The Scent of Freedom in the USA - October 2010

Last October 2010, I traveled to the United Stated of America for 10 days particularly to North Hampton Massachusetts and New York. This is my second trip after another brief visit one and half years ago also to Massachusetts.



I remember hundreds years ago, a French scholar, Alexis de Tocqueville, travelled around this country for two years and produced a really really great book about democracy in America. Comparing to him my trip is nothing, as Indonesian said that my trip experience would no more than a tip of his dirty nail :) Moreover today in this ITC technology era, when the world becomes flat like a village in which people around the world seems like know very well of what other people doing in the other part of the world. Writing a travelogue like this is maybe like putting salt to the sea, useless.

Nonetheless I still feel very fortunate and want to share my deep skin impression about this superpower country. So here is all what I experienced about this country.

I landed at Detroit Airport, spent a night and with other friends from Bangladesh, the Philippines and also our American friend continued the travel by car to Massachusetts. I was really excited knowing that autumn season has just arrived. It was like magic to witness the beauty of green threes turn into bright yellow red. My previous visit in this country was in end of winter so it was snowy white everywhere and very cold. I always amaze to the beauty creates by this changing season, so my romantic mind thought that they are lucky to have opportunity enjoying every moment of Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring. Always then a poem came out from my mind ^.^

The Autumn of my life

It was young autumn who arrive in front of the door of October,
He handsomely smile and smoothly took my hand
Walk around New England
To witness all the threes turned bright yellow and red
In solitude one last leaf fell down from a willow three

Every green will finally turn yellow and fall
Reminding the fragility of my own life
Some day I will be the yellow leaf my self
Who at the end fall separated from the ones beautiful and beloved
Oh life nothing stay forever





Well I am also pretty sure that this change of weather would be very tough for the poor because during winter the temperature is very cold, far bellow 0 degree Celsius. I imagine being poor and homeless fellows in a four seasons country would really like getting a curse from the hell. But a friend told me that in Northampton the local government provides the poor with cheap housing that they can stay with a very cheap rental cost depending on their income. Look at below picture of the house for the poor that my friend told me. It does not look like poor at all for Indonesian standard actually :-))





During the land travel from Detroit to Massachusetts I learned about how the principle of freedom of expression implement in daily life. We all know that the US constitution guaranteed freedom of expression, but I have never sure how this principle implemented in their daily life. My friend told me that only a couple days before, one of his neighbor raise a Southern flag in front of his house sang a song and all activity to express his longing for the idea of Southern State. As you know hundreds years ago the US has a very bad civil war involving the Southern states versus the Northern states due to their different policies on slavery. Many of the slaves from the Southern countries flew to the North to pursue freedom. Well it is a fact that some people in the country still want to have a separate Southern State, just like one neighbor of this friend of mine. What impressed me was that the police allowed him to do so respecting his freedom of expression.Only after the neighbors complained because the noise had disturbed them, the police asked him to stop the activity.

Well this kind of thing would never ever happen in Indonesia. Once you rise other than Indonesian red and white flag, a police would arrested you with the charge of rebellion. And many people are indeed in jail because of such case in Papua, Maluku, Aceh and even sometime ago in West Java.

I also noticed how politicians sometime harshly criticize their opponent because they are guaranteed by freedom of expression principle. At that time some politicians from the Republic party amplified by mass media were accusing Obama as a Muslim and or as a Communist, and nobody filled libel for that accusation. I recalled this kind of thing would never happened in Indonesia. High profile people in Indonesia are very much caring to their good names and reputations so any accusation would be taken as serious offense.



After driving about an hours we arrived at North Hampton. It is a very beautiful old city. I love to see flowers blooming everywhere in the streets and in front of houses. It was amazing to look at old building and old architecture houses in the city. I was thrilled to see people who are very patient in waiting the traffic light turn from green to red before passing the street, while the cars were also all abiding the traffic signs.



On this particular fact one Indonesian friend whom have been stay in the US for two years have a reason. He drives also in the state and he does it very carefully unlike when he drives in Jakarta. Why? He said he want to make his record clear from any legal violation because otherwise it will have a serious consequence for him. Not only that your driving license would be cancel when you have bad record in abiding the traffic regulations, but you may also have difficulty in other business for instance in borrowing money from the bank and many others businesses. So this friend would always carefully check how long he has park in the street to avoid overtime and so on.

North Hampton is a small town, we can reach almost anywhere just by walking. Just like other small city, this one will also ready to sleep in the evening. Many of it shops will close by 5 or 7 o’clock in the evening. Only on weekend, starting at Thursday evening all the shops open late giving chance for people to have more fun for shopping and drinking outside. By walking you can find restaurants offering various kind of foods, and they are delicious.



At least foods I tried there were all delicious :) I tried one pizza restaurant that has all very good foods: margarita pizza, pasta with eggplant and cheese on the top, and wonderful salad with olive oil sauce. I tried Moroccan kebab which located in one corner of the town. Another restaurant, I forgot the name, was also having very good roasting salmon with potato.





This city has everything people dream of: beautiful houses with large garden, good hotels, many restaurants offering various kind of delicious foods, universities, and the most important is heavenly scenery with all that beautiful lake, river, gardens, houses, old buildings, flowers and so on. No wonder people want to stay here. Hotels are fully booked during the summer as people want to enjoy this piece of heaven in earth.







The hotel I stayed in, Northampton Hotel, was an exotic building. Its tagline “an inn of colonial charm” is reflected in all its architecture building and interior design. I like the hotel: the building reminds us to the British colonial history, the interior design also reflects the past century comfort, and the foods are great. I was lucky Verite paid the hotel for me this time, but if we want to stay there next time we need to spend about USD 200 per night. Whew pretty expensive, doesn’t it? But I think its worth for the beauty the hotel offers.








When I was there, one wedding was just held there in the Hotel ballroom. It was not an ordinary wedding (in my Indonesian opinion) because both the groom and the bride were male! Oh yes it was a gay wedding. This is another form of freedom adopted by this particular state, off course not all states in the country legalize a gay marriage like this one. Well they said that generally New England people are more liberal and tolerate to difference cultures and views.

I only spent about 5 days in this beautiful town and did not feel enough. Really want to comeback some day and enjoy more the city when another color of season changed.





Before flying back to Jakarta, I spent one night in New York. I was lucky because one Indonesian good friend, Abidah, was very kind invited me to stay in her apartment. She cooked nice Indonesian foods, rawon and lontong. She treated me for dinner in one Indonesian restaurant. She shows me around New York.



This is the first time for me to meet Abidah actually after long long time ago we always heard each other name mentioned by common friends. But student activits you know always close one another because we share the same critical idea, the same dream of a better Indonesia. We talked a lot and everywhere: in the bookstore, in the train, in the restaurant, in the car and offcourse in her house. We discussed everything and that was really exciting.

We went to Isles Island where the liberty statute located. It was Friday 10 AM o'clock in the morning, and we stucked with very very long queue (about 1 km). And all of them were waiting to board in ferry that will bring them closer to the statute. The ticket was USD 12 each. If you want to go up to the statute, go there before 8 AM in the morning because they set a quota for how many people could go up the statute for each day.




Well I ended up with taking picture with the liberty in the far distance background. And thats not less fun I think. Because for me happiness is not depending to outside factors but within ourself.




We took picture with George Washington statute in Union Square, a place with so many people whom did free activities: playing chess, selling cute T-shirt, selling tomato, pumpkin and other farms harvest and so on.
















We visited a popularly cheap bookstorne called strand bookstore. I bought some books and merchandises there.





We then enjoyed the walked to the UN center and took some picture together with the the organization peace symbol.






With all those tall buildings, busy people, and sleepless city no wonder they called it as big apple. A big fresh apple in which everyone looking for with passion. However I personally did not see it attractive or want to stay there. I prefer to call it as the jungle of New York. When you are not inhabitant of it and get lost, you will feel lonely and confuse. I think I love New England more than New York. With all those busy people in rush; with all those arrogant tall buildings around, with all those depressed homeless people in sight, I just felt like nothing and depressed.






Well still even in this dry energy of New York, I can still find an oasis and that was in book stores ^.^ You can always find peace in spiritual books written by Dalai Lama, Karen Armstong, Thich Nath Hanh, Paulo Coelho, Deepak Chopra, Rumi and many more. Actually I was not alone to seek refugee in this spiritual haven of the bookstore. I can understand that at one point people need to take a rest, from the crowd to solitude, from the ambition to achieve carrier ladder to a more relaxed journey to find the true self. I shared the feeling and understanding to the people in that corner and pray for them, may peace and happiness be with you!

Manila Travelogue: 27 May – 3 June, 2010

A glance of Manila at Holiday Inn hotel Makati

Manila’s Face after Ten Years

End of May 2010 I visited again Manila for a week attending the Asian Public Intellectual Aniversary in Ateneo de Manila University. This is another visit after a year and I going back to Manila is like going home for me. I used to stay for two and a half year in 2000 – 2003 for taking my Master and conducting Asian Public Intellectual research. I was pretty at home staying at this 12 million population city. Well actually it is not correct to call the city with Manila, as the name is referring to old Manila city which is only one among 17 local government units/ cities of Metro Manila.

Physically Manila today is not much different with a decade ago. We can still see colorful Jeepneyes run along its dense roads. Hundred years of old churches around the old city of Manila are still well maintained. There in front of the churches, women and children sell candle and beautiful sampaguita, a necklace weaved from Jasmine flower, as an offering for the patron lady. In a more modern part of Metro Manila, Makati, we can see sky crappers rise around the area left only a small portion of the land for gardens and threes.

Ateneo de Manila University parking lot in Quezon City

Well my API gathering was fun. We had series of lectures from Dr Krisina Krisantu from Thailand whom did amazing humanitarian work in Africa. After spending 20 years as professional doctor and invented some medicine in her own name. She decided to work a year voluntarily to Afrcan countries, helping their government to produce cheap massive medicine production so that people there could fight HIV/ AIDs and malaria effectively. Her lecture was indeed very inspiring, so that I was also thinking what can I do to help people in this world.

We also have other wonderful lectures from KS Jomo, a prominent Malaysian economist whom now working in the UN head quarter in New York. We also have Ben Anderson whom book Imagine Community was used by many as references in social theory discourse.

Asian Public Intelectual Community - Indonesians group

 The API fellows also have their intelectual works exhibited. Some fellows have great pictures taken from their photography work as such Cholin Nicholas and dave Lumenta.

At University of the Philippines

Visiting a galery at UP

My favorite picture: representing Filipino character which are cheerful, outspoken, and religious, look at the rosario in his hand

Art perfomance lead by Motohide Taguchi from Japan, they created their own music and dance compsition

 Later at the the end of the gathering we had art perfomance directed by Dhany Reyes. It was wonderful: we gave appreciation to the API initiators and people whom work for it in an Oscar award style.

Indonesian fellows Krisnadi, Heru and me take a picture with father Jose Cruss of Ateneo

Art performance which was all directed by Danny Reyes

There was fashion show from each country, and I was lucky because Yanti brought this piece of batik so that I can have an indonesian culture flavor  

 Incidentally when I was there last May, the country had just finished conducting national election. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, the son of late President Corazon Aquino won landslide number of vote for the position. However the elected vice President, Binay, does not come from the same party with Noynoy. It is interesting that President and Vice President are selected separately not as a package, through this way it is very possible that the President and Vice President would not go along in deciding country matters. However the President is certainly have more power as he is the one who responsible to select member of his cabinets and run the administration.


Together with Presidential election the country also elected 22 senators and 277 congressmen. Senators are elected nationally. The first 12 senators with highest votes will occupy the position for 6 years, while other 12 senators with least votes will be in office for 3 years and have to run for another election to extend their term in senate. The senate has very important role as the body is responsible to pass the laws. The 277 congressmen were also elected at the same time with the presidential election. They represent area and has crucial function in preparation the state budget.

The Philippines is divided into layers of Local Governments with province as its primary unit. Currently there are 81 provinces in the country. Provinces are further divided into Cities and Municipalities, which in turn divided into villages (Barangays). Province is headed by Governor, City/ Municipality is headed by Mayor, village is headed by Barangay Captain. Governor and Mayor are directly elected and have 3 years term in office while Barangay Captain is assigned in for 5 years term. All provinces are grouped into regions, currently there are 22 regions in the country for administrative convenience. Most government offices establish regional offices to serve the constituent provinces, for instance the Department of Defense has Office of Civil Defense (OCD) in the region. The regions themselves do not possess a separate local government, with the exception of the Muslim Mindanao Region and Cordillera Administrative Region.

Politically dynamic, the Philippines was experienced a number of coups. Two of its presidents (Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada) were also forced down by people power. The strong resistance by leftist group and the big number of civil society encourage a strong control to the government. These days the legislator is discussing to pass the freedom of information act.

Hachiendas and Political Familism

Economically, the Philippines is considered as a middle income country – rank 47 on GDP by World Bank 2008, with USD 166,909 million). However the poverty rate is quit high, around 20% with more than 50% of its people are vulnerable to poverty. The country economic situation was obviously visible if you go out to the provinces. People who mostly work as peasants or fishermen live in poor condition. These people normally have a big number of children due to pro live stand they have as a Catholic county. Statistical data said that the country has 2 percent population growth since 2004 - 2007. No wonder here we can see children working to help their parent earn money.

Some of these people work for local rich landlord who own large portion of farm in the province that locally called as Hachienda. Their peasants and landlord relationship has taken form of patron client relationship. This landlordism is actually inherited by Spanish that at once ruled the country, and many of these landlords indeed have Spanish blood. Some old landlord families, for instance the Ayala family, are transformed into successful businessmen base in Manila. These people are frequently appeared at the lifestyle pages of Manila newspaper and magazine, either for party events or charity works. This obviously shows a big gap between the poor and the rich. The Gini coefficient for the country overall fell from 0.49 in 1997 to 0.47 in 2003, but this is still higher than the 0.45 measure for the late 1980s and 1994, and very high for the region overall.

The Hachienda system is deep rooted in the country, one social culture inheritted from Spanish’s 300 years colonialization. Now it even strengthens because many of the rich families are also hold powerful position in politics. The governor, mayors and congressmen are normally circulated among the strong family members. Once the father hold a strong political position, their wife and children will follow suit. We can see this for instance from the Marcos family that still powerful in their province. The son of later president Joseph Estrada was also won the second as congressman. And the new president, Noynoy Aguino also comes from the strong Hachiendos family.

Rosalie Hall wore her Phillipines traditional culture which strongly influenced by Spaniard

The country performance of good governance is not yet satisfactory by corruption cases indicator. In 2009 Transparency International’s CPI survey the Philippines was ranked 139 from 180 countries with score 2,4 (0 – 10 with 10 as the least corrupt).

This social and political fact has actually triggered strong opposition from the leftist group. The leftist group opposes the government through underground guerilla fighting through New People Army (NPA) as well as political activities through its various front line organizations to change the social system of the Philippines. The strong influence of leftist group has been coloring the dynamic of the country’s NGOs which mostly very critical to the government.

When almost all part of the Northen Philippines was strongly influenced by Spanish culure, this Igorot culture was still maintained their local cuture due to their remote location 

The US Legacy
Aside of strong Spanish cultural present, we can also see the US legacy in the country. The US used to govern the Philippines for about four decade since 1898. The US occupation has strongly influenced to the country’s political system and has established a strong tie to its economic relationship that obviously apparent to this day. English has been taken as second national language and widely used by the Filipino in their public arenas so that people used to speak mix Tagalong-English that they named as Taglish. Nowadays this English fluency has given Filipino migrant workers more advantage in competing for work abroad.


Nice Places to Visit
We can visit many good places in the country. In Manila we can go to old city with many of its old building with Spanish Architecture. At this part of Manila we can also see many old churches show their elegant western architecture. During Lenten season, we can see people do a sacrifice procession to remember Jesus Christ pain. Some people let them self to be crucifixes to represent him.

Moslem visitors like me would like to visit the Moslem community and its Mosque in Quiapo. In the area they can get halal food and buy some cheap gifts to bring home.

It is good that last year I have chance to visit Tagatay in Cavite province. Tagatay is a beautiful tourist destination that has cool air and green environment. There is a beautiful lake in the top of the mountain as the most valuable piece of the place in which nobody wants to miss.

East Nusa Tenggara Indonesia Travelogue: Encounter with a Teku tradition

Lasiana Beach

One good thing of working in an NGO like Oxfam is that we have a chance to travel to the very remote place of a country. Oxfam is normally working in the most underdeveloped area that located far away from the capital. It takes hours or days to reach the project site from the capital city. In my opinion, you will never understand the true soul of a country without travelling to its hinterland in which people still live in their traditional way of life. It is wonderful to see their traditional architecture, costume, foods, and their way of life which reflect their close relationship with the nature.

Last May 2010, I visited Nusa Tenggara Timur --- we frequently shorten into NTT-- for the first time. Ah ya it was embarassing actually why after more than three decades of my life in this country I haven't ever visited this poor but beautiful province. We went together in a group of five: Patricus Usfomeny, Vu Minh Hai, Irene Cahyani, and Ari. These pictures here were taken together by me, Hai, and Irene.

Nusa Tenggara Timur which literally means east part of the east south island, was gracefully attractive. It has three big islands: West Timor, frores, and Sumba, with more than 500 islands scaterred around. I did not be able to travel to other part of the province except for only west Timore. Very ufortunate time indeed. A friend told me that Labuhan Bajo in Flores was like a heaven in earth for its beautiful virgin beach.

In the plane that brought me from Bali, I flew together with group of tourists whom brought big surfboards. A native Timorese friend told me that this province is actually have very beautiful beach with strong wave which provides great pleasure for surfing. Serious surfers frequently march to Nembrala island of Rote Ndao district in the province to do excercise before go for surfing competition in Hawai or Brazil.

Well I did not have opportunity to visit other than West Timor island, but even the beach there in West Timor is also beautiful (eventhough they were not well maintained). I visited Lasiana beach with some signs of government intentions to establish it as tourist destination, but unfortunately with very poor condition. May be because there were not so many people visited. I am sure it is not because that the places are less appealing but simply because of lack promotion.

Lasiana beach

Children playing at one cool afternoon in Lasiana beach

This one, is a new well designed restaurant we visited along our way to Belu in the border with East Timorcountry. I am sure the owner spend pretty much money to make it green and beautiful. At one of its small gazebos I stop to pray.

Stop over at this pretty new retaurant

 

                                                                      
Nusa Tenggara Timur, the home of 4.5 million people, is considered as one of the poorest provinces in Indonesia. It has 36.29% people living in poverty, almost doubling the national poverty rate of 17.75% (2006 data of Provincial Bureau for Statistics). The poverty trend in the province is also getting worse; since 1999, NTT has dropped from 21st to 24th in the Human Poverty Index (HPI) ranking and from 24th to 28th in the Human Development Index (HDI) ranking.

That impression was clearly in sight: abandon garden in the middle of Kupang the province capital city, poor houses along the way to Belu district, and also skinny children with reddish hair.

This lady crushes corn (or paddy) at this wooden bowl to prepare meal

A family in Belu district

The province is considered as savanah area with relatively low average of rainfall, occurring mostly between November to April at every year. The topography is very rugged, dominated by deeply incised, erodible limestone which supports open savannah grasslands. Even though it only has very limited fertile land, but most of the people in NTT are working as farmers. Big number of them are peasants with small lot of farms. They domesticate cattle, horses, pigs and goats aside of planting their farm with seasonally crops as such corn, vegetables and some rice.

girls taking waters from nearby river in Belu district for their family needs

If you visit the villages in NTT you can see how simple their lives are. Their houses are very modest; wooden walls taken from palm three skeletons, grass (or palm leaves) roofs, with no bed or chair inside. People develop high roofs for their houses and deposit their harvest crops on it. This symbolizes their local wisdom of food security. Depositing most of their corns and paddy in the roof, they take one small portion of the crops for daily consumption. By this way they can manage their food for a certain period before they harvest a new one.

This is an umah bubu literally means the round house, normally develops in the back of a house. Under its roof they deposit their dried corns. The mother of the house guard this house and other members of the family can not enter without her permission

She is mama Maria, the mother of the house owner. She stay all the time in this small and smokey umah bubu for cooking with this little grand daughter.

He is Pak Bernardus the house owner. He chews betel leaf and bitter nut all the time to keep his teeth healthy. He did not know how old was his age, and that all fine for him. He can understand Bahasa Indonesia the national language, but speak only tetun his local language  

Corns, the field harvests are depositted on the top of umah bubu to feed the family for a year before another harvest 

This is what they cook in the umah bubu, a simple foods named Jagung Boti (corns mix with vegetables and sometime they also put coconut milk in it)

Yet sometime the situation becomes so worse when they fail to harvest due to long drought, flood, or disease. People takes many ways to cope with this difficulty. Some people goes to the city to look for other jobs. Some other people prefer to stay in the village and cope the crisis by selling their remaining livestock or go to the forest to gather tamarind and other valuable plants. While a group of people in one district in NTT prefers to take other people's property to keep living.

There is one popular traditiona robbery gang in NTT that locally called as Teku. The Teku people originally works as peasant. However during the hard time when they have nothing to eat, they turn them self as robbery gang. Teku gang is not only consisting of small number of people, instead it involve the whole village members including the women and children. They usually employ some kind of informant that will identify one specific house as a target, normally a rich family. They then sign the house that has been appointed by giving an early warning to the house owner. They send the house owner an offering that consist of betel leaf and bitter nuts together with a letter saying that they will visit on certain date of night. Upon receiving the letter the house owner will can do nothing, people are not sure whether it is because of a kind of magic spell or due to harsh threat given by the robbery gang.

In NTT tradition, bettel leafs-bitter nuts offering is a symbol of respect. People use this offering to ask a girl for marriage, given to the highly respected people in the society, or given to a guess. Thus I am thinking that in the case of Teku robbery, this offering could be interpret as a symbol of regret to the house owner. They are kind of saying that they are sorry for taking their money and other property from the house. They know that they take other people belonging illegally but they do it decently, with permision.

In my opinion the traditional Teku Robbery story in NTT above simply highlights the hypothesis that poverty drives to criminality. So it is true that we need to elevate poverty in order to create a peaceful world.

Changed

Five summers
Different swallow flies
Another daisy blooms
Time has passed by
You also have changed
From someone I ever knew

Jakarta, May 31, 2009

February Snow

The earth is white
The river is frozen
When a wind sends his icy blow
No threes waving their naked branches
It is a February Snow here
Cold, quiet, and anxious…
Only me who burned in a flame

Massachusetts, 13 February 2009