“Oh, a little bit,” I reply. My inquisitor introduces himself as Hassan and gives me a firm handshake holding it somewhat longer than a Westerner would. It took me several years before I grew past being uncomfortable with the long Indonesian handshakes. One of the hardest Indonesian cultural traits to become accustomed to is the minimalist idea of personal space. Americans generally have a large invisible space that they like to surround themselves with; Indonesians have almost none and think nothing of standing as close as possible to foreigners as they are unaware of this very significant cultural difference.

“How do you like the Kharisma?” Hassan says. I’m completely thrown by this very unusual opening to a conversation. I had already prepared my list of responses to the usual sequence of questions, but none of them included comments about my motorbike. Now I need to actually pay attention to the conversation. We chat for a few minutes about our bikes and then slide into the usual questions of where I’m from, what I do, married or not, children, etc. Hassan invites me to visit his house in Taliwang, but I tell him I’m late for a meeting with my contractor and take a rain check. I fill my bike with subsidized gasoline for the ridiculous price of 1 US dollar and head off for Jelenga where I want to stop for a beer and chat with Memed at the bungalows about how the tourist season has gone so far this year.

The road from Taliwang to Jereweh is smoothly paved, and I put the bike up to its comfortable limit of 100 for a short burst. It handles well and within 15 minutes I’m in Jereweh. Jereweh is a small, pretty town with well-ordered houses, several mosques, a number of shops and a high school. The cleanliness of the main road impresses me each time I pass through. Indonesians, unfortunately, have a propensity for throwing their trash anywhere outside of their immediate living environment even if it means throwing it in the vacant lot next door. For whatever reason, the citizens of Jereweh seem to have found a less public place to deposit their trash and that sense of civic awareness endears them to me. Just as I’m about to turn off on to the road to the beach, I see Memed driving down the road with a tourist. I decide that the 8 kilometer bounce down the potholed road is not worth sitting alone with a beer – so I drive on.

The road outside Jereweh climbs through a series of hills until you reach the high point which overlooks the village of Benete. This stretch of the road offers some of the finest of Sumbawan landscapes: a series of deep green hills and valleys reach far out into the distant horizon. Eagles circle in the clear blue sky looking for a meal. I stop at one of the clear points on the road where I can take a few photographs. Shooting the vistas and smoking a cigarette, I imagine a time when a relative of the recently discovered Flores Man (actually a lady) might have wandered these hills 18,000 years ago looking for the tiny elephants that roamed the area, or foraging for fruits and roots. The jungle at the edge of the horizon is still free from the development occurring just to the south and the north. This unspoiled space is an interlude of the primitive in the developing composition of modernity being written on southwest Sumbawa. 

I descend into Benete which is an overgrown village alongside the portside facilities of PT. Newmont, the American mining company digging gold and copper out of the surrounding hills. Many of the Indonesian employees of Newmont live here within easy access of their place of employment. A few shops, schools, and mosques line the main road. A string of school children walking home from school, shout and wave. I give a quick wave and smile. Just south of Benete, I climb another hill and descend into the village of Maluk, the main center of activity in southwest Sumbawa. 

Maluk has the look, feel and smell of a village hastily morphed into a town. Take the cars and motorcycles out of the picture and Maluk could pass for Dodge City in the U.S. West circa 1880. I slow down behind several horse-drawn carts carrying jilbab-covered ladies clutching bunches of greens and a few live roosters. Maluk boasts a dentist, several doctors, a public health clinic, telephones, electricity, and a public water system. The main road is lined with a variety of small shops selling the usual Indonesian foods, household supplies and building materials. Maluk also hosts the Kiwi Bar, a bar and restaurant with a somewhat naughty reputation, as well as Hotel Trophy which is owned by an Australian and his Indonesian wife. Residents of the local villages, including my own village of Sekongkang Bawah, do the majority of their shopping in Maluk. Goods here tend to be somewhat higher than in the more populated areas of Indonesia because of the transportation factor. I guide my Honda up to the Dunia Baru store which sells a variety of things including fishing gear, sporting goods, and stationary. I grab a cold bottle of Coca-Cola from the glass-faced refrigerator, ask the shop girl to open it, and take a long drink to wash the dust out of my mouth. Pak Haji, the owner, pulls up in front in his Kijang, and shakes my hand.

“Where’s your wife?” he asks looking around his shop. He’s dressed in his usual rumpled t-shirt and baggy knee-length shorts.

I wonder where this conversation will go as local businessmen generally try to sell me things when I’m out on my own without my wife to put a damper on their energetic capitalist impulse. “She’s at home. I just came back from Sumbawa Besar. I needed to buy some circuit breakers.” Ah, put everything out there all at once. This is my ploy to end the conversation early so that I can go home and see the family and have lunch.

“What kind of circuit breakers?” he quizzes me while looking over my shoulder at my bulging backpack. Obviously the conversation is going to last longer than I had hoped.

I decline to pull the breakers out of my backpack still hoping to get out the door quickly. “25 amps.”

He shakes his balding head with the look of regret. “I could have sold you some. You wouldn’t have had to go so far.”

“Oh you have some?” I reply with genuine interest. This could save me some time in the future.

“No, but I could have ordered some from Lombok. They have better quality ones.” He’s waiting for me to order some at what I’m sure will be a significantly higher cost than what I paid in Sumbawa Besar.

“Oh well, maybe next time. I have to run now. I have a meeting at school soon.” I give his large hand a tight grip, break it off quickly and head off for home.

The village of Sekongkang is actually two small villages separated by a narrow, concrete bridge: Sekongkang Atas (Upper Sekongkang) and Sekongkang Bawah (Lower Sekongkang). Both are situated about 15 minutes from Maluk over a high hill laced with a narrow, curving road that I enjoy riding on with my motorbike, but dread driving on in my car. The two Sekongkangs have perhaps several thousand residents between them along with a new public health clinic, a doctor, a few shops, a few mosques, a few elementary schools and a junior high, and a new government office, the Kantor Camat. The Sekongkangs are the site of a frenzy of construction. It seems that everyone connected with the Newmont mine is building a new home or renovating their old one. The local government has hopes of developing a tourist industry based on the wild beauty of the white sand beaches and traditional Sumbawanese culture. And while some tourists come for the surfing, a clear plan to develop the other enticements of the area has yet to be developed.

Most of the folks here are farmers or casual laborers. The mine also provides employment for some of the local citizens. A few work at one of the two local hotels: Yoyo’s or Tropical. Yoyo’s, named after the famous surfing spot in this area, and Tropical just down the road, mostly provide service for the expatriate population from Newmont. Occasionally they attract a few of the more well healed surfers, but generally their prices keep the hard core surfers looking for cheaper accommodations up north in Maluk or Jelenga.

This corner of Sumbawa is home to migrants from a variety of islands drawn here in the search for employment with the mine. My neighbors come from Flores, Sumba, Timor, Lombok, and Java; yet everyone gets along famously. Like small communities around the world, Sekongkang Bawah is a place where everyone’s business is public knowledge.

I pull up to the gate of our house and beep my horn. My neighbor, originally from Jereweh, comes over while I’m waiting for someone to come unlock the gate. “Where have you been?” he shouts. 

Paul Theroux in The Happy Isles of Oceania says that, “Travel, which is nearly always seen as an attempt to escape from the ego, is in my opinion the opposite. Nothing induces concentration or inspires memory like an alien landscape or a foreign culture. It is simply not possible (as romantics think) to lose yourself in an exotic place. Much more likely is an experience of intense nostalgia, a harking back to an earlier stage in your life, or seeing clearly a serious mistake. But this does not happen to the exclusion of the exotic present. What makes the whole experience vivid, and sometimes thrilling, is the juxtaposition of the present and the past – London seen from the heights of Harris Saddle.”

Sumbawanese from this part of the island have a rough and tough manner somewhat like a displaced New York taxi driver. They are harmless, but nosier and more aggressive than the Balinese or Javanese. “Just back from Sumbawa Besar for some electrical parts,” I reply in a muted, but strident tone. I pull out the three circuit breakers and he smiles and nods. 

“It’s hard buying things here isn’t it? Can’t you get some from Newmont?”

I replay once again my set piece on not being an employee of the mining company, but rather the school that contracts with it for educating the expatriate children. Mining companies often have a somewhat problematic relationship with the local communities; Newmont has had its share of problems as well, but because of their proactive community development program, they have a good reputation with the local citizens. I start to drift off into a mental accounting of Newmont’s many contributions to the community, but Lupe’s nodding brings me back to the present interaction.

Even while nodding, the vacant look he gives me signifies that he doesn’t really believe my explanation. While Indonesians are differentiated here based on the island of their birth, bules (white people) are lumped together. It’s distinctly different from Bali, the tourist haven, where Balinese are quite skilled in assigning foreigners concrete identities based on their nationality. In this remote area of Indonesia, bules have two identities – surfer or Newmont employee. Since I work “inside” as the locals call the mining community, I obviously fit into the second category. Identity politics in an archipelago of travelers and migrants. My eldest daughter, Mercedes, bounces out of the house and unlocks the gate. One more trip through Paradise.

The following are the previous articles Bruce wrote for the magazine:

Sumbawa ~ Another Kind Of Paradise 
Getting Out Of Dodge ~ Fulfillment, Adventure, And The Cash
The Practicalities Of Moving To Bali ~ Thoughts On Living In Bali 
So You Want To Retire In Paradise - Thoughts On Bali, Singapore And New Guinea
Reflections On An Expatriate Life ~ Escaping To Asia

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