Malay folk song:
Kami orang, Kami orang berduka
(We are people, We are sorrowful people)Kami bekerja di tanah jauh
(We work in a land far away)Di tanah jauh dari ibu bapak
(In a land far away from mother and father)Kami berduka di dalam hati
(We are sad in our hearts)
PART 1
I have never been one of those people that gets excited to board a plane. Security is tight, service is efficient, and everything is wrapped in plastic. Boarding the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Surabaya, I expect a loveless vessel floating between the lands of its passengers' attachment. But there is excitement in the stale air of the main cabin and the light-hearted chatter is in Javanese, which is rarely spoken in Malaysia. It is the local language of our destination. Unlike myself, most people on this plane are going home. It takes a long time for everyone to settle down as baskets are stuffed under seats, and impossible parcels are forced into the overhead compartments.
As we take off, the old woman next to me grabs my arm. I feel panic in her tight grip, but her voice is resolute, quietly reciting the prayers of travel from the Quoran. 'O Allah You are The Companion on the journey and The Successor over the family, O Allah I take refuge with You from the difficulties of travel.' As the plane levels out and the seat belt sign chimes off, her fingers uncurl from my sleeve. She opens her eyes and smiles warmly.
Ani, who looks about my age, is sitting in the next row. This is her first time in an aeroplane. 'Permisi, you speak Indonesian?' she asks, and when I nod, starts chatting happily, leaning over the back of her seat.
'This is amazing,' her huge smile reveals perfect white teeth. 'It took me two weeks to get to Malaysia. I rode a ferry for three days to Sumatra where I waited a week and a half for a visa. Now I get home in two and a half hours!'
Ani has been working as a nanny for a Chinese family in Kuala Lumpur, where salaries are much higher than Indonesia. Her two-year contract is finally up. She is returning to her own neighbourhood, a small village on the Eastern tip of Java, to her fiance, with whom she has spoken only twice over their two year separation, and to her mother's cooking, which apparently has no rival in Malaysia. Her eyes shine and her flawless skin glows but she tells me she hasn't slept in days. She is anxious that perhaps things won't be the same. At her twenty-six years, she feels she is getting too old to marry and have children of her own. She doesn't want to look after bratty rich kids for the rest of her days.
Hassan is sitting to my right. He is a Malaysian man who works in Kuala Lumpur as an electrician. 'You know, these people are strange,' he whispers. He is going to Surabaya to join his Javanese wife, who has returned home in her second term of pregnancy. 'There's no money there,' he complains, 'but she insists that this baby is Javanese and will be born there.' His visa is for sixty days and his wife is seven months pregnant. 'Hopefully the baby comes on time,' he laughs.
As the cabin crew busy themselves serving tea and coffee, I notice an old man in front of me slip the metal spoon and fork from his food tray into the basket under his seat. I laugh to myself, looking around to see if anyone else has noticed. I watch in astonishment as several knives, forks, and spoons throughout the cabin disappear from view.
Ani smiles warmly, seeing I have noticed. 'We are not a poor country,' she whispers, 'but a country of poor people. In my village, all the knives and forks people have are from an old shipwreck half a kilometer from our beach. You can still find good stuff there, if you can swim and hold your breath.'
'Are you taking yours?' asks the old woman, pointing at my tray.
I shake my head and her wrinkled hands close around the cutlery.
'The best souvenirs,' she smiles, 'are the useful one.'
PART 2
When I arrive in Santan, Bu Pur makes coffee and calmly sets it on a yellow and green straw mat. I am relieved to have finally arrived at my destination, this little village in Java that has so often been my home. It is explained to me that Bu Pur's eldest son, Mas Pur is leaving for Malaysia tomorrow, 'God-willing,' on a two year work contract. There will be a dinner later that evening to send him off safely. Dewi, the new neighbour comes in to keep me company and Bu Pur excuses herself to finish cooking.
Dewi is from Kalimantan. It was there that she met her Santan husband while he was working for a forestry company. Within a year, they were married and had a child. The new little family was brought to Java where she is now trying to fit in. People here think her cooking is too spicy and she misses the hot lamb porridge her mother makes. 'It doesn't matter though,' she tells me unconvincingly. Dewi's husband left again seven months ago, on another work contract, this time in Sumatra. He is moving sand and soil that will be neatly added to the island of Singapore. She wants to work as well so they can build a proper a house together and have their own well. 'As soon as he is bigger,' she looks over at her son Visnu who is humming a tune about a rabbit while he plays marbles on the smooth concrete floor beside the mat, 'I will find a job.'
'Where would you like to work?' I ask and I think of what I mean when I ask this to fellow uni students in Australia.
'Anywhere. Surabaya I guess. There's lots of work there.' I follow her gaze out the window of Bu Pur's house, along the patchwork of rice fields to the forest of jati trees and the distant mountains. 'I'll do anything,' she says.
I know there's lots of work in Surabaya. There are thousands of factories that pollute the rivers and make the air black with soot. There are also bosses that will complain in her language and convince each other that they are doing her a favour in their own. And there is a hungry child like Visnu at every traffic light, singing a happy song with a sad voice, shaking bottle tops with one hand and tapping on car windows with the other. There are streets lined with prostitutes, stiff vinyl strapped to their feet. I look at Dewi's scuffed feet, flat and brown, toes splayed on the dirt floor and I imagine her toenails painted with bright red enamel. It seems absurd.
Mas Pur comes in carrying a small bag that was once black in one arm and a pile of clothes in the other.
'You already long time not visit us here,' he says to me cheerily. He empties his arms onto the mat beside me and he takes my hand. 'I miss practicing English with you.'
Mas Pur speaks more English than anyone in Santan. He has been planning a trip to Australia for ten years but has never succeeded in getting a visa.
'Indonesia is no good.' He has told me so many times it has become a ritual between us. There is no blame in his voice, but there is guilt in my heart. 'We work hard for no money. My daughter has enough to eat but how will she go to school when she is more big?'
He dusts off the bag with a cloth to reveal a line of green cursive letters . . . 'On the move,' it reads followed by an arrow. We both laugh.
I watch as he packs his things one by one into the bag. One change of clothes, two packets of toothpaste, a toothbrush, a photograph of his daughter Tikka, a comb, and a bottle of lotion.
'What's that?' I ask.
'For my bald spot,' he explains in Indonesian, pointing to his thinning hair. 'My wife gave it to me.'
'The cream or the bald spot?' asks Dewi.
We laugh again and I think of his wife in Surabaya. Still working in the plastic factory and dreaming of her husband coming home with a full head of hair and enough money to buy a house.
PART 3
Today I am flying from Surabaya to Singapore. I sit next to a large Dutchman with a round red face. His name is Rinze. He works for O'Neil, travelling Asia checking production at shoe factories all over the continent. He has also just been to Vietnam, China, and Laos.
'You must know a lot of languages,' I say, 'for that kind of work.'
'Just German and Dutch . . . oh and English, of course. But Indonesian has a lot of Dutch words,' he tells me. 'Like 'gratis' which means 'free.' I know this already but I am feeling cheeky. 'Free?' I ask, 'as in 'not costing money,' or as in 'without chains?'
Indonesia was Rinze's last stop and now he is flying back to his wife and three-year-old daughter in Holland. In Surabaya, he was checking a factory where production has steadily slowed over the past few months. There are many empty factories in Java, he tells me, mostly in the big cities. Although he doesn't speak Indonesian and claims to 'not know much about the culture,' he is full of theories. 'Workers are so lazy there. They'll strike about anything. Its much better in China . . . and factory workers in Vietnam are the absolute best.' I think of Pur's wife, Mbak Rin, with whom I stay in Surabaya. She is beautiful, softly spoken and sings like an angel. She is also from Santan, but has been working at the same Japanese-owned plastics factory in Surabaya for fourteen years. I once tried to visit her there, as a surprise. I brought rambutans and iced tea, but I couldn't get past the security at the front gate. I have asked her about it often enough, and the answer is always the same. 'There's nothing to tell. Its boring, the same every day. Lets talk about something else.' Mbak Rin and Mas Pur have a three year old called Tikka. During the day she is looked after by her nanny, Mbak Sur. If I'm in Surabaya, I often look after Tikka. I take her shopping or to visit neighbours and if we go outside her suburb, people always say 'Your daughter is beautiful. Her Dad must be from Java.' The last time I was there, Sur had a puffy eye. It looked like conjungtavitis to me, although I don't really know a lot about it. She wanted to go home to her village in the East to recover. 'Once,' she told me, 'one of my neighbours, a good looking man of a marriageable age, had a soar eye like this. They took it out and replaced it with a dog's eye.' Mbak Rin says that when I'm visiting, Sur always seems to get sick and needs to go home because she knows I can look after Tikka. She has four children of her own at home who are looked after by their grandmother.
Rinze orders a beer and continues talking. 'It's very bad for their economies . . .' he is saying, 'when they get political.' He tells me he comes from a family of shoemakers. For four generations, they held metal tools in their hands, making and fixing shoes. 'I suppose what I do now is just the modern version of the same profession,' he laughs.
I look at his pudgy blisterless fingers and am astonished at the simplicity of everything.
'Aren't the factory workers the shoemakers?' I ask.