Jakarta in Words

Feb 26 

Jakarta: from the Sanskrit “jayakarta” which means “complete victory.” 

I hope you enjoyed the photos the DH posted as Jakarta in Motion from our day in that city. We experienced a lot of firsts. 

We were allowed to visit the largest mosque in Indonesia while a prayer service was going on. It involved removing our shoes and climbing four flights of stairs to an upper story so we could look down on the gigantic worship space without disturbing it. I was surprised to see that the women were not relegated to a separate room, but practiced their own devotions behind a sectioned off portion of the larger room. Several small children wandered about among the women, fidgeting like kids do in any church service. 

Before the use of minarets and amplified calls to prayer, the faithful were called with a drum twice my height to observe the five times of prayer each day. We were invited to give it a tap and several people did, but after the DH stepped up and gave it an authoritative thump that resounded down the long marbled corridor, no one else ventured forward. (Did I mention I first really noticed him when he was playing timpani with the college orchestra? There’s just something about a drummer…) 

The mosque was huge, the largest in Indonesia, but it was built in the 1960’s and demonstrated the emphasis on utilitarianism common in architecture of that era. It lacked the grace and ethereal beauty that lifts the human spirit that so abounded in the Grand Mosque of Abu Dhabi. 

Our photo stop at the Our Lady of the Assumption cathedral was too quick for my taste and we weren’t able to wander the lovely gothic sanctuary to seek out the Stations of the Cross or any other artistic embellishments. The majority of Indonesians are Muslim, but they practice religious tolerance. The fact that the cathedral is literally across the street from the mosque is solid proof of that. 

In China Town, we were greeted by our first “Lion Dance.” The tea was a delicious blend of jasmine and black tea. Unfortunately, we reached the tea house too late for us to be able to walk the China Town lanes to see the unique businesses and the Chinese temple because as night was falling everything was closing. 

The last stop was to a gigantic mall for a shopping opportunity which caused me some serious Anti-Shopper eye-rolling. But I recognize I’m in the minority here. The rest of the folks on our tour came skipping back to the bus nearly giddy about seeing an acre (I kid you not!) of women’s shoes. 

Now, I’ll share the things about Jakarta I didn’t want to take pictures of: 

• People living in cardboard shacks under bridges amid so much garbage scattered about, I’m forced to apologize again to Bali. (That island was pristine by comparison and there was nothing “cheerful” about the squalor in Jakarta.)
• The traffic so crazy it made the madness of Semarang seem sane. (We were told no one can afford insurance—and frankly, what company could afford to write a policy here?—so a constant stream of “courtesy toots” filled the air, trying to help other drivers be aware of the vehicles nearest theirs.
• Air quality so poor it made our neighbor on the ship remain aboard because her lungs rebelled. (Mine were fine, but only because I have a source of supplemental O2 with my portable oxygen concentrator.) 
• Building projects in various stages of incompletion but no one working on any of them. (Always a sign of serious fiscal problems)

I had the strange sensation that we’d been plopped into the middle of an urban dystopian movie set. There was an indefinable sense of heaviness hovering over the city. 

Actually, Jakarta has a right to feel depressed. It is sinking. Literally. No, the ocean isn’t rising. The land the city is built on has sunk over 8 ft in the last decade and continues to sink about 11 inches per year. The reason is because there are so many unregistered wells in the city to avoid taxes on drinking water. The residents have surreptitiously pumped out too much from the water table under the surface. Wells that used to hit fresh water at 500 ft, now must be about 1500 ft or the water will be brackish, so they continue to drill. The land is no longer supported by the subterranean reservoir of fresh water and is subsiding. 

The simple fact is that Jakarta doesn’t have enough drinking water to support its burgeoning population. That’s probably one of the reasons the national capital is going to be moving from Jakarta to Papua, the easternmost island in the Indonesian country. The government is also encouraging the migration of its Javanese citizens to other islands in the chain because this city of 17 million is literally sinking under its own weight. Indonesians on Java are offered a house, land and an income for two years if they relocate to other less populated islands. 

We’ve moved often enough ourselves to see a problem with this plan. The newcomers will forever be “not from around here.” Indonesia is divided by multiple languages and dialects, so they may not even have a way to speak to their new neighbors. Two years’ income sounds like a generous offer, but two years flies away pretty quickly. Plus the new migrants would be leaving their families in a culture that values extended family and intergenerational living. 

I’m not sure what the answer is. The port we were docked at was a commercial port. You can see from the photos in the DH’s montage, it is modern and efficient and very busy. So that’s a positive. And frankly a number of American cities have problems with homelessness, trashiness, and a fractured infrastructure, but the issues facing Jakarta seem even more serious. I’d like to believe the city will rise to live up to the meaning of its name—“Complete victory.” But once the nation’s government is moved from the city, I fear for its future. 

The people we met in Jakarta were unfailingly friendly, open and hard working. 

They deserve a better situation.