by Di Morrissey
I looked at Norma’s sweaty face. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she moaned softly. ‘I could take her back with me to the village, but I don’t think that would work either. Evan, could we get her to Jakarta? I am sure that the Wijayas would be happy to put both of us up. I can leave the kampong for a few days and, besides, I’ve got a lot of notes that I need to write up, so I could stay with Norma and nurse her while I do that.’
So Norma and I went to stay in Jakarta. Norma was a very difficult patient, but Ibu Wijaya was very kind and made sure that she bought the food that Norma was able to eat. I cooked it for her and gradually Norma began to improve.
While I was staying in Jakarta, I saw a lot more of Jimmy and we become close. He was the first man I’d known whose company I loved and with whom I could sit and talk for hours and hours. We came to share our family stories, our life back at home, our university days, and spent time trying to solve the problems of the world. Like me, he was deeply concerned about the Vietnam War and both of us were uneasy about its escalation.
‘The Tet Offensive early this year was quite a shock. It’s the first time that the Viet Cong has attacked South Vietnamese cities,’ said Jimmy.
I nodded. ‘A lot of my friends are questioning Australian involvement in Vietnam. They don’t like the idea that conscripted soldiers have to go there and fight.’
Home seemed very far away when I was sharing a beer with Jimmy in a crowded downtown bar. People lived cheek by jowl in the city, but even in the rural paddy fields and farmlands one had the sense of never being alone. Jimmy told me that he had the same feeling even when he ventured into Indonesia’s large forests where wild tigers and other dangerous animals lived. ‘You’re never by yourself in this country,’ he said.
For the first time I realised what a homogeneous society I’d grown up in. At university there had been some Singhalese and Malaysian students and there were Chinese people running businesses in some of the suburbs, but I’d never met an Aborigine. Here, however, I was the odd one out. But I liked it! Each day I tried to learn new words to improve my Bahasa. I loved the food, the customs, and I was slowly grasping the complex levels of traditional society. The religions in Indonesia were still something of a mystery I was trying to unravel. Back in the village I had begun to learn the fundamentals of Islam, and Buddhism also interested me very much. The Chinese family next door to the Wijayas were Theravada Buddhists who made daily offerings to the monks at the small shrine nearby. When I mentioned this to Jimmy, he made a suggestion.
‘Would you like to go to see Borobudur, in central Java? It’s the biggest Buddhist temple in the world. It’s not in the best of repair, although I’ve heard that UNESCO is interested in restoring it properly. It will be a major task and will probably take decades to complete.’
‘Heavens, it must be big! It sounds fascinating. How does one get to central Java?’ I asked. As much as I wanted to see this amazing-sounding temple, I thought the idea of travelling somewhere with Jimmy was even more appealing!
‘We’d need a few days to really see it, but it’s not hard to plan. That is, if you’re comfortable with the idea?’
‘Of course, we’ll share expenses. Norma’s a lot better now so she won’t mind if I leave her in Ibu Wijaya’s care for a few days. Ibu will cook Norma’s food the way she likes it if I show her how.’
I had no qualms about travelling with Jimmy. He was so easygoing, interesting, and to use the word my mother might have said, gentlemanly. And he cared deeply about the Indonesian people. I thought he was a bit on the old-fashioned side in some ways as he also sported an all-American crew cut.
He laughed when I mentioned it. ‘Don’t worry, long hair is catching on at home, but crew cuts are still in, especially here in the tropics because they’re cool and comfortable.’
We got a train to Yogyakarta and then caught a local bus, which took hours of uncomfortable driving to reach Borobudur. We booked into a guesthouse where we each had a small, clean room, if simply furnished, and shared an Indonesian-style bathroom.
The next day we went to see the temple, and I was stunned at its stupendous size spread out over an enormous area.
‘Just think of the millions of stones that were dragged here to build it, all of them sitting perfectly together with no cement or mortar,’ said Jimmy. ‘Some say that it was built to represent a lotus floating above a now dried-up lake, but I don’t know how true that is.’
We slowly ascended from terrace to terrace. The lower levels were ringed by a high balustrade that blocked out the view of the landscape below, instead drawing us into the life and teachings of Buddha as depicted by carvings and sculptures on the walls. We wandered amongst the statues for hours. The temple seemed to go on forever.
‘No wonder it was a place of prayer and pilgrimage,’ I said. ‘But it’s heartbreaking to see how much has been broken off and taken away.’
‘It was built about twelve hundred years ago, but over the years fell into disrepair. Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles heard about this fabled place when he was briefly Governor of Java in the early nineteenth century.’
‘You mean the Raffles of the hotel in Singapore?’ I asked.
‘The very one. He heard about the temple and encouraged the Dutch to take an interest in it. They did, and gradually throughout the nineteenth century they developed the site. Unfortunately, looting was rife and happened on a large scale. The Dutch allowed many of the statues to be taken away. In the early part of the twentieth century, they began to look seriously at restoring Borobudur, but it all stopped with independence as it was not a priority. Still, hopefully UNESCO will step in now. It will be a tragedy if this place is not properly preserved.’
‘It is amazing that such an incredible place could be built long before the cathedrals of Europe were even thought of,’ I said.
‘Europeans don’t have the monopoly on extraordinary and impressive buildings.’
It was a long hot day. Sometimes we stopped and sat to simply try and digest the richness of all that surrounded us in the magnificent temple. We passed several local people praying and making offerings. At sunset we made our way back to the guesthouse.
After the cooling mandi, I changed into a sarong and a loose top, and picked some small frangipani flowers from a tree in the garden to pin in my hair. Their perfume was heady and that, along with the slim-fitting sarong, made me feel as though I was gliding rather than walking.
Jimmy jumped to his feet when he saw me and kissed my cheek.
‘You look so beautiful, Susan. Just lovely.’
We sat in the garden at a small table while the staff lit candles and burned small kerosene flame torches. They brought us cold drinks and plates of peanuts as well as crispy krupuk, a deep-fried prawn cracker. We still had a lot to talk about after our exploration of the ancient temple.
‘There are so many extraordinary places to see in Indonesia. Every island has something different and special,’ said Jimmy.
‘Where else do you think is a really brilliant place to visit?’
‘My favourite place is Lake Toba, on the island of Sumatra, the biggest volcanic lake in the world. It’s more than fifty miles long and like a clear deep blue ocean. In the lake is a massive island called Samosir, which is attached to the mainland by a tiny isthmus. There are a few little guesthouses scattered around the steep hillsides as well as an old Dutch colonial hotel, which I like. Swimming in the lake in the calm morning or in the melting sunset is like being lost in the mists of time. And the other amazing thing is that it’s full of goldfish!’
‘Sounds incredible. How romantic.’
‘It is. Very.’ Jimmy smiled at me.
Our meal was served: noodles, a delicious fried fish and a salad with my favourite gado gado, or peanut, dressing. We drank two Bintang beers and talked more and laughed a lot. I was tired, my legs aching from all the climbing and walking, but I felt exhilarated.
And then, when we went to our rooms, Jimmy kissed me at my door. B
ut this time it was a very passionate kiss and we were both breathless. He pulled away and opened my door, saying, ‘You’d better go inside, right now, or I won’t be able to stop kissing you.’
I knew then that he felt as I did. And it was a warm and wonderful feeling. I knew that I was in love for the first time in my life.
While I continued to research life in the kampong, my thoughts turned constantly to Jimmy. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. We were seeing each other regularly, and while the boys teased me about him, they agreed he was a nice bloke.
‘Not too much of a Yank,’ laughed David.
‘What does that mean?’ I asked.
‘Doesn’t go on about how great America is, I suppose.’
As a group, we had become very close since moving to Bogor. Even though I spent most of my time in the kampong, I saw the others regularly in town. Evan and Norma had rooms at a hostel beside the hospital where they worked, while the others were housed with local families. Norma was happy for me to share her room when I stayed in Bogor overnight. Mark was billeted with an ethnic Chinese family, the Tans. The family had been born in Bogor, but clung to its cultural heritage. If Jimmy came for a weekend visit, he would stay with them as well. He could have afforded one of the small hotels, but he knew that the Tans appreciated the money he paid them and he enjoyed their friendly hospitality. It was more fun than staying in a soulless hotel.
Much as we liked getting to know the local people, we were a band of Aussies glad of each other’s company. Every Friday night we would meet at a local eating house and talk about our work as well as simply let our hair down. We soon learned that Norma would never leave a mother in labour, but she joined us when she could, picking carefully at what she ate and saying she came for the company, not the food. She was not the most joyous companion. She was one of those people who lacked a sense of subtlety, taking everything at face value and looking annoyed when she realised a comment had been made as a joke.
Alan could also be a bit taciturn at times. I quickly realised that if things were going well for him then he could be good fun, but if the project he was working on was experiencing difficulties, he was not really interested in anything we had to say, and instead would brood over his own problems. Generally, though, on these nights out we had a lot of laughs and it was always good to exchange notes.
‘One of my problems is that the villagers, especially the farmers, are all so conservative,’ David complained one warm evening as we sat together enjoying the fading light.
‘That is certainly true of my kampong,’ I said in agreement. ‘Although, to be fair, the younger ones see the need for progress. But the older ones, especially those in authority, don’t want to change anything.’
‘How true,’ said David. ‘But sometimes not wanting to implement radical change can be for the best.’
‘How so?’ asked Alan. ‘I think that any progress is good for the villagers.’
‘Recently the Javanese officials wanted to modernise the rice industry, by bringing in massive rice-processing mills from overseas and pushing the locals into more intensive planting, that sort of thing. But it didn’t happen,’ said David.
‘Sounds like a good idea to me. Produce rice more efficiently more food and more profit. Good for everyone,’ said Alan.
‘Not for the women in my kampong,’ I replied, swatting an insect. ‘A big mill would mean that the money the women earn through grinding their own rice would dry up.’
‘I think that the main reason the idea didn’t take off was that people don’t trust the government to be able to provide them with rice at affordable prices. They think that whoever controls rice production controls the local economy,’ David explained.
‘I think they are probably right there. So, what have you done for your local farmers?’ asked Mark.
‘I’ve managed to get them working together, doing simple things like cleaning out the irrigation drains. I’ve also organised some agricultural students to come along and introduce some new ideas, like planting high-yield rice varieties, and we’re supplying them with fertilisers,’ said David.
‘That sounds pretty good,’ said Evan. ‘It’s unrealistic to expect us to be able to implement big changes, but if we are able to make people’s lives better, even in a small way, then I think we can count ourselves a success.’
Jimmy, who’d come from Jakarta for the weekend, nodded and said, ‘That’s exactly how I felt about the Peace Corps. We couldn’t make a lot of big changes, but the ideas we introduced, even if they were small ones, did have a positive effect. You guys are all doing a great job.’
‘Thank you, sir. Round of applause for our Yank mate,’ David responded, and we all laughed and clapped.
The more I saw of Jimmy, the more I fell in love with him. I had never been able to talk so deeply with anyone else before. I loved how courteous and thoughtful he was with other people, whoever they were, Indonesian or foreign. He was perceptive and intelligent and popular with my Australian colleagues.
Later that same weekend, as we walked through the beautiful Botanic Gardens that made Bogor famous, I told him that I wondered what he saw in me. I said that I felt so provincial and unsophisticated.
Jimmy put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze.
‘Susan, I love your sincerity, your unpretentiousness and the fact that you have volunteered to help the Indonesians. You are genuinely interested in other people, especially me. And I’m really glad that you like it here. Maybe you could stay on after your contract is up. You would have no trouble getting a job.’
Then he again raised the subject of Lake Toba.
‘Look, can you get away for a few days? How would you feel about taking a little trip with me? Going away to Lake Toba on Sumatra, where no one knows us, means we can have some wonderful time together.’
There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. I felt the same, a bit shaky, excited and nervous. I certainly had never been away with a man before, but I didn’t want him to know how inexperienced I was, so of course I said, ‘I’d love to. You know how interested I am in Sumatra. And Lake Toba sounds wonderful.’
‘Count on it.’ He gave me a huge smile. ‘It will be really special to take you there.’
A week later, we flew to the large and bustling town of Medan on Sumatra. Once we left Medan, we headed through kampongs and padi fields in a wheezing 1950s Chevy, driven by Suhaimi, a pal of Jimmy’s he’d known from his Peace Corps days. We passed large rubber plantations that gradually gave way to tea and coffee plantations as we started to climb the high winding road up to the lake. The car began shuddering on the steeper inclines and was overtaken by rickety buses coughing oily fumes, even on the dangerous bends. Jimmy and I exchanged glances and I clutched his hand.
The higher we got, the more spectacular the scenery became. Eventually we reached the steep approach to the lake and the car drove along the thickly forested ridge of the ancient volcano until we finally rattled into the courtyard of the Parapat Hotel.
The hotel was an old Dutch place still showing bits of fading colonial glory. Painted scenes of Lake Toba and murals of stylised wayang kulit puppets adorned the walls. Batik cushions sat on heavy leather lounges and dusty plastic flower arrangements decorated the cavernous lobby. Jimmy checked in for both of us, but I felt embarrassed when I handed over my passport, revealing we were not married.
We were given a warm, overly sweet juice to drink before being shown to our room. As we stepped outside the reception area I caught my breath. Below us stretched a huge aquamarine lake, surrounded and almost hidden by steep forested hills. The water glittered in the afternoon sun like a polished jewel. I’d never seen anything so beautiful and I was speechless.
There was a giant brass gong at the top of a flight of stone steps which Jimmy told me was to summon us to meals. The steps led down to the gardens below. As we followed a young boy in his batik sarong and batik peci, I couldn’t help wondering where the other guests were.
‘Do you bring food and drinks down here?’ I asked the young man who had brought down our luggage. He nodded and pointed to the menu and asked if we wanted to order krupuk and beer. We did, though Jimmy had his doubts about how cold the beer might be.
‘We should celebrate. This place is spectacular,’ I said.
That evening I put on a batik print dress a tailor in Bogor had made me and we headed up to the top terrace to have a drink and watch the sunset. Apart from us, the hotel still seemed deserted, so Jimmy suggested we take a betjak into Parapat.
The little town of Parapat was almost as quiet as the hotel. Families seemed to have retreated into their houses, although in the watery glow of a few sagging streetlights we could see several young men loitering about.
There were few restaurants to choose from, some local stalls and hawkers, a small place called the Satay Shack and a larger place simply called Rumah Makan, the eating house, or restaurant, which we decided looked the best.
The town was certainly a sleepy place and off the beaten track. I felt I was far away from the rest of the world. As though he had read my thoughts, Jimmy mused, ‘I wonder what this area will be like in, say, twenty years’ time. Will it be packed with tourists, or entirely forgotten?’