Chapter IV

*The proceeding chapter should be read with the knowledge that the author has recently been reading Johnathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”, and the tone and cadence of the writing may have rubbed off.

Chapter IV

The author spends time in the areas sub-villages and acquaints himself with its inhabitants. A number of brief excursions into the surrounding environment are detailed, as well as mundane aspects of daily life. An account of a village elder.

Having arrived and become settled with the habits and comportments of the village life, i feel it now appropriate to share an account of several events and observations that have struck the readers’ humble traveler.

The village is yet to be connected with the majesty of the perpetual modern electrified lamp. Further, the villagers are also not yet interconnected through the cables of spun glass fibres carrying news and gossip from the web of world-spanning dominion, and as such are refined to communicating by the ancient art of face-to-face conversation, or if distance commands, by way of handheld communication device allowing them to talk, send messages or even view a page full of the various faces of their kin and peers. The domiciles of the local inhabitants are varied in age and size, but the average house is constructed of ulin (ironwood) and meranti wood with metal shingles, and encompassing about 1000-1500 ft2 and are elevated by two feet or more to avoid the rising rain waters. The houses are electrified by generator and possess a foyer adorned with comfort couches and chairs and a small table used to hold magazines of interest or coffee, large furniture-less viewing room containing a television, a kitchen, outhouse and various chambers for rest. Food and common necessities are purchased from local vendors on the beachside, on equipped motorbikes, or in general stores located within the village. Many of the inhabitants still maintain gardens on the property, or some kilometres into the distance, from which they draw fruits and vegetables to round out and supplement the daily dietary needs. However, many now rely solely upon the production of others, having traded their land for stacks of the local currency, with the land now put to industrial use.

Babes of varying age are left to wonder the property, the youngest occasionally without the full dress, often completely bare. Their activities include erudition by means of accompanying and assisting parents through a number of the daily tasks, but also include games (a popular one including tops and rope), roaming the village lands, swimming, soccer and a local pastime known as “SMS”.

The author has befriend a number of the local children, two (brother and sister) of which are of particular interest for their reader and thus merit detailed description. Both seem to suffer unfortunate bouts of mental disillusion as the young girl, Juleha of approximately 96 moons, has the unfortunate affliction of presuming herself to be a crab, scuttling sideways when I approach her and fleeing to a safe distance. She then returns toward the author and again flees when engaged in conversation, claiming, again, that the author should “cari kepiting” (catch crab). When I deciphered the manner in which the girl cyclically attempted to employ me in this game of mockery, questioning both my wit and intellect, I quickly put an end to the relationship by first describing Santa Clause and then informing the girl that the figure does in fact not exist.

The brother, Tamudin, new to the age of teen, has become skilled in the art of sorcery and deceit. When yours truly attempted to employ the boy with the task of cataloguing the animals receiving husbandry on in the village, the boy repeated informed the author that the prefix ‘peler’ (penis) was to precede any description of the various beasts (goat, fish, chicken, cow, and cat; pig being absent due to the taboo delineation the beasts receive in the local religion). It was to my detriment, succumbing to an uncharacteristic moment of naiveté, that I should repeat the refrain ‘peler kamping’ (goat) in the presence of my local attendant (the mother of the house I took residence in) without full knowledge of its meaning. The result was to draw blush to the woman’s cheek, and yours truly. The author, seeking retribution for such a treasonous act of casting disrepute upon an elder’s noble character, allowed the boy to lead me, and two other friends, to the local spring source supplying freshwater, by way of river, to the towns people. The trek was but a short jaunt into the wooded area of the surrounding hills (approximate to 2 Canadian kilometres), passing through thick bush hacked away by local men, though quickly overgrown with crawling, thorny vines of a dozen varieties or so, and inhabited, most predominantly, by an array of monkeys, birds, and butterflies which bounded about the forest cover. Upon arrival at the spring source, after the four feasted upon local cakes and crisps, the author threw the boy into the source, from a height of about 1.5 meters, in full knowledge that one should not go swimming less than half a Canadian hour after one has feasted. To my dismay, the boy bounded about happily in the spring, in full health and knowledge of the art of buoyancy.

In another meander through one of the local sub-villages, in the attempt to better understand the local ways of life, the author came upon a one noteworthy of description. The village was set back off of the beach into hills and the small valley area which surrounded the local area. In walking strolling through, the author took note of a number of fruiting trees (mango, cocoa, papaya, jackfruit and a number of other specimens unknown to the author and his translator). The village seemed to teem with life, both cognizant human and savage beasts (snakes, chicken, goat, cow, cat, dog, monitor lizards, monkey, and during the night, wild boar would descend from the hills to feast in the gardens the villagers maintained). In attempting to seek out insight from one of the village elders, the author came across a man of 80 years cradled in a hammock and engaged in conversation with another local man. In inquiring of the man’s health and activities, the gentleman informed us that he was ‘Masih sehat (still healthy, pointing this head and chest) but that his “peler”, he remarked grinningly, was no longer of functioning capacity.

The man also went on, simultaneously judiciously inspecting the teeth of a saw and the health of its structure, to inform the author that all the people of the world, with a variety of religions, nationalities and skin colours are “sama sama”. While adorning the author with nothing but praise for the good people of his home nation, Canada, and congratulating my choice to learn the local language (though greatly unable to understand it when I spoke it to him) which is spoken by many, he continued by expressing his confusion as to why people of Australia, sharing a common area with that of Indonesia (approximately equidistant with the distance separating Canada and Mexico), did not also speak the language of Indonesia. An answer, which your good author felt he was unplaced to give, and more generally incapable of expressing in the local tongue.