability of that time transposed into something far more dangerous and sinister, he was in a position to be able to call in favours and thus protect his family.

  His wife, my mother, would have been at serious risk of the mobs due to her ancestry had she not had my father and his connections to protect her, and, by extension, me. As it was, we were moved from the small private dwelling we rented into the relative safety of an army compound, and it was here that I proceeded to continue my studies until graduation from senior high school in 1977. By this time my father had carved out a second career for himself whilst laying down the foundations for my own.

  Dad was still working for the government but in more clandestine areas of expertise. He was not permitted to talk too much about things, of course, but many years later I learnt that a by-product of the horrors of 1965-67 was the setting up of a government agency with connections to the intelligence services. The intelligence services in those days went by the acronym of BIN – which stood for Baden Intellijen Negara (State Intelligence Agency) – and dad worked for an offshoot of this organization. As the male indigenous partner in a mixed marriage, who just happened to already be working for the government, my father was deemed to have the special insight and skills required to be able to understand the sociological conflicts, concerns and underlying problems facing society under the rule of President Pak Soeharto’s New Order government.

  My father was often away from home and his journeying included several trips overseas. As far as I am aware now, he was responsible for learning and then training recruits in the arts of subterfuge. It was also his remit to oversee the setting up of very small, localized agencies that would be run on the ground in a literally street-by-street or kampung basis. Simply put, each area or municipality was instructed to appoint a local head or chief. This head would be responsible for the registering and observance of citizens within a collection of maybe two to three streets. All these citizens would report to the local chief their personal details that included obvious information such as name, age, and address, but would also include details relating to ethnicity, religion, political leanings, property holdings and even bank

  account details.

  The neighbourhood chiefs would be charged with keeping an eye on those citizens within their locality and then reporting upwards to the village or kampung chief, who would in turn report upwards to the local municipality chief, and so on and so forth. It sounds complicated, but it was basically the establishment of a ‘spies charter’ and it remains in place today.

  The whole system was very much self-financing, with citizens paying ‘administration fees’ to register with the chiefs who likewise paid upwards. My father was, by all accounts, near the top of this particular food chain and so did reasonably well financially, and this in turn led to us living in relative comfort.

  In 1977 it was time for me to consider my future. In reality, though, there was not much considering done by anyone as it was decreed that I would take up a post at Yogyakarta Military Academy to undertake Officer Training while ostensibly studying for a degree in political history.

  Fast-forward almost twen
ty years and Neil and I first entered each other’s orbits. At the time, I was moving towards the end of my spell in the military and was beginning to branch out and look for investment and opportunities within the private sector, and Neil himself was, I suppose, trying something similar in as much as he was teaching English and trying to make a living and even a business from doing so. Although he says he can’t remember our first meeting now, it is still clear in my mind. He was doing some freelance work for a language school in Surabaya called (I think English Education Classes – EEC) and as a ‘native speaker’ he was sent out wherever he was needed to teach. Now, my dear old mum, who would have been in her early sixties at the time, decided she wanted to brush up on her English and take some private lessons. She got in touch with EEC who duly sent Neil round to mum’s house twice a week for a couple of hours or so, and we briefly met one evening when I popped in for a visit while he was giving a lesson.

  As I recall, we exchanged pleasantries and, using my years of training and through force of habit, I garnered a little information about him, his background and personality and promptly salted them away for future reference. As I say, Neil insists he can’t remember this meeting and therein, I think, highlights one of the many but subtle differences between the pair of us: while I generally speaking don’t miss a trick, Neil can sometimes be said to be not entirely on-the-ball, and this is why he is prone to the odd slip or sometimes displays an inability to make the most of a given opportunity.

  About eight or nine months after this introduction, I did indeed find myself on the brink of my first truly solo business venture. I decided to invest in buying a franchise in the well-known English Plus Language Corporation. This is a corporation that is involved in the foreign language sector, and includes (amongst other things) a chain of language schools across the world. Each branch is in itself a franchise and ‘owners’ are beholden to the corporation as an entity, and I invested in one of the first ones opening in Jakarta, Indonesia.

  As it ultimately turned out, this didn’t turn out to be a fantastically lucrative first dip of the toe into the private sector, and although the schools still operate today and I haven’t actually ended up losing money, nor have I exactly made a mint out of it. More of that to come later, but at this point I was more interested in ensuring I had a good team of teachers for our opening. Being a bit of a greenhorn when it came to the education business, I initially tried to recruit by word of mouth and this is when I remembered Neil and so approached him in order to see if he would be interested in coming on board.

  It wasn’t difficult to dig up his personal details, and so one day my wife and I made an appointment to go up and see Neil together with his wife, Yossy, at their house in Sidoarjo.

  I guess Neil must have been about 27 or so at the time and Yossy a couple of years younger. As we settled down to chat in his living room, I took the opportunity to take in my surroundings. His home, although not exactly salubrious, was certainly respectable in size and décor, and he seemed to be doing reasonably well for himself. His house was a single-story dwelling but had three bedrooms, a large living room, and, no doubt, a kitchen and bathroom in the back. He and Yossy had tastefully furnished the house with a nice line in contemporary furniture and had adorned the walls with what appeared to be a couple of original pieces of artwork. They looked to me to be a young couple with a plan and a future ahead of them.

  I outlined my plans regarding EPLC and he seemed interested although non-committal. I said I saw him coming on board and working with me for a few years and then being in a position to either branch out on his own, or else move up through the Indonesian education system and get into the really lucrative teaching world of bona-fide International Schools. I said that in time I would assist him to gain the additional educational qualifications which he would ultimately require should he have serious designs on staying in the teaching industry, and in turn he could assist me in providing some knowhow and experience in what was sure to be a trying time as I attempted to get the business off the ground. I advised him that as much as he might enjoy doing what he was currently doing; namely, lots of teaching in various locations all over the city, he wouldn’t be a young man with lots of energy forever and what I was offering him was a chance to build a career.

  Although he was friendly enough and seemed to be listening to me, I got the impression I wasn’t really getting through to Neil. I felt he was perhaps reluctant to move to Jakarta at that point in his life, or maybe he felt he could do better financially working on his own than the package I was offering him, and thus the vibes I was getting from him didn’t look promising. I noticed that every time I asked him a question or made a general statement about something, his attention would momentarily flick across to his wife, Yossy, before offering up any sort of response. He also spoke very carefully and in measured tones as if he was weighing up how much information to impart, which I found slightly unusual in someone still relatively young.

  Ultimately, I decided to take the bull by the horns, so as to speak.

  ‘Yossy, may I speak to you outside a moment?’ I ventured.

  They both looked surprised, but finally Yossy answered. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, if you don’t mind.’

  She didn’t look it, but she replied, ‘Sure.’

  We spoke briefly and quietly in Indonesian outside on the small patio there while my wife and Neil stayed inside.

  ‘I can see you are the ‘boss’ in this marriage. The decision maker,’ I started.

  She tried to protest. A token protest, I thought. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, you are. I can see that. Look, Neil has potential,’ I pushed on. ‘I like him. But he needs a bit more drive: a bit of a push. Try and persuade him this could be a good move for him. For both of you.’

  I saw her hesitation and so decided to try a different tack.

  ‘I have wide contacts in Jakarta and I can soon get you a position in an airline there, if that’s what you personally are concerned about.’

  Still Yossy seemed unconvinced: ‘It’s not that. It’s just that I think Neil enjoys more or less working for himself.’

  ‘Well, I can understand that,’ I countered, ‘but I think flying all over Surabaya chasing the bucks will soon get old. Look, I tell you what. I’ll leave it with you guys for now and get out of your hair. If you feel this is something you’d like to look into, then you’ve got my number, but if you both feel the time’s not right at the moment, well, that’s fine too.’

  Yossy smiled and said she would work on Neil and see what she could do, but she didn’t hold out much hope, and nor did I to be honest.

  I was proved right to be pessimistic and it would be another seven years or so before Neil finally did come to work for me.

  My business, as I’ve said, turned out to be a lot of hard work for not an awful lot of gain, at least in the beginning. The first thing to deal with was the fact that the franchise purchase fees were rather exorbitant at $50,000 and then 10% of gross income, which proved not far short of crippling once start up and running costs were factored in. It took an inordinate amount of time and effort to recoup just the initial investment, but after three or four years we were finally showing a slight working profit and turnover was increasing.

  The mistake I made back in the beginning was trying to do everything by the book and above board. By this I mean I felt all eyes would be on me as a former TNI operative, and so I would have to be squeaky clean – I should have known better, really, but I learnt! I learnt the various little scams and tricks involved in staying ahead of the game. For example, the most obvious scam was to not declare the correct number of students to Head Office and so pay less commission. This wasn’t hard to do, but it was a little risky because if a franchise didn’t show sufficient profit it could, technically, find its licence being revoked. There was also the risk of spot checks and audits from HO, but these were rare and far from stringent. Other little tricks included obtaining contracts to teach in b
usinesses at lucrative rates and not declaring them at all to HO. Again, a risk was involved, but generally speaking it was minimal and as long as HO got a reasonable lump sum quarterly they were quite happy.

  What was expensive, though, was the employment of teachers. The unique selling point of the business was it employed ‘native speaker’ teachers instead of ‘local’ teachers. This meant that the majority of teachers were from countries where English is the first language – the UK, the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc. – and this meant, theoretically at least, a higher quality of teaching. Of course, the reality was nothing of the sort. The vast majority of teachers we employed may have been natives, but they were certainly no better than the Indonesian teachers. In fact, in many cases they were severely lacking in even rudimentary knowledge of the grammar and structure of their own language. They were, as I say, purely USPs for the business. They did, however, cost a lot to employ as one had to fork out for their work permits and visas, pay the government tax on their employment, and then lay out a disproportionate amount on their salaries – on average they earned (and I use that word loosely) four times that of a (better qualified) local teacher.

  I discovered there were ways of reducing costs here too, though – again with an element of risk involved- and so improved my margins slightly. The way to get round these costs was to employ the foreigners on business visas rather than working ones. This was much cheaper as they didn’t then require work permits and no tax needed to be paid. There was a risk of raids from immigration or other such authorities, but even then a word in the right ear – if you get my drift – would ensure advance notice of such raids and thus ample time to take such cautionary measures as to simply tell the bules to stay home that day. The greater risk was actually to the teachers themselves, as the business visas were only good for a maximum of three months before they had to be renewed or extended. Too many trips out of the country could lead to suspicions being raised at the airports and so it was all a bit cat-and-mouse.