Muslim scientists

Pictures of office building damaged in earthquake and that church again

Thurs 11 Jan


No word from Thomas about the meeting that Pak Biwa is said to have arranged for today so I send a text to Biwa and then phone to find that the meeting is on, and at 7pm though by my misunderstanding I take it to be an alarming 9 pm. I walk round to the second bamboo house under construction for specialist Pak Paidi but he’s said to be at a third site, nobody there but chat to the neighbour whose brick and concrete house is speeding ahead – he also has detailed plans for a toilet to be added on as soon as the scaffolding is down and describes the route of the soakaway. My host Pak Hari has described how to find the new church at Bantul so I sketch out a road map as a guide, make sandwiches and set off with my rucksack, computer and ‘western expert’ clothes for the evening meeting. Get across country in the morning sunshine ( the alleged rainy season just hasn’t taken off yet for some reason) to Bantul and find the church with a little help from a biker at a telephone shop who guides me the last half kilometre. The church is the large bamboo one which I visited before but a difficult structure to photograph and with an exterior surprisingly hidden by trees and other buildings. Nevertheless I get a good collection of pictures and set of for Jogyakarta. After a few miles with the nearest mountains visible on the wrong side of the road I stop to ask the way and have to retrace my steps. Sweating from the heat (I’m wearing a jacket to reduce skin damage in the event of an accident) and travelling a long way around the ring road that must surely rival the M25 for distance, I arrive at the Hostel where Thomas is preparing the cafeteria for the meeting. Alice after another falling out with Wati is packing her bags for a journey home to Sumatra, her mother has sent money for the tickets. There is a good excuse of a couple of funerals but Ibu Wati has still to be approached for approval. Not a good moment to discuss my speech for which Thomas will be interpreting. I get a cooling cold shower and make of on the bike to the nearby internet café but there are problems with the hotmail connection so hsve to give up and return to the hostel for Thomas to use the bike to take Alice and Michelle to the coach station Just as helmets are being donned Biwa and Wati appear and Wati drives them in her car. Life seems to be in a state of limbo, and too for Andrew who is now out of pain from his shoulder injury but unable to use his bike for a couple of weeks and is having problems finding suitable accommodation for his two year placement. Thomas has no time to worry about his family as he prepares a wall poster for the meeting, gets mats arranged for seating, raids rooms for light bulbs and drinking glasses, cooks the rice, makes the tea and repares the food brought in for serving at the right moment. The meeting, programmed for 7 pm makes a hesitant start at 8 pm and some of the heavyweights arrive at close to 8.30. Altogether there are 36 people present including just two women – all of them seem to be lecturers or researchers at one or another university in Jogya so inevitably they rambled on for ages with a single break for the food. Most of the speeches seemed to be in the Java language, though I fool myself to think that Bahasia Indonesian would be any more comprehensible. It seems that the group is a Muslim scientists collection (no doubt as anachronistic as Christian scientists) out to revive Indonesia’s fortunes through a revivalist sense of jingoistic pride and including moving the capital from Jakarta to Jogyakarta. It may be just as well that there was no time for my speech on my philosophy of design as applied to heroic national landmark buildings out to rival the Statue of Liberty and the Sydney Opera House. Ultimately I helped Thomas clean up the debris and we share a bottle of beer provided by Biwa while speculating on the prospects of him finding another job to get Alice back from her parents and away from the hostel and Ibu Wati without having to end his relationship with Biwa – all looks pretty bleak and I would not be too hopeful of a solution being found let alone implemented.