Awkward Utopia

[Warning: major fluff post.] Bahasa Indonesia is spoken by a few hundred million people. It is the lingua franca of the tens of thousands of islands that comprise the country. Unfortunately, while I was there, I shied away from adopting any slang or personal dialects, preferring the textbook forms. As such, as far as I can guess, the title of this post is “My home is Indonesia.”

As Margaret Thatcher pointed out in Statecraft, Indonesia suffers from centrifugal pressures whereby different nationalities aspire to nationhood. Although in the cases of East Timor and Aceh, the tenor of the movement acquired new pitch once natural resources were discovered (read: oil), the fact that is some people do not identify with each other, and latent as well as overt discrimination exists culturally.

Consider this extraordinary commercial:

I remember where I was when I first saw it: I’d stayed up for some reason til like 2 am Yogya time watching television and then this song came on. The beautiful voice and woman — the happy children, glad to come together and be led into a new day, only in Indonesia, as it says (”hanya di sini… di Indonesia”). Frankly, my spine tingles every time I watch it even now. I love this commercial: it’s so bright and optimistic! But look at how they come from different regions and ethnicities and are led by a very light-skinned woman (she could be from Sulawesi… but I’m betting on Java). I recognize some may look at it very differently: cultural imperialism.

When people explain the geographical realities of Indonesia to us, we might expect to hear of the following story, but it’s an altogether difficult conceptual leap to understand. Many people are born on the seas by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. They are born to others who were born on the seas, and so on, so far back that no one may claim citizenship. These people live on boats, fish for their livelihoods, and participate through anxiety-ridden trips to unregulated markets, where they might be arrested.

They are called sea gypsies.

Last weekend I watched an outstanding documentary on Discovery HD about them. They speak Bahasa Indonesia, too, judging from what I could understand on the documentary. I encourage you to take a look at a truly different lifestyle, sensing tsunamis, and what it would be like to be alone on the sea with the same group of people — forever. And consider: how many in our own history have engaged on similar fates? ( And since we’re in a mood for poetry, how about some Masefield? )

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

As the sea gypsies have shown, some form of the sentiment (to what degree it is mixed with a longing of some sort must be open to question) has survived since the beginning of our civilization. As Captain Kirk shows, it will last at least until the 23rd century: