For the year or so that she spent traveling throughout Indonesia, Elizabeth Pisani provides an explicit answer to the question "What am I doing here?" She went to research a book that would "introduce my Bad Boyfriend to the world" (p. 6). She had lived, worked, and traveled in Indonesia during various periods since 1983, but she still didn't feel like she understood Indonesia or her attraction to it. Writing a book "would give me an excuse to spend more time in the country, to get to know it better, to try to understand how it has changed over the years of my sometimes frustrated devotion" (p. 6).
Her book succeeded in demystifying Indonesia for me, and it's also one of the best travel books I've read. One reason for her success is that Pisani was well-prepared to take on the project. She first traveled to Indonesia as a 19-year-old in 1983, she returned in the late 1980s as a journalist, and she returned again from 2001 to 2005 to work as an epidemiologist. When she returned in late 2011 to research this book, she was already well-informed about the country and had learned to speak the national language.
Another reason for her success is that she is a traveler's traveler. She writes that only one rule informed her trip: "Just say yes" (p. 8). Whenever anyone invited her to do something, she did it, including the many invitations she received from fellow passengers on buses and boats to go home with them when they reached their destinations. Indonesians are clearly welcoming hosts, and Pisani must have been a great guest. Much of what she explains about Indonesia is informed by her immersions in villages throughout the country. Speaking the national language made it possible for her to make such connections, and she also has the spirit of flexibility and adventure that make for great travels.
True to her goal, the book is mostly about Indonesia and Indonesians, not about Pisani. She relates what she saw and experienced to address a range of interesting and important issues, including the way traditional local customs (adat) continue to shape local and regional political and economic practices, the relationship between Indonesians in the core (Java) and those in the rest of the country, and how warm and hospitable people can also engage in brutal conflicts based on religious, ethnic, and other social differences. She explains the development of democracy and political decentralization since the fall of the dictator Suharto in 1998, she explores the complexities of economic development from the village level to multinational exploitation of Indonesia's rich mineral wealth, and she tries to make sense of the transformation of the rebel movement in Aceh from military confrontation to participation in electoral politics.
But we also get enough about Pisani and her experience of traveling to make this a great travel book. Mostly she presents herself as plucky and adventurous, willing to go ride a bumpy bus or boat into any remote area to find out what's going on with a mining development, the local tuna catch, or the efforts of hunters and gatherers in a Sumatra forest to transition into the 21st century. But she's honest enough to relate quite beautifully how she collapsed one day in a remote part of northern Sumatra as all the stresses of traveling alone -- a single, white, foreign, atheist woman -- briefly became too much to handle (p. 262). Pisani is a good enough traveler to "go native," and she's honest enough to acknowledge that it isn't easy or without costs.
For a traveler like myself who has looked with a skittish eye on Indonesia for years, Pisani's book makes it seem not only possible to explore the place a bit but also quite desirable. I have no illusions that I would follow fellow passengers home after a long boat or bus ride, and I'm not even sure I could handle the bus or boat ride itself. But Pisani makes all of Indonesia look hospitable and accessible, which means I might give it a shot some day.
Pisani, Elizabeth, Indonesia Etc. New York: W. W. Norton, 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment