Bengkulu

After my plans fell through for the Ramadan holiday last week one of the Indonesian teachers at my company invited me to his home-town in Bengkulu. He warned me several times that there was no A/C and the conditions were “very basic.” I waved it off and said nothing trivial like that would deter a seasoned traveller. Three days and four hours of airport delays later I had the opportunity to put my words to the test.

Robbi's mum and sisters were waiting for us outside the airport, which was packed with Benkulians returning home for Eid. All around us was jungle and there was a disgusting smell that came from the open drains in the car park. They were steaming in the heat even though it was around eight o'clock evening. I followed his lead and shook his family's hands while bowing my head so that it touched their fingers. His mum asked me if I spoke Indonesian with a very strong and difficult to understand accent. I said I spoke just a little in what must have seemed the most ridiculous accent of all time because it made everyone giggle. So far I had only seen the women and they were all wearing hijabs.

We got into a Toyota Avanza and took the scenic route back to the house down a long strip of beach which was clogged with fairground rides and fairy lights and street food. Towards the end of the of the beach was a long strip of darkness and Robbi told me there were 'many bullshit characters doing bullshits'  in that bit. Since his girlfriend Ardana had a curfew of 9 o'clock it would be impossible for Robbi to meet her that night and he complained that it wasn't his fault. Even so she was refusing to speak to him.

Whenever we played computer games in the evening at my apartment in Jakarta she would call him and ask him to say that he loved her before they hung up. Robbi confided in me that he had never even kissed or hugged a girl. Her idea of hugging was to 'hug hands.' He told me how in his culture it was very important for girls to be married before they turned 25 and that he only had two years left to raise about £1000 to pay a dowry to her dad and cover wedding expenses for the both of them. He said he longed to kiss her an asked if I had any advice. I declined to comment and told him a relationship like that was too far out of my experience. “If she isn't porking you, she's probably porking someone else,” didn't seem to fit. You never know though.

Before that I had heard about a strange marriage tradition in Indonesia where the families of the bride and groom tug a chicken to determine how much the groom has to pay to the family. Sometimes the groom's family gets a dodgy split and has to pay half his wages for the rest of his life to the wife's family. Maybe Robbi's situation could be worse.

We swerved around some chickens and down a dirt road then arrived at the house. It was white and had a sagging wooden porch with green tiles underneath. The jungle sprouted between the other houses dotted along the path and a long concrete trough of open drain water bordered the road on both sides.  We removed our shoes while Robbi's sister parked the car in the garage and his Dad greeted us at the door with some more hand shaking and jokes I could hardly understand. Inside there was a big bowl of rendang and a full cooker of rice waiting for us. The meat was buttery soft and the sauce was rich with only a bit of chilli, which was good because it would be a few days before we could finish it all.

After dinner all the women who had been wearing hijab earlier were walking around in their pyjamas. We  all sat on the floor in front of a TV from the 1980's watching an Indonesian sit com where a woman was crying about a dowry. On the way to the house we had stopped to pick up some snacks and I filled a bag with chocolate, crisps and instant noodles. I had to physically force Robbi's mum away from the till to prevent her from paying for it and snatch the money out the hand of the teller to replace it with me own. She called me a kind man and I said something unintelligible in Indonesian and everyone in the shop laughed at my accent/ horrendous grammar. Maybe they were laughing at the sentiment, because to them I was already a part of the family.

Before bed Robbi's dad invited me to attend a service at the Mosque at 6am the next day. I accepted so after trying on some “muslim clothes,” which apparently looked better than what I was wearing, I went to Robbi's room to get ready for an early night. His room just about accommodated his bed and an extra mattress that had been wedged in, blocking the door to the adjoining garage.  The walls looked as if they were once pink but had since faded to bare concrete and the roof was corrugated iron that radiated heat from the day. On the far wall was a table with one miniature fan plugged into the only socket. Robbi brushed a giant centipede off the mattress on the floor and told me I could take the top. I didn't argue with him.   

The next day I dragged my, already rancid, self out of bed and into my new clothes and we drove to the mosque. All the men went to the men's side and the women to the women's. I was surprised to discover that as well as being a civil servant Robbi's dad was also the imam at the mosque and lead the prayers, which were sung in Arabic. I managed to fake my way through all the prayer movements under the hot sun by copying people around me. Then I sat through a speech I didn't understand and we went to someone's house to eat 'tapai' and 'lemang,' which was rice grilled in banana leaves and some cereals which were with a very sweet purple sauce that I didn't really care for. I ate two portions to avoid looking rude.

We had planned to go to another service later in the day but as soon as we got back to the house I fell asleep for 3 hours and missed it. On Idul Fitri (Eid) it's tradition to visit all your friend's and family's houses and apologize to them for every time you may ever have wronged them and they are obliged to accept. It seemed like the perfect time to visit Robbi's girlfriend.

He permitted me to drive us there on his sister's motorbike since we could apologize to the polisi in the unlikely event of encountering them. When we arrived, her father and mother offered us food and welcomed us from their chairs but they didn't get up to greet us and after shaking hands avoided our eyes and found other people to talk to. The house was full of visitors. Robbi told me they hoped their daughter would find a richer husband than him. Their house was very similar to his but maybe slightly larger. We sat in the corner and I tried to talk to her brother who was an immigration officer but, like everyone else I had met apart from Robbi, he spoke no more than two words of English.

I asked his girlfriend why she didn’t speak English and she said because it was hard and she wasn't interested. I noticed that while they talked she touched his hand a few times and rested her head on his shoulder for a few seconds. After about 30 minutes the house was even more full and we decided to head back.

That night we made a plan to visit Robbi's uncle since he had never met a white man before and it was his lifelong ambition to take a photo with one (truly). While everyone talked, a pregnant cat came in off the street and noisily gave birth on the floor. After watching the scene in amazement I turned to everyone and told them a cat had just given birth. They turned around and just said “Oh yeah,” as if it was completely mundane. I was then warned several that it was a long drive to his uncle's house and that we would have to spend the night in much poorer conditions. I said no worries, what's good enough for your uncle is good enough for me.

His uncle's house was in the small village of Pajar Bulan. It had bare brick walls and the floor was bare concrete. He was a rice farmer and most the people I spoke to there were also farmers. There were ten to fifteen houses in a cluster surrounded by agricultural land and more jungle. Our lunch was rice with some assorted vegetables and I was able to speak to the person responsible for harvesting everything on the plate because they were all at the house apologizing for poisoning the food they sold him because it was Idul Fitri.

It was already evening and one of the farmers asked me if I like to play chess, When I said I did they went off and rounded up the 'best chess player in the village,' with an audience included, and brought them back to the house. They said the old guy was 'the best player,' but I couldn't tell if they were being serious because there were a few sly looks going on.

I had a splitting headache from the journey and the constant heat. I was also exhausted from having to get up shortly after sunrise after only quick bouts of poor sleep. After a year in Jakarta I had become unknowingly dependent on A/C. During the game I found it very hard to focus on the pieces.

After about 45 minutes, while I was thinking, I felt something wet and cold slap on my head and roll onto my shoulder. The crowd of observers looked at me with mild interest and someone pulled a black ghecko off my shirt. Robbi said the lizard was a good omen and shortly afterwards I noticed someone pointing out in Indonesian that I had a two-move checkmate available. To the astonishment of the crowd I played the mating line and everyone puzzled over the board for a few minutes before we shook hands.

They invited me to play some more games but I said I needed to lie down for a couple of minutes and asked where I was sleeping. Two or three people were already asleep on the bare floor in the living room and I rubbed the dent in my greasy hair where the lizard had fallen for luck. After a tense walk, Robbi's uncle lead me to the master bedroom where they had prepped the only bed in the house with a mosquito net and told me I would share the bed with Robbi since I was the guest of honour. Again, I didn't argue. I didn't get up until the next day either.   

In the morning Robbi's uncle asked if I would like to have a shower. In Bengkulu the shower was a tub full of murky water that came from a slow running tap and a bucket floating in the middle. The smell in the bathroom rivalled the smell in the car park of the airport. I had hoped the smell came from the toilet but I wasn't 100 % sure. Despite hints from other people in the house and my recent irresistibility to flies, I had claimed that I was too lazy to shower. I was in desperate need of one, but I was also suspicious. I asked if the water was clean and he said it was very clean and handed me the keys to a motorbike and told me to drive carefully.

Robbi jumped on the back and we bounced with the other bikes down a terrifyingly steep and rocky hill then drove over thin planks that were balanced on a threadbare bridge. After this we came into a clearing and drove down a trodden path through some jungle.

At the end of it we came to a dam in a river. I changed into some shorts that were in the seat of the motorbike and lathered up some soap with the help of Robbi's uncle who insisted on cleaning my back. While I finished showering he dunked his toothbrush in the water and cleaned his teeth. He asked me if I remembered to take my toothbrush and I said no so he offered me his. I told him I can only use a special toothpaste because I have sensitive teeth but thanked him for the offer. 

Later on that day we went to a music festival but people seemed to be more interested in me than in the music and throngs of people were crowding around me. They were asking where I was from and if they could take pictures with, or of, me and why I was in Pajar Bulan. Some of these people included Robbi's cousins who were lady-boys and his family was concerned I might be offended by them. I assured them it was fine to talk but they shouldn't get their hopes up for any dowries.

Then Robbi's sister wanted to sing a song on the stage and employed us as back up dancers. After the three minutes of awkward dancing we gathered so much attention that the family couldn't stand it any more and we left early.

Before we left Pajar Bulan, while we sat on the floor in the living room, Robbi's uncle expressed his concern that me and Robbi would fall out and cease to be friends and that we had to be careful. Why he thought this I have no idea. He then took one photo with me outside the house and I asked if he wanted another one but he said no.

While everyone loaded the car Robbi and I went back into the house to get some sunglasses I had left on the table. I looked at the family photos on the wall and he explained them to me. There was one picture of a young boy on the wall and Robbi told me he had died aged just thirteen or fourteen because he was racing motorbikes.

In the car on the way back everyone fell into a tired silence for a while. I asked Robbi if he had every raced any bikes when he was younger. He told me he had once but he had a horrible experience. He was driving down a very long, wide and quiet road on the beach and decided he wanted to test the high speed of his motorbike. He accelerated faster and faster and was enjoying the speed.

Then a child stepped out in front of him and there was a loud cracking sound. The motorbike weaved across the road until a car struck it from behind and ploughed over it before speeding into the distance without stopping. Robbi was thrown clear of the car and skidded to a stop at the side of the road. His skin was cut and bruised and he was bleeding a lot from his arm but he could stand up and walk around.

All he could think to do was look for the child so he paced up and down the road searching everywhere. Eventually he picked through some bushes and found a young boy of about eight years old who was alive but unconscious and was also cut and bruised. The road was empty again so he waited by the side and called his parents to come and pick them up. A man walked over and Robbi explained the situation and told him to run the child somewhere so that he could be taken to hospital faster. Then he continued to wait. After being picked up he explained the what had happened to his parents and they arrived at the hospital. It was the same hospital that the child had been taken to.

After being patched up and bandaged he was interrogated by the doctor about the accident and given little information about what state the boy was in. The doctor told him that the boy had no parents. The interrogation only stopped when they heard the boy crying in the next room.

I asked Robbi what happened next and he told me that there wasn't a lot that they could do since the boy had no parents. All that his family could do was pay for his medical expenses and give him some money and food. If the boy had been a girl there may have been an institution they could have been taken to but since it was a boy they would have to continue living as a thief as they had done before. Because of the strange nature of the accident it's possible that the entire thing could have been a botched scam by a local gang that went wrong because Robbi was going so fast.

He had to walk to school for a year after that and was never given his own motorbike again. He said the only reason he went in to school was because he had an inspiring English teacher and a passion to improve his English.

Later that night Robbi wanted me to Skype my friend in England who was thinking of applying to work in Indonesia. I called him up and said there was a local who wanted to give the lowdown. Robbi told him there is some bullshit in Indonesia but not 100%. Then my friend had to go to dinner.