Wednesday, August 21, 2013

The POISONWOOD BIBLE

Barbara Kingsolver's best seller, The Poisonwood Bible, was published in 1998. It's the gripping story of the Price family. Nathan, a Baptist preacher-missionary obsessed with ramming Jesus down African throats, moved his wife and four daughters in 1959 from Georgia (US) to the Belgian Congo. He is narrow minded and obsessed, a misogynist amidst his four women, inflexible and totally closed to the intricacies and strength of the culture and spiritual life of the village of Kilanga and its inhabitants. In this day and age, after 911 and incessant bombings in the US, the Middle East, and Indonesia, to name a few places, I believe, that mentality would be classified as hardliner, although I have never heard the term being applied to a Protestant. 
His wife Orleanna is a prime victim of the husband and the situation. The four daughters—Rachel who is very blond and 15 when they arrive in the Congo, wants nothing more than to return to Georgia and become the belle of the ball. The twins Leah and Adah, one year younger than Rachel, are identical in respect of their tremendous intelligence, but physically totally different. Leah is a tomboy daring, outspoken and enterprising, while Adah, hemiplegic[1] from birth, is restricted in her movements and does not want to speak. Ruth May, the five years old late arrival, is playful and independent and the first one to establish a contact with the village children.
The villagers are not interested in the fire and brimstone sermons of Nathan Price and strongly oppose his endeavours to baptise them in the river. His sermons are translated by Anatole, the highly intelligent village teacher and only one who speaks English. The village chief Tata Ndu is against the foreign intrusion and the attempts to erode his authority. A shadowy South African bush pilot delivers their monthly rations from Leopoldville.
When in 1960 the Congo gains independence from Belgium, Nathan Price is instructed by his Mission HQ to leave the Congo and return to America. He refuses and against the wishes of his females he decides to stay. The monthly rations are terminated together with the 50 dollar stipend.
Times are dire and just to feed the family a daily problem. When suddenly Tata Ndu pays them regular visits they are very confused not having any idea what is happening. When their helper Nelson, who has been placed there by Anatole, explains to Orleanna that the village chief wants to marry Rachel—because the blonde would be entertaining for his six wives. Rachel throws a tantrum and demands to be repatriated, which only results in her having to copy the appropriate Bible texts, the ones that refer to honouring thy father...
Nathan comes up with the idea to pretend that Rachel had already been promised to Eeben Axelroot, the bush pilot.
The evening I read that I woke up in the middle of the night, not really woke up, more like a vivid dream where I had a very active role to play as director and writer of the scenario. In a country where, after independence, whites were paraded naked in the streets of Leopoldville, or just shot, resisting the wishes of a village chief was not advisable. Would Eeben be shot, Rachel be abducted, the whole family chased out of the village, or poisoned...? I couldn't come up with a satisfactory solution.
I'm not going to tell you how it all ends. Read it yourself. It was a bestseller in 1998 and selected by Oprah for her book club, and it still is good. I strongly recommend.
Jakarta, 21 August 2013



[1] Paralysis of one side of the body

Thursday, July 25, 2013

PALU, a change for the better


  - Why was I not woken up, I asked the girl in the reception.
- The telephone does not work.
- You could have sent someone to knock on my door, couldn't you! To which there was no reply. And to my question where breakfast was served she pointed vaguely to somewhere behind me.
It was the same large empty space where the evening before I had had a beer—warm, or diluted with ice, and large bottles only—and had observed a group of rather sullen looking local young men sipping their drinks. They could best be described with the German word Halbstarke, which freely translated means "partially-strong", the English term yobbo denotes too much noisy aggressiveness.
That morning the empty bottles had been removed, but the ashtrays were still full. They were the triangular type, pressed from a thin sheet of metal and originally coloured a metallic pink or blue. Heavy use and a lot of banging around had removed most of the colour, however.
I cleared the table and got my nasi goreng from the breakfast buffet together with a cup of lukewarm coffee. The fruit, runny overripe papaya, and the watery orange syrup I passed up. In all fairness, the rice was not half bad, especially after I had added some salted soya sauce with chillies.
Palu is the capital of the Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi and the hotel was an effort by the provincial government to support tourism. Located on the beach it must originally have been attractive. A swimming pool in the shape of intertwined circles had been empty for quite some time, and was now used as a garbage dump. By whom? The hotel, or its neighbours? A fishing community, drenched in poverty, living on the seafront in sheds that were poorly constructed of driftwood and woven bamboo.
But this, of course, was tens of years ago when most roads in Palu were still unpaved and electricity was provided 12 hours a day. I had come to assess the developmental progress of a number of projects to the southeast of the town, quite some distance actually. And the road was an endless string of slow kilometres. I was tired and was glad to have reached the hotel that, from a distance, looked promising. Moreover, the shower worked and the sheets were worn but looked clean.
After my shower I went out to have dinner. The restaurant I had been recommended served Padang-style food. It was empty when I arrived and upon my request was told that today's choice was chicken and grilled fish and steamed papaya leaves with a light yellow curry. The food, although not really Padang in taste, was good and I complimented the owner when she came and sat at my table to ask where I was from and what I was doing in Palu. She even wanted to know from what part of Holland I was. She was from North Sulawesi, and when I told her that I had been in Manado the previous month, she answered that she was from Tomohon, not Manado.
- So how come you are not serving roasted pork, I asked. I had noticed the little cross hanging from a chain around her neck.
- There is more demand for halal food, was her explanation.
Could be, but with me the only customer, it looked more like limited demand whatever the menu.
Swiss-Belhotel Silae Palu
Central Sulawesi has been taken up in the developmental surge of the past decades. Swiss-Belhotel is now the main hospitality provider in town, and with Swiss know-how they have created a very attractive place indeed. 



Thursday, July 11, 2013

TERNATE – mixed opinions


I remember Ternate from my first visit in the early-80s of last century—wow, that is 30 years ago. And an enjoyable working visit it was. Sitting in my hotel room one night, working on my notes, a sudden desire for pastis came over me. I went across the street where I had seen a general merchandise store and asked for a bottle of Pernod. The owner reached behind him and wiping the bottle, placed it on the counter. Only then did I realise that my request must have been out of the ordinary, and even more astonishing was that the bottle of Pernod was available. I shook my head in wonder and asked the owner why he stocked Pernod, I wouldn't expect much demand for the stuff in Ternate...!
- Yes, he said, you are the first one to ask for it for years. I had bought a box of six bottles about two years ago when a group of French marine biologists were staying in town for more than half a year. They drank five bottles and you now take the last one. Now no more!
Remarkable! And I am not even a regular Pernod drinker. Thinking back, I could have asked for Campari, which I drink about as often as Pernod. That last bottle must have called out to me! At the end of my stay I took it home where it lasted another year.
During that same trip I did something that I now hardly dare to admit! Remember, this is the 1980s and environmental awakening was only starting. In restaurant Garuda (I think it was called) I helped to reduce the population of the local coconut crab by one. The taste is indescribable, a super lobster maybe. And the best part is that, unlike regular crabs, there is no hard work to get the tiny bits of meat out. This crab is full of easily accessible meat. I would have eaten two if there had been more, but we finished the daily, or maybe weekly, supply. Then already one had to order in advance, or be lucky, to get them.

Two coconut crabs

Coconut crabs are solitary and thus nearly impossible to breed in commercial quantities. And they have no chance to survive in areas where humans have developed a taste for them. Even in those days they must have been from islands other than Ternate, and nowadays they are most likely as rare as the dodo.
For the protection of the remaining few—wherever they may be—I here reproduce the illustration made by Georgius Everhardus Rumphius for his Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet (1705). Not one of his clearest drawings, but to put potential consumers off the coconut crab, it couldn't be better. Disgusting, isn't it!
A friend of mine recently visited Ternate. To my question whether he had been able to locate restaurant Garuda he answered with a short no, but also stated that he had been so disappointed with the hotel where he was staying that he had cut his trip short and thus had not really had time to look for the restaurant. He apparently had stayed in the best hostelry in town and had been glad to get a flight out the next day. The staff were uninterested and incapable (my friend's Indonesian is not too strong, so that might help to explain the problem), the sheets were full of kretek burn holes and quite grey, and when he flushed the toilet the contents of the septic tank floated on the bathroom floor. He managed to get another room, but it was not the de lux type he had ordered.
He vowed never to go back and would advise anybody who asked not to go there..
An unfortunate upset for the tourist promotion efforts of the island, but good news for the coconut crabs.... if there are any left.


Reference:
GE Rumphius, The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet, 1705

Thursday, June 27, 2013

A free booklet...

The headline states Reduce Belly Fat—the easy way! A completely free manual on how to lose ten pounds during the first two weeks. That is, ten pounds of fat, not water. Pounds that will not come back the moment you don't pay attention. Without cravings, endless exercises and boring treadmill. Just 7 minutes a day. And I include my easy weight loss recipes for delicious meals and snacks.
And yours completely free.
My good friend Johny B. Good, who used to be called Chubby and now is a sought after fashion model, has come up with this unique method after many years of trying and spending countless dollars of his own money on research. It is rally fabulous and it works. You must have seen him in Calvin Klein knickers...
Now why would he want to give his programme away, you will ask. Right? Well, it's my doing. He owed me one and I convinced him that by making this public he would not only do me a favour, but all the others who want to shed pounds, too.
You see, I have recently noticed that my weight is increasing and my waist expanding. So, before I'm called Tubby or Fatso, I decided to do something about it. And therefore, this programme: Reduce Belly Fat—the easy way!
Right, so now you know why my mate Johny parted with his programme for free. That leaves the question, why would I let you have the programme and my mouth-watering recipes for free?
We'll come to that shortly, but first I want to give you some important information on the digestive system and how and why fat accumulates around the waist (for men) and around the derrière—the nates if you don't speak French—and thighs for the opposite sex...
... and on and on it goes ...
Usually this type of presentation does not have a fast forward button, and to find out what the real purpose and cost is one has to suffer through, or never know.
Just pressing 'delete' is not the answer either as the sender will not find out, and probably there are enough 'yes, sign me up' responses to make this a viable endeavour.

And what will the search engines make of this blog... a free booklet...? Must be a spelling mistake. 

Friday, June 14, 2013

How little we know...

Yesterday was my father's birthday. Had he lived he would have been 106, worthy of a mention in a local newspaper and a visit by the mayor—the Queen, or under current conditions the King, no longer sends birthday wishes to those over one hundred years of age.
Thinking about my father I suddenly realized how little I know about him. I lived in his house for some 20 years and saw him occasionally thereafter, but about the years before my birth and after I left the house I know virtually nothing. He studied economics in Rotterdam but dropped out... when and why I don't know. I have a photograph of him sitting on a horse, posture of a cavalry officer—he dreamt of becoming one, I was told but never was enlisted. His horse riding days were cut short by his father for reasons unknown to me and he never managed to learn how to drive though the family was wealthy and possessed several cars. With a friend he had started an insurance brokerage firm. I met him in his office sometimes when he took me for lunch. And when it became obvious that I was interested in girls he told me that there were girls to bed and girls to wed. The last time I saw him he was in a rehab-centre sitting on his bed in light blue adult nappies, trying to put his trousers on. He didn't know me anymore, asking my mother whom I accompanied on the visit: Who is the gentleman with you?
His father I might have met ten or twelve times in my whole life, and his older sister less than that, I called her "Madam" when meeting her for, what I thought, was the first time when I was 12 or so. Grandmother had died long before I was born; even my mom had never met her. She had a colonial background, I was told, probably a bit mixed in lineage, but that was not talked about as it was considered a blemish in their societal stratum.
My mother, on the other hand, had kept diaries since she was 12 and had kept them all. When living in her beloved Dordogne she re-read them and worked them into 110 typewritten pages of her life, that is, her life till she was pregnant with her first child, my sister. We found this document among her papers when she died at the ripe old age of 98. I took it with me and translated it from the original German into English to make it more accessible to my five children who do not have enough German to be able to appreciate it.
When I think about my mother I always wish I could have read it earlier, when she was still alive. It is a window on her past and a clear indication that as an adolescent she had been lost and lonely, misunderstood and forced into a role she did not want. She was sent off to keep her grandmother company. The grandmother who still lived in the 19th century and who did not allow her granddaughter to follow a secondary education that would have given access to university. Instead she was groomed in social skills for an early marriage.
During the last decades of her life she often mentioned to me that she had not been a good mother; my vehement denial she would gratefully accept, but it did not convince her. With the hindsight provided by the diaries, I can see that most of all she had craved to be loved... If only I had known, how much more could I have shown her that I did love her and that she was a great mother?
Knowing-not knowing is of course not single directional. The question can also be asked: how much did my parents know about me, or my sister? I was a difficult adolescent, for sure. I hid from their view, did not express myself, except in opposition. And I stayed that way long after puberty.

This unprovoked rambling is partly the result of realising that a long time ago my father had passed away, and that I had never really known him. But it is also caused by some questions about my previous blog where I mix up periods and people and a bit of fantasy; is that true, how come we never knew, was the gist of the reactions. 

Monday, May 6, 2013

An Upbringing among Generations


My auntie, the younger sister of my mother, died a few days ago. This is for her. She would understand why. 

There he was, brought in by the nurse, wrapped up in a soft white towel, only the face visible. His grandmother took him, ignoring his mother's outstretched arms. His grandmother was the mother of his mother, who kept quiet, having submitted herself to the old lady's wilful authority since she was old enough to be told, she was in no position to object now. He was the first boy for two generations—his mother was an only girl and his grandmother had two sisters. His father sat in the chair next to the bed, a bit unsure of what to do, expecting recognition as the provider of all this, but none was coming, certainly not from his mother-in-law who disliked the fact that he was from a four-boys-and-no-girls family. She took it as a personal affront and had made sure that he understood her dislike the moment he had shown an interest in her daughter. Unfortunately, she could not possibly refuse him, after all he was from a respected and well-to-do family, but it riled her, four boys!
This was a rather unexpected aspect of the normally liberal woman. She was a fairly gifted artist whose paintings had been sold widely. The painting her grandson would inherit, Girl in the Reeds, showed a beautiful nymph-like girl. Many years later, when he saw the painting consciously for the first time, he had asked: "Grandma, is that you when you were young?" As his grandmother had never been that beautiful, the question earned him a nearly inexhaustible amount of goodwill.
Girl in the Reeds by Selma Gutzkow
"Hello, g'day everybody, top of the morning... Ahh, there he is, my grandson! Here, let me hold him for a sec"
This was his grandfather, the father of his father, self-assured, a bit too loud, but charmingly playing the country lad he was not. His grandmother reluctantly let him be taken from her. She silently hoped that he would start to cry but her wish was not granted. Men...!
"And what do we call him, have we decided yet?" That caused quite a little stir. His father had insisted that he be called after him but was overruled, even by his own wife. Grandfather had promised to set aside a fund for his education when called after him, but was rejected although nobody dared to tell him so. And his grandmother had insisted that he be called after her father, once a writer of local fame, but that was before the war, WW-I that is.
"Well, whatever they will eventually call you, I'm sure you'll make an excellent third-generation manager of our proud family firm." His grandmother was inhaling deeply in preparation for her undoubtedly snide reply, when his mother made herself heard asking for her baby...
"It is my baby, I believe, and you keep him away from me, squabbling over names. And if I'm not mistaken by the signs, the educational issue is coming up in a minute! So why don't you all leave me for a while, have a coffee in the canteen, I need a rest and so does my beautiful wee little lad."
They all tramped out, but before the door was closed the grandmother was heard voicing her opinion on traders—she called them tradesmen even though the company his grandfather had referred to was a multi-million business in tropical produce and oils.
The issue of the name would be settled within a few days. A victory for his father it was. His mother had given up, she was tired out by the delivery and did not want to keep on arguing. But, she would never call him by that name. I married one, she would say when asked, that's my contribution to the ugly names society, I don't have to further support the lack in aesthetic judgement of the family. So she called him Little Lad, which when he grew older was shortened to L-L.
She was a kind and soft-spoken woman who abhorred arguments and disharmony. Her contribution to his upbringing was concealed in the bedside stories she told her Little Lad. They always started with: Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten... which, she had explained, was the opening line of a beautiful poem by Heinrich Heine about the Lorelei on the River Rhine, and also that she would take him there one day. It meant I do not know the meaning... and then she would weave a tale of kindness and love ad tolerance, and nature full of beautiful animals and flowers. It was their little escape from the family fights and arguments...
The endless discussions about his education would drag on for years, forever it seemed. Grandmother wanted schools with strong arts sections, and grandfather came around with registration forms for the public schools of his choice, pressing for a quick decision to secure a place. In the end he went to a primary school at walking distance from the house, and for the secondary school his parents opted for the school the parents of his classmates had chosen, too. He was intelligent and gave teachers no problem. And as he also was fairly lazy he had quickly discovered that he could freewheel on sixes and sevens with a minimum input, leaving him lots of time to pursue other things. Although not very athletic he liked sports, especially the ones related to water—he was a good sailor and in university he was on the varsity rowing crew. After a failed attempt in mechanical engineering—mainly to get away from the MBA dangled in front of his nose by his grandfather—he switched to humanities and eventually became a much appreciated teacher, whose banner read: Each Child its Own Dream at its Own Speed! This, of course, was not his original thinking, but an adaptation of the theories and practices of a whole range of educators, from Pestalozzi and Friedrich Fröbel to Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner. He had studied them all and taken the bits and pieces he liked. And unknowingly (perhaps) he had fulfilled his mother's dream.
  
References:
Family secrets
and thanking you, Heinrich Heine

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

JAKARTA JAKARTA… the Great Durian!


From my tenth floor balcony I can see eight cranes in operation. The ones that are used to construct some high-rise buildings: office blocks, apartments, or yet another shopping mall. Time will tell.
I read in a recent Jakarta Globe that the demand for cement soared by 15% in January 2013.
Conclusion: the indicators for Jakarta's economy are pointing nowhere but up.

So, brace yourself for more cars, more motorcycles, more congestion, more and longer gridlocks, increasing rates of soil subsidence and a higher frequency of floods…

But still, such a great place to live…










Of course, you must love durian, 




    the fabulous sunsets... 


and dramatic skies. 












In the pas it was known as the Queen of the East... 







but now it's better.