Jakarta "Barry" Obama

One thing is certain, if “Barry Obama” wins the presidency, the U.S. image over here will change overnight. It’ll probably change everywhere, including in America itself, but more than one person here has commented about his Indonesian connection, and what an Obama victory would mean to people. Obama spent four years as a child here, with his mother and stepfather (an Indonesian). It really is pretty hard to believe that a kid who roamed the streets of Jakarta nicknamed “Barry” (everyone has a nickname here) and attended local schools (very rare for expat kids), could be the next U.S. president.

There’s little I hate more than bandwagoning, and I was thinking Clinton is the best available choice, experience-wise, but it’s hard not to be moved by Obama’s oratory. His Iowa victory is really exciting. It would be nice to have a president who not only can speak English, but can do it so well (if only he had some executive experience). It’s also moving to see the reactions to Iowa; here are some from abroad, and this is from Harlem:

Another woman who remembers America 50 years ago watches Obama's victory and tells me she's never seen anything like this in her entire life. Someone says, "Doesn't he look like a president?"
(Via this, it turns out Andrew Sullivan is a big Obama fan).

What’s really great is that Obama didn’t win this round because of Harlem (or Jakarta). It was Iowa after all. But Jakarta and Harlem could still hurt him, of course. Daniel Pipes, who’s had his share of cynical jingoism (I can remember some from when I heard him speak in D.C. a few times), outdoes himself here, writing “Was Barack Obama a Muslim?” (via this).

As you can see, I’ve had too much unproductive time on my hands this week, mostly because I got the official Jakarta “welcome”: I was sick as a dog. After spending a few days working up in the mountains above Jakarta, I came back and spent the next few days holed up in my room (haven’t really emerged yet). The mountains, besides being a quiet place to read and write, also taught me where Jakarta floods originate (it never stopped raining for more than an hour) and reminded me what “cold” feels like (aside from A/C that is).

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Here’s a Makassarese (South Sulawesi) restaurant. The picture hanging on the top left is of the Ka’bah in Mecca, flooded in the 1941.

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).