Rain and Elections

Padang stands. The tsunami I was warned about never happened, but floods in Padang actually swept away more than 200 houses this week, so maybe "superstition" was premature. The rains have been heavy in many parts of the country and in Central Java a mudslide claimed the lives of more than a hundred people.
I can’t quite decide whether this is just normal "rainy season" or whether the past few years have really been exceptionally bad.

I remember as a kid in primary school, there was a terrible train accident involving a bus full of school-children. If I remember correctly, there was one especially enlightened rabbi/politician who explained that the number of kids killed wasn’t due to chance. It was the exact number of defected mezuzot in the school (a mezuzah is a small parchment of prayer placed on door-posts, including in every classroom).

A very infamous enlightened-one opined on the deadly mudslides here this week as well. AFP reported on Abu Bakar Bashir’s brief visit to the site:

"This was likely caused by immoral acts going on here," 69-year-old Bashir told reporters during his 10-minute visit, without elaborating.

"This could be a lesson to be learned," he admonished.

Bashir served more than two years for his role in a "sinister conspiracy" that led to the 2002 Bali bombings which left 202 people dead. The Supreme Court last December overturned his conviction.

This week was also the three year anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, of course. I had plans to make it back there this month, but they’ve been postponed.

This is from my visit in 2005, 10 months after the tsunami. This used to be a neighborhood:

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On a completely different (deep-nerd political science) note, here’s a campaign add from the recent Jakarta gubernatorial elections from my neighborhood.

It reads:
Let's go - put Jakarta back in order!
"We want [it], we're capable, we can!"

This is an ad for Adang, the candidate backed by the pretty radically Islamic PKS. This is the well-organized and disciplined upstart, strongest in Jakarta. In 1999 they ran on a sharia based platform and failed. Turning to anti-corruption in 2004, they got over 7% of the vote (the largest party, Golkar, only got 22%), and have been doing well in local elections since.





PKS scared the other parties sufficiently that in these gubernatorial elections, practically everyone else backed the incumbent deputy governor (Fauzi Bowo) and prevailed. More than one person has remarked that it disproves the power of democratic electoral accountability if the present incumbent deputy governor of Jakarta can get elected governor (but I've heard more favorable opinions too).


And here's a guy wearing a free t-shirt on a Jakarta overpass.



















Happy new year!

Holy Night

Here’s what a (English speaking) voice from Jakarta sounds like. And here’s a voice from Guernica (for a political science flavor), a Hebrew speaker from Yehud, and saving best for last, and in honor of C&J’s return from West Africa, an Ewe speaker from Accra, Ghana.
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The highlight of this week was a rather sleepless night in honor of Idul Adha (Arabic “Eid ul-Adha”), the “Big Eid”, commemorating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Ishmael to God (a couple of other religions mix up the sons). Two of the main traditions of the holiday are community-wide participation in traditional prayers, throughout the night, and the sacrifice of animals.

My place happens to be strategically located between three competing mosques. Part of this competition was the night-long simultaneous chanting of God’s greatness over the different loudspeakers by everyone in the community. Children were invited. Very young children too. People who can’t carry a pitch were not discriminated against either. It was a long night. Interesting, but long.

In the morning, the streets bore the signs of the holiday too. I did my best to avoid the puddles of blood and the head of a cow in the alleyway. I know a bule who skipped eating that day.
You wouldn’t actually know it was Idul Adha from the big malls of the city, however. Christmas is everywhere there, Santa Claus and carols included. It’s really hard to remember in the malls that this is the largest Muslim country in the world.
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On nationalism and grammar.

Volcanoes, alcohol and cigarettes

I’m planning to start research in Padang in February, but my contact there just informed me that there may not be a Padang in February. He just returned and shared what is now common knowledge over there (reported on the local news as well): on December 23^rd, a 10 meter tsunami will hit the city (which lies at sea level, on the coast of Sumatra). Everybody knows this and everyone thinks he’s crazy not to believe it.

Tectonic activity is what makes this country what it is, literally. Indonesia is basically a ring of islands in a semi circle created along the borders of tectonic plates. The volcanic soil is also what makes this place so insanely fertile and gives Java, in particular, the capacity to sustain its huge population. Superstition – or what some might consider superstition – is also a defining feature of the place.

When I opened my local bank account, they handed me a list of numbers to choose from, just as they did when I bought my cell phone. This wasn’t aesthetic courtesy either; it was a very serious matter. I explained I don’t really care about the number - I’m foreign – and they just laughed. What an ignorant bule I am.

The current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (“SBY”/ “Es-Be-Ye”), is actually in some political trouble over his apparent bad luck. His tenure has been marred by such a string of natural and human disasters that nothing short of a presidential-sized jinx can explain it: the tsunami, the earthquakes along the southern coast of Sumatra, the earthquake in Yogyakarta, the sinking of at least two ferries I can remember, air-accidents.... Even the revered Sultan of Yogya’s reputation has been somewhat tarnished by his failure to protect the city from nature.

A couple of years ago in Yogya I arrived in a Bahasa Indonesia class and found my young teacher horrified at my sight (in itself not surprising, I guess). How could I have worn a green t-shirt so nonchalantly? Don’t I have other t-shirts? Everyone knows the Queen of the South loves green. She’ll come and get me and my teacher with me. Never – ever – wear green to the beach. Better not to wear it too close to the coast either.

But bad luck, superstition, or tectonic realities don’t always affect policy. Apparently there are plans for a bridge across the Sunda Straits that separate Java from Sumatra, which would be - I think - the longest bridge in the world. The straits also happen to be where Anak Krakatoa lies (“child” of Krakatoa, the infamous volcano that erupted of the late 19th century and was felt as far as Australia). With all due respect to the Bay Bridge, this might not be the best location for a bridge that long.

“Minister says 24 Indonesian islands disappeared: report”

In other news, I received authorization to conduct research at the Indonesia Islamic University in Yogya. What was interesting is that I got it via text-message (the only way to get things done here) and that the text-message, from the rector of the university, was sent from Mecca, where he’s performing pilgrimage. I’m quite sure it’s my first sms from Mecca.

Eid mubbarak, merry Christmas and (belated) happy Hannukah.

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“The Chinese phrase for 'research' sounds a lot like that for 'alcohol and cigarettes'… "yanjiu" is research in Chinese, while "yan" = cigarettes and "jiu" = alcohol, albeit in different tones.”
- Beijing-J, (why she thought of this now, in the context of my fieldwork, is beyond me)

"Where you going?!"

Most common first question from strangers: “Hello Mister! Where you going?!”
For a long time (well, still, sometimes) I answered that question, not always delighted to have to share my daily plans with random people. But then I discovered it wasn’t actually a question at all. It’s just a translation of “Mau ke mana?” (lit: “To where you want?”), the local version of “How’s it going?” or “What’s de situation?” Answering “mau ke mana?” literally is a little bit like newcomers to the U.S. answering the tireless “How are you?” questions literally (or the fake-smiled supermarket version, “How are you today?”), only to then discover no one actually cares. I heard of an Indonesian reporting that that Americans aren’t very friendly. People on the street kept asking her how she’s doing, but they never asked her about her job or life or where she’s going….

This week’s “exploration” has been in a radius of about a 5 minute walk from my kost, where I’ve been toiling in front of my screen (I love human subjects board applications!). It turns out there’s quite a bit to be found in a 5 minute radius. Going in the opposite direction of the “gado gado restaurant” I’ve found a whole maze of tiny alleys in the local kampong (kind of urban village, for lack of a better translation), beside a not-so-clean little canal. It’s clearly very poor, but it’s generally well kept and most people don’t seem miserable in any sense. At night everyone is out by the mosque, teenagers are flirting away and things seem pretty happy.

Just down the road is “Benhil” (Bendungan Hilir) street, which gives its name to the neighborhood too and has wide variety of local restaurants of the type I was missing. I now officially have a favorite “rumah makan” (food house), serving mostly Padang food, where lunch is far better and cheaper than any western style place. Benhil is also a neighborhood that was completely flooded last year, and this week’s rains make it pretty apparent how that could happen. I don’t think I was ever afraid of thunder as a kid, but this is a different kind of thunder and I’m feeling it now…. I’m also glad I live on the second floor. I doubt the kampong is a very happy place when the floods come.

But in true “capital of huge poor country” fashion, right besides the flooded kampong, I can easily continue with most things I would (?) do elsewhere. Yesterday I was hunched over excel spreadsheets at Starbucks, in the mall just 10 minutes away. A couple of weeks ago I was at a club featuring famous Austrian DJ Peter Kruder (I know, how exciting!) and attended the “JakJazz” festival featuring Spyro Gyra (didn’t actually see them in the end, though). And tonight I’m actually headed to light Hanukah candles with a contingency of Hebrew speakers living in Jakarta. They’re everywhere, these people.

Unrelated:

“It's not clear to me that the poor people are entirely the problem."
- Overheard in Bali at the UNFCCC (the global climate convention; finder’s fee owed to D)

Completely unrelated, yet somewhat disturbing:

Without knowledge of the position they play, women consistently rate the faces of goalkeepers and strikers as more attractive than their teammates.
- (from BPS Research Digest)

Overcoming Coordination Problems

1. Spending too much time in my kost revising pilot behavioral-game protocols for translation has made me see strategic situations everywhere (this is what first year grad school felt like; not a fond memory). It's also given me time to observe this guy from my balcony:

Volunteer traffic directors are very common in Jakarta (and elsewhere in Indonesia), solving two major problems in one go: extreme labor abundance, and the classic coordination problem known as traffic. I firmly believe traffic behavior is a great indicator of societal norms (although probably not in the obvious ways). In theory, all you need is a universally acknowledged norm to overcome these problems (e.g. "drive on the right hand side" or otherwise fill your sidewalks with "Look to the Right" to save some foreign lives), but you also need people to follow norms...

The Jakarta solution is to have people volunteer to serve as traffic directors (in most parking lots, for example). It works, and they get voluntarily paid too.

The thing is, I'm not 100% sure this guy is just coordinating traffic. There's a chance he's predating on it as well, being paid not just for direction services, but for simple passage rights.

2. I could use an Indonesia-friendly alternative story for the prisoner’s dilemma that doesn’t involve criminals, non-sharia investments or anything resembling “gambling”. Let me know if you have an idea.

Notice the makup on the bride and groom

A telling fact about Indonesian ceremonies is that people tend to dress in the traditional attire of their hometown, no matter where the ceremony is. I like that.

I was invited to a wedding in Jakarta that took place in the parliament building (it was just hired, no special connection, I was told). The event itself is basically a reception; the actual wedding takes place in a small circle of family and close friends. I was taught to tell the difference between the headdress of someone from Solo vs. Yogyakarta (the two old central Javanese Sultanates). The Yogya one has a bulge in the back. One's batik shirt - the far cheerier variant of black-tie formality - reflects one's culture as well. It was a sign of respect that a Japanese guest came in a proper Kimono and incredibly impractical footwear. It would have been a sign of respect had the Westerner come in proper Western attire (but he tried, in his way).

A Religious Thanksgiving

No Thanksgiving in San Diego for me this weekend. Sate replaced turkey and a local restaurant took the place of Rico's burritos in Del Mar. Still, Thanksgiving Day was actually pretty fruitful workwise and gave me an amusing view of the religious complexity of this place. There are six official religions in Indonesia: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism (reinstated to official status in 2000). The meaning of neither Atheism nor Judaism is much understood here , and since my Latin and Sanskrit are non-existent, I fill out forms with a simple "Kristen" ("Very Old Christianity" or "Christianity-minus-Christ" or "Christianity-minus-Religion" are a few ways of looking at it).

My first meeting of the day was with a senior Catholic banker (courtesy of his colleague, my ever generous former host and friend) who had spent time in official positions. He told me of the difficulties of official appointment for non-Muslims in the past 15 years (since the rise of later president Habibie and the incorporation of Islamic rhetoric into official Suharto regime language). The new saliency of religious divides changed previous taboos and brought out preferences for the majority Muslim, often masking other, ethnic or socio-economic biases (against ethnic Chinese or other minority groups).

A generous dose of emphatically non-chauvinistic Islam is what I got from a taxi driver after the meeting. A young Batawi (original Jakartan) with a cap and facial hair, he was delighted at my interest in his beliefs. A rapidly delivered lecture ensued in Indonesian, spiced with carefully enunciated Koranic Arabic. Its melody was very much like previous experiences I've had with young newly religious Orthodox Jews trying to rekindle my inner light or a born-again Christian enlightening me about my savior. The gist of it, as far as I could tell through the gale of words, was that all creatures are God’s doing and He loves them all. We must never be angry at someone for being Hindu or Buddhist or Christian; this is not the Muslim way any more than terrorism is. Of course, there’s the slim chance he was saying the exact opposite and I missed a few negations in there, but considering the audience he was appealing to, I’d say that’s unlikely. Would he say it to another audience? It seemed genuine, but you never know, I guess.

Stepping out of my sermon/ride I went in to one of the many malls in this city to wait for a meeting nearby. Walking in, I was hit by very loud Western style music and saw a crowd of people, some in jilbabs (the local hijab), watching a small troop of young, attractive dancers of both sexes in very little and very tight clothing. So little and tight, I felt too self-consciously Western-male to watch for long; no one else seemed to think much of it. Jilbab-wearing women were moving along with music and everyone seemed very interested in the gyrating dancers.

And on I went to the next door Catholic university to the lab of a couple of linguists who happen to be native speakers of Hebrew with ties to Stanford and as Catholic as I am. I wandered among students practicing karate, laughing at those practicing karate or checking their email below the giant statue of Jesus to find their office for an extremely helpful methodological conversation on the practicalities of experiments across Indonesian ethnicities.

The truth is, though, this is Jakarta, not “Indonesia”. When you ask a newcomer if they’re originally from Jakarta, they may answer “No. From Java [the island Jakarta is on]”. I spent little time here in my last visit, and it’s shocked me how cosmopolitan and modern the city is. That's great for elite work, to which I’ll return late in fieldwork, but it’s not really that useful for my grass-roots research. Luckily, said linguists happen to have a field-station in Padang, West Sumatra, one of the places I was eying for my experiment anyway. Even more luckily, I now have their help and permission to hire their staff – here and in Padang. So it looks like I’ll spend the next few weeks translating material and setting up procedures, then head to two experimental sites – most probably Yogyakarta (Java), one of the two old Javanese capitals that inherited the kingdom of Mataram, and Padang, home of the matrilineal Minangkabau, first vice president and national hero Muhammad Hatta, an Islamic rebellion against the Indonesian republic in the late 1950s and some of the most famous and spicy cuisine in Indonesia.

PS
1. Update on the next door establishment: while it’s not an auto-body shop, I can now report that it does not seem to be gado-gado restaurant either. I haven’t seen any food or tables and there are a lot of young guys hanging out, especially at night. There’s a guard and a general air of “we have a restaurant sign so the police can pretend to believe it when we pay them off”.

2. A view from my rooftop, in terrible lighting:

Pisherman’s Wharf

I’ve succumbed to the blog plague. It seems like the only manageable way to regularly update on my whereabouts, for those interested in these things. I’ll try and keep it shortish, but I’m not promising much.

This inaugural post is blagged from my new "kost" (a dorm room of sorts with a hotel feel to it) in prime Jakarta location beside some auto-body shops and a crowd of parked motorbikes. The kost is called "De 2nd Home", which might be overstating things a little, although it's quite comfortable. At first sight, I had the uplifting feeling that I'd landed in a microcosm of everything I’m here to study: outside my window a green flag of Islam battles afternoon torrential rains, a small Christian charity hosts a bunch of kids running around, a group of very amiable, not terribly busy people hang out at all hours of the day by a kiosk still adorning campaign material from the Jakarta gubernatorial elections, and the owners of the well guarded De 2nd Home are (I think) Tionghua, the occasionally pogromed ethnic Chinese. In especially inspired moments I can go up to the rooftop terrace for a windy view of the modern towers of Jakarta set to a very loud stereophonic competition of muazzin calls to prayer.

A few days later I can report that the green flag is a commercial for something, the Christian charity is just a government health post with a Red Cross sign (don’t know why they don’t use the crescent), the people are still very amiable and still not busy, the auto-body shop next door turns out to be a Gado-Gado restaurant, and the De 2nd Home owners are still Tionghua (and renovating!) but several of my neighbors are just Bules (Gringos). Indonesian reality seems to be trying to invade my theory, but I will prevail.

But before prevailing over reality… there's just a little bit of bureaucracy to deal with. I spent my first week running between government offices, filling out forms I don't quite understand and trying to keep my story straight on all of them. I now have my SIP and KITAS (!), which along with my SKJ will enable me to get my SPP, and in a couple of weeks my registration card should be ready (this all means as much to me as it does to you). A minor occasion for celebration was my first monetary "token of appreciation" to an official. I didn't actually realize what it was until I didn't get a receipt. But seeing as the man was wearing the stunningly bland uniform of the Department of Home Affairs - dealing with, shall we say, the security aspects of "Home Affairs", I have no regrets. I walked out with letters to the “Home Affairs” offices in 28 provinces (just keeping my options open…).

And now I’ve entered the “calling in all contacts” phase to set up the actual research. I’ll be focusing on elite interviews with politicians for a bit while setting up the many technicalities for later research phases in Islamic and general universities. I’ll be heading out of Jakarta for trips before too long, but in the meantime and in between bureaucrats, I've been enjoying what Jakarta has to offer (more than I had remembered). Luckily, my attempts at coming to terms with being on this side of the earth for quite a while have been aided by several great reminders of "home": a cousin, a friend from my department, delightfully helpful former hosts, a former Stanford Bahasa Indonesia teacher, a wonderful glimpse of the Celtics going 7-0 and counting, and a taxi driver who seemed to know a little too much about San Francisco and was very enthusiastic about showing it:
"Where you from?" - "Amerika, San Francisco"
"Ya, where you live?" - "Di San Francisco. Di California"
"Where?? Daly City?! Ma-ket?! Lombad?! Va-ness? Castro-ha ha ha?!!! Pisherman’s Wharf?!

Oh, and the heat… did I mention the heat? I’m not sure it’s “collective action amidst diversity” I should be researching. Who has any interest in acting collectively or otherwise amidst this humidity, anyway?