Indonesian Diary Entry

December 7, 2001

I write this on December 7th. It seems a little paradoxical that this was the day a war began for the U.S., and a day that peace may be coming to Afghanistan. In the Middle East the words “war” and “peace” have apparently eased out of the vocabulary. In Solo things have been very peaceful.

Yesterday was actually more interesting than most days. I had a language lesson in the morning, and then went off to a town about an hour and a half from here. I went with a fellow in the department who serves as an advisor to a micro-finance program that provides funds to women in a couple of villages. The drive over to the town (Salatiga) was the type of Central Java trip that I’m now becoming familiar with. As always, it involved going on a two lane (well paved) road, that in fact functions as a four lane road. The same smelly busses and animal drawn vehicles were present, but the drive was pleasant. It threatened to rain all day but never did, or at least it never rained on us. I think we skirted it. As we neared Salatiga the landscape rather abruptly became hilly, and the flat rice fields were replaced by terraced ones. I’ve seen these terraced fields a few times, but they do not become less interesting with repeat exposure. Perhaps it is because we see paintings of Asian scenes with terraced fields, or perhaps it is because there is a beauty in the irregularity of the fields, but without trying to probe that it is worth mentioning that these are as beautiful as any scenes I’ve encountered.

The program is sponsored and funded by a bank (and related foundation) in Bangladesh. It is the Grameen Bank. The women work outside the home, primarily in activities related to the traditional market (pasar). Some make handicraft type items and some sell fruits or vegetables. The amounts they borrow are very small by our standards, but these funds are also very important to them. It allows them to expand their operations by a fraction. So we went to two villages outside the town, and these were the real thing. In both places the meeting was in someone’s house. The houses were solid with brick walls, but also with dirt floors. They did have electricity, although no lights were used while we were there and that meant it took awhile to adjust to the interior darkness. One of the houses was reachable by car, but the other required us walking about a half mile. We walked along a road that could have been used by a four-wheel drive vehicle. To my surprise we did encounter one motorcyclist along the way. Yet another brave Indonesian. I didn’t know we would be doing this and had dressed for a regular day at the office. Fortunately, I did have on a reasonably suitable pair of shoes.

Most of what goes on in this program is the result of Grameen. They designed the original micro-finance programs in Bangladesh, and the activities here are part of a worldwide network of replicated programs. The funding is now international, with foundations, NGOs, and banks getting involved.

The women get together once a week. There are at least two purposes of the meetings. One is to remind the women of their responsibilities and get a report on their business activities. The other is that this is when and where they repay their loans. It is very difficult to describe the meeting because it is easy to be patronizing about what is going on, and I dearly do not want to do that. But I will mention a couple of things about the meetings. They begin their meeting with a recitation of what I thought at first was a prayer but realized pretty quickly was a set of principles. (There were about twelve women at each of the meetings.) One woman was the reader. She read the principles from a book and the rest responded by repeating the words. The principles include such things as “I will use my loan only for the purposes I sought the money;” “I will repay the loan every week;” “I will keep full records of my payments;” on so on.

The women ranged in age from about 20 to very old. There was one woman who was small and old, who looked like she was wearing her best sarong, and whom I found especially attractive. For me she was a true representative of the Javanese Woman. I asked my host (Bambang) how old he thought she was. He said about 70. I told him she had to be 80 if she was a day, and he then asked her. The answer came back that she was 65. Given my recent birthday age I knew she had passed 65 many years back, but after talking about it with Bambang I came to realize that she had no idea how old she was. The number was basically made up. There are any number of things that do not matter to these people, things that we take very seriously. On the other hand, there are things that they care about and cherish that we dismiss.

I took a few pictures. I was embarrassed to be taking very many, but I couldn’t leave without a couple of photos.

You look back on the days that matter, and they matter for different reasons. Seeing Borobudur was a day that mattered. Being told I had to leave Solo, and then arriving in Jakarta and seeing hundreds of demonstrators and hundreds of police and army troops around the Embassy mattered. Yesterday’s visit to see the women in the villages of Salatiga mattered. Put that one in the scrapbook.

The other events of the last few days are less noteworthy. Since I did not put together a diary entry at the beginning of this week, I will record that I went to Yogyakarta last weekend and had a very nice time. I stayed with my friends the Coles and we were visited for dinner by an American couple. She is working on a PhD from CUNY on the subject of student movements in Indonesia. He is also working of a PhD from the same place, but in philosophy. It was enjoyable to meet the two of them, and very refreshing to chat with them. That weekend also included a trip out of Solo with three men from UNS to look at some sights nearby, and have a couple of food opportunities along the way. The day was rather wet, and I was as cool as I have been since arriving here. We were in the hills and it actually was lower in temperature as well as a little windy. For the first time I was not sufficiently clothed, but that was really true for all of us. After returning to Solo I had a regular week. One night I played badminton (poorly), and one night I went to a local fitness center. That was with a fellow I met through Emi, and it was probably more interesting as a cultural thing than as an exercise thing. The equipment was not what the Clark University Fitness Center would consider to be up-to-date, but it was certainly adequate. In fact, it was the only such equipment I’ve seen over here. The people working out were in the age range of one-third my age to two-thirds. The music was loud. Very loud. The biggest surprise was that there were a substantial number of people there when we arrived (about 5:20 PM) and through our hour or so stay. This is surprising because of Ramadhan. And I gave a lecture to a marketing class this week. Once again it was a full period (9:45 A.M. until 12:15), and once again I was surprised by the student interest. Of course I know next to nothing about marketing (no, I guess I know nothing about marketing), but the instructor knew that so I was not traveling under false colors. I did the talk about population issues, and how they relate to marketing. It was fun to do the talk and the success was related to distributing a detailed outline. That has become my standard operating procedure and it works well. No one feels as if they have to understand my English when they can read much of what I say at the same time. I tend to drift away from the outline, but it keeps me under control and I always come back to it within a matter of ten minutes or so.

The week was a nice one. Happy to be here.