Journey through Hell

We are back in Medan but only after surviving one horrific, four-hour ride on a supposedly air-conditioned bus. As the bus left Lake Toba, the internal climate was reasonable but at that point we were enjoying the cool air at the Lake's altitude of 900 metres. Before long however, we were descending into the tropical heat of the lowlands and the air being pumped through the bus's interior seemed to be the same as the air on the outside. The windows couldn't be opened and for the next three and half hours I sweated continously and lapsed in and out of consciousness.

As the bus traveled along, the driver picked up more passengers, far in excess of the number of allocated seats, and so the aisle filled up with more bodies who in turn generated more heat. A guy standing in the aisle beside me decided to light up a cigarette in spite of the no smoking signs but was persuaded to extinguish it by some other passengers. Finally, on the outskirts of Medan, the bus broke down completely and we were forced to catch a becak to our hotel.

The becak is a motorcycle with a sidecart for passengers and is intended for two adults at the most. This day it carried two adults (Desy and myself), two children (Sabina and her cousin Ilham) plus a large suitcase, my backpack and several smaller bags. We must have made quite a sight and attracted many stares, especially with a Westerner on board. We battled through Medan's chaotic afternoon traffic (it was about 4pm) and I wish I could have captured the scene with my camcorder or digital camera but I was half-dead by this stage and intent on survival not documentation. The incident,though undocumented, will remain firmly etched in my memory under the category of "things survived but never to be repeated".

Greetings from Lake Toba

I'm surprised that I'm creating this post on the shores of Lake Toba in the north of Sumatra because for many years this place has been a technological backwater. When I first visited in 2002, it was difficult to even get a mobile phone signal and now I'm accessing the Internet from the hotel's free hotspot. It certainly demonstrates how the telecommunications infrastructure in Indonesia has improved over the past six years, although it still has a long way to go.

As wireless Internet connectivity improves with the rollout of WiMAX and the cost of Internet-enabled devices continues to fall, the Internet will become more accessible to Indonesians and play more of a role in the education of its students. Fixed phone lines, that would allow at least dial-up access to the Internet, are never going to penetrate to the more remote areas of this archipelago and thus wireless connectivity of some sort (GPRS, HSPDA, WiMAX) is the future.

But enough of technology, I'm currently looking over a lake that is 900 metres above sea level and is more than 500 metres deep at its deepest point. The tranquility of the location is in stark contrast to the violence of the eruption that created it. About 75,000 years ago, an explosion occurred here that was so powerful and so catastrophic in terms of its effect on the world's climate that the human race at the time may have been reduced to as little as 1000 breeding pairs (see Lake Toba catastrophe theory).

Blue Energy

It all started around the time of the UN climate talks in Bali late last year when an Indonesian company "launched a range of gasoline and diesel products under the name blue energy". Here is part of an article, dated December 5th 2007, that reported on the occasion:

In a lavish ceremony held on the sidelines of this week’s U.N.’s climate talks in Bali, the company launched a range of gasoline and diesel products under the name “blue energy” witnessed by Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono himself.

Just days before the launch, Indonesia’s environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said that the country would have “its own fuel made out of plain water”.

Five cars, pumped with “blue energy” that have made a 5-day trip from Jakarta to Bali went through a pollution test. The result: 50 percent lower emissions on average.

Yudhoyono dubbed this “a winner for Indonesia”, cheered by the crowd in white-blue uniforms, while songs, written and composed by the president himself, played in the background. The company’s chairman said this could be Indonesia’s way out of the oil economy. In short, it’s a magic fuel.

Even back then the article mentioned that the magic was fading but not enough to deter the true believers. Joko and Purwanto, the masterminds of this scam, had managed to convince the President who "set up a special team to pursue the project, pouring billions of rupiah into the effort" according to today's The Jakarta Post. The research team came from the Muhammadiyah University in Yogyakarta and they "decided to develop the invention and appointed Joko and Purwanto as expert staff".

It all started to unravel only recently however, and the latest statement from the University's rector was that "he felt ashamed his university and researchers were deceived" and he has filed a lawsuit against the two "inventors". Yesterday the research team began dismantling the facilities that had been constructed but not without some resistance from the inventors' lawyers who claimed that radioactive substances could leak from the power project if it were torn down.

These sorts of scams take place everyday in Indonesia where economic pressure makes people vulnerable to get-rich-quick schemes but this one is memorable because it has taken in the President and the scientific wing of a leading University. I'm reminded of the empty energy promises in recent years of "cold fusion" and Peter Brock's "orgone energy".

Homo Domesticus

It's been a quiet week, this first week of my holidays, and the photo of Sabina with her menagerie of soft toys sums up the domestic tranquility of it all. The murderers, psychopaths and robbers are still out there of course but hopefully that is where they'll stay. Next week, we head off to Medan and Lake Toba for a week or more and I'll probably leave my laptop behind and bring some physical books to read.

It's been two years since our last visit to the Lake and back then there was limited Internet access (via my mobile phone's GPRS) but I'm just as happy to leave it all behind me for a week or so. I spend everyday at one computer or another so it's probably healthy to have a respite so I'll declare Lake Toba a technology-free zone for me personally. There's not even a TV set in the hotel rooms where we normally stay and that's certainly not missed. The only thing I can't do without is The Jakarta Post. I have an entrenched habit of reading the paper at breakfast time and I'm out-of-sorts when it's late or doesn't arrive on public holidays.

With our newly acquired camcorder, I will be taking plenty of video footage and of course I'll have my digital camera to take lots of photographs. In that sense, I won't be completely free of technology. It would be interesting, one day perhaps, to go with only a sketchpad and pencils. I have done some sketching over the years, although I discovered early on that I had little aptitude or patience for oil painting or watercolours.

Rising Violence

It seems that crime is creeping closer to us lately. A couple of days ago one of Desy's relatives in Medan was murdered. She was in her mid twenties and was working in a kiosk that sold mobile phone when she was killed in a knife attack. The incident appeared on national TV and the murderer (a young male), having pulled the metal sliding door down behind him in order to conceal his crime, found that he couldn't raise it again to escape. He was found hiding in the ceiling. There are more details to this story that I can't bring myself to write about.

Murders, burglaries and robberies seem to be on the rise, although it's difficult to quantify these things. Suicides caused by economic stress are definitely increasing in the various regencies around the country. The only good news is that the FPI (Islamic Defenders Front) went a little too far last weekend and disrupted a peaceful demonstration that was promoting religious tolerance. As a result, there have been several arrests and calls for the organisation to be disbanded. These preman berjubah (thugs in white robes) have been causing trouble for years but the government has been too gutless to take an decisive action.

Even now the response to the FPI's excesses has been equivocal as is the current indecisiveness as to whether to ban the deviant Islamic sect called Ahmadiyah. There is no sign that the current weak leadership of the country is going to get better anytime soon. The only President to impress me since I've been here was Gus Dur but he was bundled out of office far too quickly as the result of political machinations. Being leader of a large Muslim organisation, one might have thought that he would be pushing an Islamic agenda but, quite the opposite, he was a model of tolerance and liberal thinking. Predictably, he's been highly critical of the FPI lately and supportive of Ahmadiyah's claims for recognition.