On the road again

Now the light in the next room abruptly clicks off, and I notice for the first time how light it actually is outside. I never sleep in, at least, not usually. To wake up and find daylight all around me always makes me feel like I’ve wasted the best part of the day. I gaze over at my son Yudhie, sleeping, as usual. He needs more sleep than I do, because he has such a long road to travel, whereas for me, the road is almost at its end. Therefore I sleep almost not at all anymore. I carefully slip out of bed, pull on my trousers, grab my shirt, and go out to take my shower. Well, that’s one way of putting it, but I do not actually take a shower.

Yes, this is how you do it… it all starts with water from the well!

Unnoticed by the habitants of this paradisiacal spot, I draw buckets of water from the well, fill the reservoir as I was shown the day before, then douse my head and upper body with icy cold water using a plastic bucket. I wash my hair, my head and my body from the waist up, standing behind the wall that encloses the privy next to the well. This is the most basic form of bath in Yndonesia, and we will see it time and again everywhere we go, though usually more sophisticated, and indoors. I dry myself off with a towel and put my shirt back on.

Hen with new brood

Granny appears from somewhere all excited, and wants to show me a hen with her newly hatched brood, which she has isolated in a special basket in front of her little store.

Now Yudhie appears at the doorway of the cottage. It’s his turn to use the facilities. Yes, sometimes we also have to use the toilet as well, and I haven’t explained about that. Well, there’s not much to tell.

Out here in the countryside, the little privy at the well is also used to relieve oneself, and the floor of it is a drain floor. You can’t take a dump there, of course. To have a bowel movement, you’ll have to go into the bush, find a secluded spot, try to have it cleanly, then return to the privy, unclothe your bottom and wash, always using only the left hand. And that explains why, in Asia and other ancient lands, you never offer your left hand, or anything in your left hand, to anyone. From Greece to New Guinea, and everywhere in between, it’s the same.

Typical country road

We sit down together and have breakfast. The night before we talked about how we would return to Lampung town. Yudhie and I really thought it was too much to expect Riyanto to take us back. The outbound journey really was quite arduous, and we’d hoped we could hire someone with a car to carry us back to the airport. So, Riyanto went out in the dark evening to find us a driver. There was one, of course, but when we called to say we were coming, he hadn’t had enough time to arrange anything. Fortunately, a driver was found. This morning, we had only to get our backpacks on after breakfast. Riyanto and his wife accompanied us, she dressed for the mosque, as it was a Friday.

On the drive back to Lampung we saw many things, too many to photograph, even had we tried. As one interested in architecture, construction and design, my eyes feasted on the native crafts of home building. Scaffolding constructed entirely of bamboo poles of various lengths and thicknesses surrounded new homes being built, as we passed them on the road. I marveled at the artistry of windows and doors, to me the essentials that make or break the design of a house. Having stayed in and closely inspected Riyanto’s cottage, I got a good idea of how to build an Yndonesian house. Yndonesia is a land of brick, or at least originally it was; now what I call cinderblock is chiefly used.

These pengamen, street musicians, are not the ones that we saw in Lampung,
but they are performing their music the same way

Thinking back to our first bus ride, I encountered for the first time native troubadours, called pengamen. Two of them boarded our bus at Lampung as it was waiting to be filled with passengers, they played guitar and sang native songs beautifully, then passed an envelope for donations. It was my first time and I didn’t know any better, so I plunked a pile of rupiah coins in the envelope, maybe 2,000 rupiah worth. I’m sorry I didn’t give them more, even 20,000 rupiah—two dollars—wouldn’t have been too much. Coins, as I learned afterwards, are received in change but rarely given in payment. I’ll explain why later.

Lampung airport

Soon, the land rover that was taking us to our destination, the Lampung airport, finally got us there. Now, it was a bit of an awkward moment for both Yudhie and myself. We had already paid the driver for bringing us and of course returning to Nakao, but now it was time to say goodbye to Riyanto. It must’ve been strange for him to see his only son, but the son he gave up at birth, going away again with someone he had heard about and had only just met, but who was now, mysteriously, part of their family. He joked about my identity to his neighbors, saying I was his son’s ‘father-in-law.’ What else could he say? But the parting went well. Yudhie, with the humble gestures of a son, offered Riyanto a paper envelope containing a gift of money as a Christmas present. Next, I offered my paper-wrapped gift, saying to him ‘Selamat Natal’—a merry Christmas—and ‘Terimakasih’—thank you—then, we picked up our gear and headed for the ticket counter to have our boarding passes printed.

Next… Natal di Indonesia

Yudhie and Ayah in the Sumatera countryside, near Nakao, Lampung