How did you first get to know about Ibu Robin and her work? What
 struck you most about her and what has drawn you to support 
Yayasan Bumi Sehat as we say goodbye to 2011?


I was introduced to Robin through her daughter Deja who I met in Ubud. 
The first time I visited Bumi Sehat Robin invited me straight into the 
birthing room as a delivery was happening as if to say, ‘look, this is
what we do here, we bring babies into the world’. She has an amazing sense
of purpose, drive and enthusiasm that is infectious. From the first day 
I saw how she had accomplished so much with such little funding, I told
 her I would do whatever I could to help.

How would you describe what Bali means to you?
The most beautiful thing about Bali are the Balinese people themselves.
 The community, culture, religion, art, creativity and love that they 
express is unique to the planet. Every time I return to Bali, or take a
 scooter right through the villages, I see something I’ve never witnessed 
before. I am inspired by the mystery of it, but have always felt at home
 since the first time I landed on the island.

What are the 5 most important things in your life right now?
My children, my lover, serving as many people as I can through music, my
 daily yoga/running/meditation practice and laughter.

Michael Franti and Ibu Robin Lim at the Bumi Sehat clinic.

What can people look forward to from the NYE celebration in Nyuh
 Kuning?


The show is going to Rock!!! I have Jay Bowman on guitar and Carl Young on 
bass from Spearhead performing with me, as well as a host of other friends
 and local musicians. We are going to be playing a wide selection of
 songs people know and love as well as several songs from the new album I 
am recording at the moment.
 The New Year’s Eve celebration is to raise funds and honor the the 
incredible work Bumi Sehat and Robin Lim do to birth new life into the
 world and to honor the people of the village of Nyuh 
Kuning who collectively help to give life to Bumi Sehat. 




How do you feel as you look back on 2011 and what are your hopes
 for 2012?


2011 was a time of great upheaval around the world and a time of great
 personal change for me. I’m excited by the changes I see on our planet. I want to be present for all the relationships in my life and be a
 difference maker in the world.

Michael Franti & Spearhead – Say Hey (I Love You)

Ticket information:
Limited pre-sale at Rp. 350,000/450,00 Rupiah at 3 walk-in ticket sales outlets: Bumi Sehat Clinic on Jl. Nyuh Kuning, Bali Buddha Ubud and Bali Buddha Kerobokan.
US$45 tickets can be purchased online at http://www.stayhumanstore.com/ticketsales.aspx and will be available at the door for Rp. 500,000 at the door.

Donation tickets can also be purchased online for US$35. These are provided to the local community.

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“This is the best festival in the world. I haven’t had so much fun since my bar mitzvah.”

Etgar Keret.

Etgar, this is your first trip to Indonesia – no easy feat on an Israeli passport. What made you decide to come to Bali?
Richard Flanagan recommended the festival to me, but the main reason was: I know this is a country where there is some hatred for Israel. And I really feel that whenever you come to a place where there is anti-Semitism, there’s something very humanizing about it – an abstract idea can take the form of a human being. For sure I didn’t come to try to justify anything my government does, because this is not a government that I specifically vote for, but I came to give a glimpse of those ambiguities of existence that exist in real life and are portrayed in fiction.

Do you feel like a representative of Israel when you travel?
It’s not that I feel that I represent my country, as much as I feel that I represent myself. When people don’t know me, they a priori hate me. There’s this phenomenon that’s anti-Israel. People aren’t anti-Italian or anti-redhead or anti-people who wear sandals, but the fact is that if someone carries this kind of passport you hate him and that’s something that I would like to change.
Israel is a complex country with an active peace movement and all kinds of shifts in its politics, and it’s part of a very complex regional situation – which does not justify the occupation. The truth is that most of us live in a very complex reality.

Have you ever succeeded in breaking down prejudices by appearing at a writers’ festival?
This has happened a lot. For example I met the Indonesian author of the book My Friend the Terrorist, and he said to me that in the past whenever he thought about Israel there was a series of negative images in his mind, but now when he thinks about Israel he sees me smiling.

Do you think humour can play a role in changing people’s attitudes?
I think traditionally humour is always the weapon of the weak. We usually use humour in those places where we can’t change reality. It’s kind of a way of protesting against reality. Look at Irish humour. It’s the same with Jewish humour. When you meet something in your life that you can change, change it. If you can’t, make a joke of it.

Is this what got you started as a writer?
I started writing when in the compulsory army service. I did computer work in shifts of 48 hours, which were very much like solitary confinement. I would go through all kinds of crazy psychological processes, and in one of those shifts I found myself writing.
I wrote a text and then I went to see my older brother. I buzzed his intercom, but it was very early in the morning and he said “I’d better come down, my girlfriend’s mad because you woke her up”. He came down to walk the dog. The dog really wanted to take a crap, but because my brother was reading he kind of dragged him along the street while reading my story. Luckily for the dog this was a very short story, so he was finally able to relieve his doggy urges and my brother said to me “Man, this is amazing. Do you have another copy?” I said “Sure,” and so he bent down and picked up the dog crap with the story.
I realized the power of literature in that moment. I realized what I wanted to do, because this was so much the demonstration of how a text can become part of us. It has nothing to do with the paper.

Do you think you would ever have started writing, without the “solitary confinement”?
I had never written anything before that. I majored in physics and maths, and studied engineering. If I wasn’t writing I don’t know what would have happened — worst case scenario I would have become a very unhappy engineer, and a mediocre one.

What is it about writing that captivates you?
When you’re a soldier, you really don’t have any privacy. You shower with other people; if your girlfriend sends you a letter your sergeant will read it out loud to make fun of you. When you’re writing it’s basically a place that echoes what you really feel, and where that can stay untainted. It’s more than privacy, it’s kind of like me telling myself secrets.
I’m a great believer that writing is creating the space where you can say what you want, and be what you are. In the Biblical times there were safe cities that you could escape to, like a city of refuge. Writing is like that — it is like a sanctuary.

When you talk about writing it sounds like you’re talking about freedom.
There’s something very, very liberating about writing. I often say it is so much easier for me to write than to live. In my stories I can just be.

Has success changed you?
Success is a very tricky thing. It can disconnect you from life. I must say I find it to my advantage that I have such a talent for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time that it seems that no matter how successful I am, I’m still able to fuck it up.

You teach writing at university, and are commonly described as the “voice of young Israel”. Do you feel any sense of responsibility regarding your influence on young minds?
I’m a very responsible, over-stressed kind of guy. I’m the son of Holocaust survivors. My primary instinct since I was a kid, knowing my parents suffered so much, was to just want everybody to be happy. So usually I am suppressed the way somebody living inside society should be. But when I write I’m kind of celebrating my humanity. I think there’s something much more dangerous, responsibility-wise, in manufacturing the right ideology for people, rather than just telling your truth. If it’s the truth, I really believe there can be nothing harmful in it.

Do your parents read your writing?
For sure. They love it. My father once told me: “in your stories, in one half the father always dies, and in the other half he’s an asshole, but in each and every story I can always feel that you love me.”

You say that it’s difficult for you to be a writer in Hebrew, because writers in Hebrew are seen as prophets.
Hebrew is the language of the Bible and is seen as a holy language. When you publish a book in Hebrew it’s always the one that will be next to the Bible on the shelf.
Hebrew has a unique story because it didn’t exist as a spoken language for 2000 years. People were very articulate in reading and understanding it, but they never spoke it until one arbitrary moment where it got defrosted. So it has an intrinsic tension between its very ancient roots and the fact that it has to be anarchistic and chaotic and open to inventing words and importing words, so people can say what they want. There was no Internet in the Bible, there were no faxes in the Bible, so they had to make up something for these things.
Hebrew is both very creative and anarchistic, and at the same time very classic. And that’s what’s fascinating about it for me. It touches this inner contradiction we have in Israeli society, which is a very paradoxical society of not only being young – we have old people but are a young country – but also this contradiction of being wild and conservative.

You have also made films. What’s it like seeing your stories on screen?
There’s something very lonely and egocentric about being a writer. When you write, you just make up what you want and most of your interaction with people is interviews or talks – you’re with people but usually you talk about yourself. You can get used to that, and that’s very dangerous.
For me, filmmaking is about being open, listening, accepting others; it’s all about human interaction and flexibility. I really like collaborating with people. My wife admitted to me that she was jealous of the film editor we were working with, who was a Croatian man who weighed 100kg. She said “I feel your closeness.” A film is like this kind of sexless orgy.

Sex plays quite a role in your writing.
Yeah it does. I would say that when many people meet me they are disappointed or surprised because I’m not like my stories. And it’s for a reason, because if I was like my stories I wouldn’t need to write my stories. I’m not documenting my life, I’m documenting my yearnings. There’s a huge difference.

www.etgarkeret.com

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At Amanwana jungle resort on Moyo island.

When it comes to Amanwana, it really is almost about the journey as much as the destination. Situated on Moyo island in Sumbawa Besar, the jungle resort is just an hour’s flight from Bali in a C-208 Amphibian Cessna Caravan float plane that flies impossibly close to stunning volcanoes and dives into marshmallow clouds of brilliant white, emerging again to reveal dazzling views of rugged green slopes and picture-perfect coastlines before it lands at a backward tilt with a gentle series of splashes on the most perfectly sapphire waters. A multitude of varieties of fish are already visible as the plane pulls up to the jetty and the door opens.

“Selamat pagi. Welcome to the jungle.”

Sunset with sea view.

The beautiful island of Moyo is located just kilometres off the northern coast of Sumbawa. Since 1976 it has been a protected zone for an abundance of animal and bird life, from deer and banteng bull to wild boar, macaque monkeys, sea eagles, and osprey. The island has a population of just 3,500, residing in eight villages around the coast and subsisting through fishing, farming, and trading. Amanwana, styled as a luxury camp, has been here since 1993. Of the is-land’s 36,000 hectares, Amanwana actively manages 12,000, officially set aside as a nature reserve.

Some of the abundant marine life found in the waters around Amanwana.

Moyo is truly a nature lover’s dream, offering a fascinating natural environment for exploration, with vegetation that ranges from dry savannah to dense jungle and hikes that take in a series of spring-fed waterfalls and cool freshwater pools. Its shores are lapped by the Flores Sea, in which a wealth of coral is found, from stag horn to gorgonian fans, while throughout the waters can be seen a profusion of colourful tropical fish and sometimes also dolphins, manta rays, and whales. Amanwana has its own dive centre and offers PADI certified dive courses, so divers at all levels can experience the magnificent worlds under these waters.

“I’d rather be in a tent than in a house,” Mary Leakey famously said, and in tents like these, few would argue. With either ocean or jungle views and linked by sand pathways under a canopy of tropical forest through which families of monkeys scramble, the resort accommodation consists of 20 luxury air-conditioned tents that are bright, spacious, and airy, each enclosed by a solid wall underneath a canvas ceiling, with teak-framed windows along the sides offering panoramic views of the surroundings. The tents are not walled off from the rest of the island, which is also a sanctuary for the indigenous Rusa deer, beneficiaries of Amanwana’s breeding programme, which has ensured a steady increase in numbers of their population.

In May 2008, Amanwana created the Moyo Conservation Fund, which enables guests to contribute to the conservation efforts and community work on the island. From restoring the coral reef to building a school in the nearby village of Labuan Aji, the resort works towards protecting, nurturing and enriching the environment for future generations of islanders and visitors. These efforts also include a turtle protection project, waste recycling scheme, and education and support for stewardship of the land. At another level of community involvement, one-third of the staff is from local villages, opening up opportunities to them abroad while strengthening ties between the resort and the villages back home.

A sense of this harmony with both the environment and the surrounding communities is deeply felt during a stay here. Add to this the usual impeccable Aman service and understated elegance, and you have the ingredients of an incomparable resort and a truly memorable experience.

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Last Day, Jakarta

A man sits behind a desk, chin resting on one hand, gazing into space. A young woman rests her head against his, embracing him gently. Behind them is a bust of Mahatma Ghandi; the desk is stacked with classical CDs, books and papers.

The look of sadness on the man’s face and the gesture of comfort on the part of the woman are unmistakable even before you read the caption beside the picture and learn that this is none other than Abdurrhaman Wahid, or Gus Dur, Indonesia’s first democratically elected president since Suharto and that he is being consoled by his daughter on the night of his impeachment.

“It’s a very beautiful moment,” says John Stanmeyer of the photograph, which is part of an exhibition at the newly opened Exhibit Gallery in Bali. “It happened very quickly; I was standing outside the room so the door frame is in the photo. It was a private moment between father and daughter.”

Just a day before, he’d shot footage of the Indonesian military turning the turrets of their tanks toward the royal palace, a wholly symbolic gesture that signalled Gus Dur’s imminent fall from power.

Sitting on a Javanese daybed sipping coffee in his studio in rural Bali, such historical upheavals seem a world away. Yet as a freelance photographer under contract with TIME magazine, it is the American’s job to capture such moments, many of which have graced the covers of the global newsweekly, not to mention those of National Geographic, Fortune, Asiaweek and French weekly Courrier. For the last decade, he has trained his lens on Asia, documenting some of the region’s most pivotal events and developments, from something as abrupt and devastating as the tsunami in Aceh to a process as nebulous as the shifting zeitgeist in China, (captured in a photograph of a Chinese teen sporting pink shades and a T-shirt bearing a pop-art image of Mao, against a backdrop of high rises).

The few journalists that occupy this frontline not only report the news, they often make it. Does Stanmeyer see it as a privileged position? “I have a huge responsibility… to deliver things honestly, purely, in a balanced way and without prejudice to either side if it’s a conflict situation. Privileged? I probably see too much; I don’t need to see all of it to understand it.”

Red Light – Ruly, China 1999

Two decades earlier, Stanmeyer occupied a very different world. Starting his career at a very young age, he found himself working as a fashion photographer in Europe for magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and Andy Warhol’s Interview, as part of a burgeoning style elite. “This was at the time before the supermodel era,” he explains. “I’d been to Art School and failed every journalism course I took!”

Just as he was beginning to realise quite how lucrative a career in fashion could be, the young photographer experienced something of an epiphany. “There was a moment in my early 20s…it must have been ‘83 or ‘84, when I realised I was brainwashing people into thinking that who they were was what they wore. I’d been using my hammer and nail to build the wrong piece of furniture.” Far from some kind of celestial radiance, it was the stark light of reality that led him away from fashion and the excessive levels of marketing it was coming to engender. Moving away from Italy, he came across a group of Peace Corps workers in Madrid who’d recently returned from Haiti, and it was on the troubled Caribbean island that he produced his first piece of documentary photography in the early ’90s.

At that time, the people of the island nation were suffering in the aftermath of a military coup that had in turn impelled a debilitating UN embargo – “I was appalled by what was going on… it was hard to believe this was happening just 90 miles away from the richest nation on earth!”

In effect, Stanmeyer had discovered his purpose. He took a job at the Tampa Tribune, a major daily newspaper in Florida, where he set about learning the tools of his trade. While some of his colleagues complained at the pedestrian assignments, Stanmeyer welcomed the opportunity to cover the country fair yet again – he knew he wasn’t going to be there forever. At the same time, he met his wife Anastacia, a writer, and the two began funding their own trips to document the crises of the time.

“We would save coins all year long…we sent ourselves to Sudan by saving coins. We’d come back and they’d give us a front page, a double spread in the middle in colour and another third page. We didn’t get paid, but we had this platform from which to speak about issues and this meant something to us.”

The whole notion of purpose seems to lie at the heart of Stanmeyer’s work. There is little vanity about him and he talks about his photography as first and foremost a tool for making people think, for effecting social change. His personal projects over the years confirm this – he’s spent the last eight years documenting the spread of AIDS throughout Asia and as a founder member of highly respected photography agency vii he’s been at the heart of two major book projects, WAR and RETHINK which he describes as “testimonials of the last five years of humanity.”

This is far from your typical coffee table fare, dealing as it does with the world’s current conflicts and the roots of 9/11. The seminars he holds in New York are invariably sold out, not with journalist colleagues (”what would be the point? They already get it!”) but with people who are less familiar with the issues he’s talking about.

Balloons

But what is such a man doing in this tropical island idyll in the heart of Indonesia while his peers rent apartments in New York or London or Hong Kong? His first visit to Indonesia was at the cusp of the economic meltdown in 1998; more than twenty visits and five years would pass before he chose to make it his home. “I fell in love with the country. Until moving here, all the work I’d done in Indonesia had been about very serious social issues…stuff that probably would scare most people when I think about it, yet I’ve invested everything I’ve got in this place.”

Ironically, Bali was for a long time one of the islands Stanmeyer liked the least, always put off by the excessive tourism. It wasn’t until after the first Bali bomb in 2002 that he saw the island in a different light. He’d spent the first week after the attack in Java, trying to understand its dynamics as evidence began to slowly emerge. “I saw a totally different side to the Balinese…this love and compassion brought about by darkness and evil and ill deeds and the suffering that comes from them. They had such enormous humility and compassion. TIME was doing a story about individuals who saved others and through that I met a group of people who let me know there was something very special here. I flew home and said to my wife, what about Bali?”

Something more ambiguous draws him to the archipelago as a whole, however, something that appeals in a very personal way. He describes it as the striking rapidity of Indonesian society, the extremes he’s encountered here, from placidity to anarchy, enormous wealth to abject poverty – “it’s a country that can turn on a dime – I guess everywhere does, but I just love deep immersion cultures, cultures that retain their roots amidst the bombardment of western culture,” he says. There is also the sheer diversity of cultures, peoples and ideas that populate it. “How do you manage and keep united a country that contains such diversity? Imagine five or six African or South American nations all becoming one, spread across three time zones and the size of North America. I respect anyone who’s willing to try and manage that!”

As an emerging – or re-emerging democracy, Stanmeyer sees an intriguing complexity of issues at work in today’s Indonesia. After what he views as an extended period of stagnation, we’re now experiencing the “pulls, contractions and twists of a nation maturing and growing.” It is a growth predicated on such enormous diversity and yet he believes that the country is on a better path than it has ever been. Of course pressing concerns like corruption will take time – “We need at least another generation,” he states emphatically. One of the biggest problems in this light is a simple one.

“Everyone globally and in Indonesia wants and needs proper goods and services – decent education, proper health care, a solid legal system, honest police officials, good roads, etc – but few pay or more so, are able to pay taxes because of such low incomes. These alleged corrupt civil servants likely play the corruption game because many are so poorly paid. How can you pay good salaries (salaries one can actually live on) if no one is contributing, or more so if funds through service taxes or through aids grants are not allocated properly to societies needs? It’s not rocket science, it’s fundamental.”

There is very little finger pointing in any of his discussion about geo-political issues. One could be cynical and suggest this is the simple diplomacy required of a man in his position – though he’s clearly impatient at some of the attitudes he encounters in the country of his birth, especially those who question his decision to live in Indonesia. “There is a form of extreme interpretation of Islam, but it’s a very small percentage of people. We have more lunatics in North America for God’s sake. Indonesia is not a hotbed of radical Islam.”

It doesn’t come across as just diplomacy though, rather a deeper sense of the way in which we are all connected. “My blood can run in your veins and mine in yours,” he says early in the interview. “How are we any different? And yet because we fail to look at that as humans, we perpetuate conflict, war, poverty…it’s all interconnected. We’re all connected, from a rice farmer to a politician.”

From KABAR September 2006

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Not a week goes by when I do not get an email from someone, somewhere in the world, asking me a question relating to kopi luwak. Kopi luwak, or “KL” as we call it, is one of the rarest and most expensive coffees in the world. At around $800/kg it dwarves the moderately expensive Jamaican Blue Mountain and Hawaiian Kona Arabica Coffees.

For those of you who do not know what kopi luwak is, take a deep breath, put your cappuccino down and read on. Luwak is the Indonesian name for the Masked Palm Civet. This animal has close relatives throughout most of Asia, as well as in Ethiopia and Kenya. Its poor cousin in China got blamed for being a link in the SARS epidemic in 2004 and got pretty much wiped out in a government cull. Before that it had been a culinary delicacy in Mainland Chinese cuisine. In Indonesia, the range of the luwak is quite widespread. Their habitat includes higher altitude, less densely populated areas of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Sulawesi and the islands of Nusa Tenggara. The luwak is nocturnal by nature and is quite wary of human contact. It nearly always comes out at dusk to hunt for food and to forage, by morning it is tucked up sleeping.

Luwak on Robusta, West Java.

The luwak is an omnivore, eating mainly fruits, but not averse to raiding a hen house for eggs, or scavenging for mice, rats and small chickens. Often it is demonised in small villages for its ability to damage poultry production, perhaps in a similar vein that weasels are not on any farmer’s Christmas Card list in western countries.

So this brings us around to the part the luwak plays in one of the stranger chapters of global coffee consumption. Not unlike the way in which coffee was first discovered (thanks to a herd of dancing goats back in Abyssinia over 1000 years ago), kopi luwak somehow accidentally made its way from animal to human; albeit in a more direct and slightly revolting way.

Luwak generally forage ripe coffee cherries from the trees during the night, gorging themselves on the fruit. The gastrointestinal tract of the animal removes the pulp and skin from the cherry, but is unable to digest the stone or bean inside. Finally the beans are deposited in a starfish-shaped pile from the rear end of the luwak. The excrement, which looks a bit like peanut brittle candy, is then collected, cleaned, dried and roasted by the villagers, who savour it for its unique taste profile. Of course, in the village kopi luwak actually has two meanings. The first and most common does not actually refer to coffee consumed and subsequently passed by the luwak, but rather to ripe coffee that was picked by human hand, the luwak reference being to the fact that if the luwak had seen the cherry first he would have eaten it, as it was that ripe.

Luwak Droppings.

As the luwak is an omnivore it must be said that the taste of the final cup does depend somewhat on what else it has been eating along with the coffee cherries. Cupping reports from experts include comparisons to fruit such as papaya, pineapple, mango and blackberry. On the other hand there are also frequent comparisons to “game” (meaning the dead mouse consumed before the coffee cherry, I suspect).

As the luwak is an omnivore it must be said that the taste of the final cup does depend somewhat on what else it has been eating along with the coffee cherries.

As the luwak is found all over the coffee producing regions of Indonesia, the regional cupping characters of the coffee will still be apparent in the coffee. Because over 80% of coffee from Indonesia is the less interesting robusta, the luwak’s intervention in the traditional coffee chain does not dramatically change the cupping character of this type of coffee. The cupping characters of the arabicas, however, are altered by the inner workings of the luwak.

Prof. Marcone and Alun trying kopi luwak in an Indonesian village.

I had the pleasure to accompany Professor Massimo Marcone, from the University of Guelph, on a TV documentary shoot back in 2004. Professor Marcone is the world’s premier civetologist. His study of civets has taken him from the Horn of Africa, through the Philippines and Malaysia to Indonesia. His passion for civets is contagious. During the filming he described to me in great detail just how the luwak’s intestinal system affects the coffee. Apparently the combination of scenting glands on the rear end of the animal, along with the secretions in its digestive system, contributes to a unique finished product. He has also devised a method to detect whether kopi luwak is the real deal, or fake. He estimates that around 48% of all kopi luwak on the market is fake, or at the very best very small quantities of real stuff mixed in with normal coffee filler. When paying such a premium, it is wise to make sure the coffee you are buying is certified as being authentic.

Steve-O and Chris of Jackass fame (note luwak in background).

One of the more interesting groups of luwak hunters to turn up at Merdeka Coffee’s door was the cast of MTV’s Wildboyz (including Steve-O, Chris Pontiak and Johnny Knoxville from “Jackass” fame).

Kopi luwak indeed attracts its fair share of both true sceptics and coffee crazed fans. American TV talk shows such as Oprah have regularly featured it. One of the more interesting groups of luwak hunters to turn up at Merdeka Coffee’s door was the cast of MTV’s Wildboyz (including Steve-O, Chris Pontiak and Johnny Knoxville from “Jackass” fame). Steve-O had a great tussle with the luwak, which left him (Steve-O) scarred and battered. In the final shot of filming he scooped up some raw luwak pooh containing coffee, consumed it and claimed with great satisfaction: “Good to the last dropping!”.

Whether it deserves a serious place in the mainstream of specialty coffee is debatable. However it can not be doubted that kopi luwak is absolutely unique and it comes from right here in Indonesia.

Alun Evans is a coffee roaster based in West Java, Indonesia. His company Merdeka Coffee, is pioneering relationship coffee with farming communities throughout the country. Visit www.merdekacoffee.com for more details.

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Bull races on Madura.

The passionate blur of “kerapan sapi”, the bull races on the island of Madura, begins our journey on a momentous high. The preparation and setting for the event are equally spectacular. After the toil of the harvest season, the bulls enjoy a special treat combining fodder with a gourmet concoction of crushed ginger, pepper, honey, beer, and a hundred eggs! Surely this potent brew would rouse any animal (or human for that matter) to extraordinary feats of athleticism, but some tender loving care doesn’t hurt, either. A soothing massage and inspiring whispers in the bulls’ ears from the owners before the race act as perfect catapults for the ensuing frenzy. The real heroes of this amazing spectacle guide their thundering charges on a bamboo sled or “nanggala”, attached to two bulls. Having to harness and channel the energies of a released demonic power, these jockeys seem to exist in a surreal world of swirling motion and chaotic control. The bulls and their masterful charges leave us reeling with the spontaneous thrill of life at its outer margins.

Child in Kalimantan.

In Kalimantan, another region known for its rich indigenous traditions, my camera searched for living traces of ancestral culture, and was well rewarded at the “lamin” or longhouse of the Dayak Benuaq group at Mancong and the elongated ear lobes of the elderly Dayak Kenyah women. However, I soon found myself delighting in the energy and laughter of the younger generation. We were surrounded everywhere by pranks, pouts, and peeling knees, overseen by the warmth of child-rearing that seems to be the natural asset of all Indonesian people. My slightly reluctant model at Muara Mantai sat within the handsomely crafted boat of his father, preparing him for a life amidst the riches and swaying tides of the river. Indonesia is a young country, surging with the hopes and desires and aching vitality of fresh blood. While we may regret the passing of some old ways, this land is ripe for the renewal of an unleashed vigor and new dimensions of beauty.

Anggrek bulan in front of Gunung Lokon.

Stunning landscape vistas complement the aesthetic appeal of the people and their cultures. Upon our arrival in Manado, the eyes feast on the beauty of the Minahasan people, refined and tempered by an ethnic cauldron that combined groups from mainland South East Asia, Indonesia, and the Philippines with the colonial blood of three European tribes – the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch – as well as enterprising Chinese migrants. Blessing this land with fertility and exuberant color stand tall volcanic cones, forming a protective ring around the peninsula. At the pleasant resort town of Tomohon, the magnificent vista of Gunung Lokon energized my lens. Appropriately, the summit carried a crowning layer of foggy cloud, underlining its mysterious majesty and its active qualities. “Anggrek bulan” (the serene white orchid, literally “moonlight orchid”) enframe this ethereal scene, for Tomohon is indeed “Kota Kembang”, the Flower City. This is the perfect setting for the exuberant Minahasa culture, with its celebratory dances, the lilting tones of the “kolintang” (wooden xylophone), and the fiery gastronomic juices released by the spicy cuisine, layered with the subtle flavors of the bamboo cylinders used in its preparation. Joy and generous hospitality come naturally to these delightful people.

At Rante Lombok.

The pride of the Tana Toraja in Southern Sulawesi, grave sites carved into limestone cliffs, preserves the continuing influence and blessing of the ancestors, who cannot stay away from the emerald symphony of this cool plateau. I came across a rather more mysterious site at Rante Lombok, hidden deep within the recesses of a bamboo jungle. Although the “bombo” (souls) of these ancestors were pacified and interred in exquisitely carved wooden coffins, this rebellious group decided to come back to life and recreate their favorite pastime: theater. As I looked around at the amazing groupings of “actors”, I was particularly struck by the solitary figure, who appeared ready to star in yet another new version of “Hamlet”. Was he Hamlet’s father, haunting his tortured mind, or was it Hamlet himself, launching into the most beloved soliloquy of all time, “To be, or not to be…” I knew this Hamlet’s answer, a ringing affirmation of the beauty of his land and culture:
“To be, to be
In this glorious land
Of sunshine and thunderous rain,
Of sweet-odored mist and emerald grain”.

The Dani warriors of Papua.

Papua brings you the thrill of encountering human origins and the crafting of our earliest civilizations. The handsome Dani warriors, accompanied by apprentice boys and “cheer leading” women, hark back to a tradition of “weem” or war, inevitable in a group of 50,000 people divided into twelve alliances. However, from the standards of present-day warfare (or rather, butchery), an estimated annual death rate of 20 or 30 per group does not appear excessive. “Weem” has now become a mock spectacle, and Dani men continue to use the occasion to appear at their fearsome best. Pig fat adding a sheen on their sleek muscular frames, many bedeck themselves with precious ornaments of cowrie shell, animal fur, and bird plumage. The real beauty of the Dani people, though, resides in the region of the solar plexus, called “etai-eken” or “seeds of singing”. Fusing our concepts of soul and personality, the “etai-eken” are regarded as the vital center of every individual’s being. I find the connection between soul and singing a perfect affirmation of my passion for music. For the Dani, as for us, pleasurable sound creates the harmonious accompaniment of life, transforming and uplifting the inner self.

From dizzying motion to serene calm, from the powerful mystique of ancestors to the spontaneous giggle of children, from volcanic stirrings to gentle waves, this archipelago fulfills a hunger for completion.

By Vivek R. Bammi, photographer and author, “Indonesia: A Feast for the Senses” (Jakarta, PT Sukarya & Sukarya, 2005).

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