This is a little experiment I did last week. I was on my way to Solo, alone for a roughly five hour bus ride. I figured this might be the time to try a little stream of consciousness writing, so I pulled out my writing pad and proceeded to fill its next fourteen pages with a random and messy scrawl (I had nothing but my lap to rest the pad on) of my impressions.
I mount the bus and rummage around in my fanny pack to find my phone and speakers. In Germany I never owned one due to the fanny connotation, but here it is an absolute must, especially since sarongs don’t have pockets.
I fiddle around with the buttons and the central knob – soon the slow monotonous rap beat of “Listen to the Lion of Cameroon ROAR” by Manu Dibango flows into my ears. Its rhythm mixes oddly with the bus music and even on its loudest volume setting my phone cannot out blast the noise of the bus, the engine, the wind and the music from the on board speakers.
The conductor taps me on the shoulder expectantly, I peek into my wallet: Damn! Nothing in there but four 1,000, some 10,000, a few 50,000 and dozens of 100,000 rupiah notes. The normal price for a bus trip from Purwogondo to Semarang is between 8 to 10 thousand and I can’t get that in precise change. I give the conductor a 10,000 note, knowing that he will not give me back the 2,000 or 1,000. I could have gotten away with just 8 thousand! But then again, 2,000 rupiah is only 14 cents, so why am I mad anyway? This is a general problem I have had, money too big to use in everyday situations. Fresh from the atm I am usually armed with crisp and clean 50,000 or 100,000 notes both calibers far too large to use in everyday shopping. In situations like this I tend to look up the nearest “Indomaret” or “Alfamaret”, Indonesia’s most popular small supermarket chains, buy something small like a packet of gum (maybe 6,000 rupiah) and pay with a 100,000. The cashiers are often annoyed, but I need that change if I want to get anywhere in price-haggling situations.
“Listen to the Lion of Cameroon ROAR” has given way to the snappier rhythms of “Ye Ye”, the next song in my Manu Dibango playlist. I use my selective hearing skills to enjoy his song, the way that you can concentrate on a single conversation in a crowded, noisy room.
A woman and her child rise to signal their wish to stop, there are no fixed or roofed bus stations. The conductor who was busy hanging out of the bus door shouting at oncoming traffic notices the woman and her little boy. He turns away from the eye-contact conversations he’s holding with a potential passenger waiting on the side of the road. These conversations are quite unusual but necessary. If you want to mount a bus you hold eye contact with the conductor for about three seconds and signal facially that you want to mount, there wouldn’t have been any time for shouting because he is usually too far and the traffic is too loud so this silent method is most efficient.
Like I said, the conductor sees this and whips out his most important professional tool: a small aluminum 500 rupiah coin. He uses it to tap the window of the bus and the high pitched tick tick tick can be heard by everyone, penetrating the endless din around it. The driver hears the signal and stops, the conductor ushers the woman and the child off the bus, helping them with their bags, then taps the window again and the driver hurls the bus along. After this successful maneuver the conductor leans back into the bus and jams the coin into his hear for future use, it’s a perfect fit.
I now relax to the smooth yet shivery tunes of the saxophone in Manu Dibango’s “Somba Lomba”
Because of my skin I look vaguely Indonesian. Often, like right now, I feel like the fact that I am a “bule” (the almost derogatory slang used to describe foreigners, mostly white tourists) is my little secret. The other white skinned volunteers have no chance at hiding their origin, but with me most Indonesians don’t realize there is something strange about me until they notice my broken Indonesian. At this point they usually ask where I’m from and look surprised when they find out I’m German. I’m still not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.
We pass fields full of rows of bright green vegetables, they look like grass. Rice fields line both sides of the road. The rice field in general deserves special recognition:
The aesthetics of the rice field
It has become somewhat of a stereotypical image for Southeast Asia, the rice field with its bent farmers and their triangular straw hats. But that picture exists only for the briefest of moments; during the dry season the normally watery fields are parched and barren. The earth is cracked in zigzag lines and the bone-dry white stubble of last year’s harvest is all that remains of the symbol we see on Indonesian postcards or in the picture section of the LonelyPlanet travel guide. Only once the first heavy rains have begun does that idyllic image star to form. First the rice is planted in narrow, straight rows. It grows about twenty centimeters high and its color is a vivid bright green. From afar the rice field looks more like a meadow of juicy English lawn than anything else. But once you approach you begin to see the thin layer of reflecting water underneath and the field looks like a gigantic silvery mirror out of which little grass like shoots are growing. Only once you stand right in front of it do you see the neatly ordered rows of plants whose pattern is impossible to distinguish from an angle. It looks like someone drew a grid using green shrubbery. An empty but watered rice field is no less spectacular. The fields are kept so saturated that a fifteen centimeter layer of water lies on the earth. Its reflection of the light masks its shallowness and creates the illusion that the rice field is in fact a small patch of still ocean, reflecting the clouds like a gigantic mirror.
The density is so striking that I find myself believing that the rice would support my weight if I were to walk on it. The green looks so fresh and even that I have to remind myself that this is real and not photoshopped.
So we are passing the rice fields and I look towards the front of the bus. There are droplets of clear drippy rain on the windshield, yet the driver seems reluctant to use the wipers which are currently stuck on the middle of their usual path. Maybe they are broken.
The driver shouts the name of a stop, but no one wants to get of. We heave along.
At the front of the bus, above the head of the driver, hangs a large square frame which used to house a TV. Though now empty, its accompanying DVD player still hangs underneath it. The assortment looks hollow and tragically incomplete.
We reach a wider road and a creepily artificial looking actress smiles down on us from a roadside poster advertising a phone operator.
The bus breaks suddenly and everyone is ripped out of their dozes as we and our baggage lurch forward. Is it an accident? No, the conductor just saw some passengers who wanted to mount and stopped for them – the majority of the passengers has closed its eyes again and forgotten about the incident.
We are already at the Demak terminal, I am surprised, when I first drove this route it felt like ages until I got here. At the terminal all sorts of vendors mount to tempt the passengers with snacks and refreshments: “Tahu, tahu, tahu!” (Tofu), “Es degan, Es degan!” (fresh iced coconut milk), “Aqua dingin, Mizone, Pocari Sweat!” (brand names of bottled drinks). One strategy is to place a bag of peanuts and candy on the lap of every passenger, hoping that they will think: well it’s in my lap already and I want it now, I might as well buy it. If you don’t buy, they come around again and take it back. The bus is moving again and the vendors hustle to get off, waiting for the next batch of fresh customers.
The busses themselves are brightly painted: red green blue or with flashy golden stripes. They are also covered in writing, brands, English phrases, and Arabic prayer calligraphy.
We turn into a large road lined with trees and divided into four. The two roads in the middle are for busses, lorries and cars, the two outside for the motorcycles.
I turn off my phone, knowing that I can’t hear anything anyway and aware that I will want the battery to last for the four hour trip from Semarang to Solo later on. Oddly enough the bus music has just stopped as well.
We stop to pick up a couple of school students; it’s the time of national end of semester examinations, hence I am not teaching. You can always identify students, they all wear uniforms.
The droplets on the windshield have since dried, but the wiper is still there square on the middle of the glass. It’s definitely broken.
The man behind me shifts and what I had thought to be a bump in the seat turns out to have been his right knee.
An odd smell wafts in. At first it is like the sweet smell of cooked beef, but quickly turns into the also sweet but much less appetizing smell of rubbish and sewers. Then it is gone again.
My bum is starting to numb and my upper right thigh on which I am resting my backpack is itchy.
I arrived in Semarang’s “Terboyo Terminal” and mounted the Solo bus.
I am now on the bus to Solo. It is much bigger, like a normal cruise bus and, thankfully, without music.
I have scratched my thigh, gone to the toilet at the terminal in Semarang, bought some snacks for the trip and found a nice airy spot near the door of the bus while the choir-heavy song “Negeriers” is blasting in my ears.
I have opened my first rations, a bag of fruit-flavored chewy gum candy. They’re alright but nothing to write home about.
A young maybe eleven year old boy comes on the bus and hands out envelopes on which is written the following message:
Assalam mualaikum
Bpk. Ibu saudara sehahan dengan tulus iklas
Aku mohon bantuanaya untuk makan sehari hari
Terima kasih
Wasalam
Which basically means: please put some money into this envelope to help me eat every day.
I put a thousand rupiah note and some coins into the envelope. The boy comes around collecting the envelopes.
We are still in Semarang, I can see the “Java Mall” which has a European style bakery on the ground floor and excellent doughnuts (you can even get croissants over there, croissants!).
I see a young woman outside. She has clearly been using whitening makeup, she is naturally attractive but the pasty pale mask makes her complexion (framed and accentuated by her red gilbab (headscarf)) seem slightly alien.
The metrical pumping of Manu Dibango’s funky rap is occupying my conscious mind as my unconscious mind registers the many warungs (small roadside restaurants) and tokos (small roadside shops) at the side of the road. We are still in Semarang, it is a big city.
We pass some truly spectacular private villas, all high above the road and yet right next to it; Semarang is very hilly.
A bus just like ours pulls up beside me. I see a young indifferent looking man at the window, we make eye contact, then his bus accelerates and he moves out of view. If he pulls up again I’ll try a smile.
My Manu Dibango playlist has finished and I choose Outkast to follow him. Somehow everything seems more fun and exciting if accompanied by their song “Hey Ya”
“What’s cooler than being cool? Ice cold!”
“Shake it, shake, shake it….”
As I rock my head we roll onto the highway, there are no motorcycles allowed here.
Tall claustrophobic walls of rock surround us as the highway cuts through the landscape like a deep wound, Semarang is indeed hilly.
They actually have tickets on this bus! I pay 13,000 and receive my slip of paper. Also the conductor spoke to me in English, which means my little secret is not so secret after all. I wonder what gave it away, maybe my huge backpacker rucksack or my Indonesian. I am slightly annoyed; it felt nice to be a “hidden” bule amongst all the other Indonesians.
A kindly looking musician introduces himself, then launches into a comfortable ballad to the tune of his guitar. It looks like a ukulele but has only three strings. He sounds nice and seems like a friendly old man. He smiles broadly as he receives the passenger’s money, I give him 1,000 rupiah.
The sky is darkening, the overcast bodes rain. Let’s see what happens…. Yup it’s started to drizzle. Now the seat near the open door turns out not to have been such a good idea after all.
It’s dark now and a lot colder and we are still speeding towards Solo.
After The Dropkick Murphys and Michael Jackson I am now listening to Johnny Clegg.
Thankfully the bus is emptier now; my bag has its own seat and doesn’t have to rest on my lap anymore.
Also the soda which I was excited to try from its TV commercial tastes like soap. Moh! (This is Javanese and means “Do not want!”, a word I like to use once I found out what it means).
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