Indonesia

My second stop on this trip was Indonesia. I flew from Singapore to Jakarta to visit Anne Budd, who had just finished language school there, before going on to her new assignment, teaching English in New Guinea.

Jakarta is an amazing place. It is dynamic and full of life. It displays some of the wealth of this country, so rich in natural resources: oil, gas, hardwood trees, precious gemstones, gold. Modern skyscrapers abound throughout the city and skyline is quite impressive. There is also a lot of poverty, as one sees the shacks in which some of the population live in the foreground of the skyline of the city. While Singapore is very controlled and orderly, Jakarata is wild and free and well, the opposite of controlled or orderly.

Perhaps the most overwhelming aspect of life in Jakarta is the traffic. There are a lot of vehicles on the streets and the traffic appears to be permanently gridlocked. It just doesn't move. It takes a long, long time to get anywhere because the traffic is so jammed. Imagine a huge number of vehicles caught in a long term gridlock. Then add thousands of motorbikes running between the cars and trucks and up onto the sidewalks, further jamming the traffic. That was my first impression of Jakarta!

Enough of gridlock. There's more than traffic in this country. We took a trip up into the mountains west of Jakarta, to Bandung, which is very beautiful. Being at a higher elevation, the air is cooler, and since it is less populated, less polluted. Although it rained a lot of the time we were traveling, the countryside was really beautiful.

While in the mountains we visited a park which encompasses two volcanic calderas that still emit steam and hot mud. It's much the same kind of landscape as Yellowstone Park in the USA.

The best part of being in Indonesia, however, was the people. They are warm and friendly and very welcoming. Anne shared some of her Indonesian friends with me and they were very open and welcoming.

The best part of meeting the people was meeting Anne's "Share Group" at her boarding house. The proprietors of the boarding house or "Kos" recently became Christians, and the people in Anne's share group are all serving the Lord, some at great personal cost: two work for Wycliffe, one teaches at a Christian school, and the Vietnamese American in the group works with children at risk. The night I visited they discussed spiritual warfare, a concept that is very real to them. One told the story of a recent experience when he was hit by a motorbike as he was crossing the street, and was hit with such force that he was catapaulted across the roadway and landed on the opposite side of the street, yet had no broken bones or serious injury. Most of Anne's friends speak very good English, which really amazes me. Anne greets them with "Hey, Dude!" so their English is also very contemporary.

Not all of Anne's friends are Christians. Some follow the dominant religion in the area, but they are very gracious, friendly and even protective of Anne, as they were of me, too. Andri is a law student who is also quite a businessman. His goal is to become rich enough to support the rest of his family, who have sacrificed for him, in good style. He has invested some money in ducks, which a farmer is taking care of for him. After a couple of months, they will be mature enough to sell at the market, and he hopes to make enough profit to invest in his next venture. Puspa is a businesswoman who works very hard at her job, and looks out of Anne. She's a woman who gets things done and when Anne needs to get somewhere in a hurry (hard to do in the traffic here) Pus takes her aboard her trusty motorbike for a wild ride to their destination.