Christmas in Jakarta
My time in Jakarta this trip has really helped me to get to know the place better. Aside from the almost daily trips to huge malls (most are the size of westfields back home, I think I’ve been to around 6) and being shown around local oddities such as Taman Mini ( a theme park conceived by the wife of Suharto, its a miniature version of Indonesia) and other interesting places I wouldn’t see otherwise, such as Universitas Indonesia (where Tatap, who I’m staying with, works) I’ve learnt a lot more about the people of Jakarta, and the concept of Jakarta as well. As Tatap told Paul and I, Jakarta is still searching for its identity, its not Indonesia, its not a global city, in many ways its just a large collection of people trying to figure out what they have in common. There is no planning in Jakarta, so its really hard to get a sense of geography, as well as a sense of where the heart of the city actually lies. So much of it is crowded and chaotic. There are suburbs after suburbs of densly populated streets, with toll roads towering above them. Nearly every major road here is a toll road, many with 5 lanes of traffic each way, and usually jammed with traffic. Its also been interesting to look at the huge contrasts between the wealthy and the poor here. On the way back from the UI campus, we went through a suburb called Pondok Indah, which is home to the wealthiest people in Jakarta. There was block after block of enormous mansions, like those you see in areas like Vaucluse in Sydney. Apparently most of them are empty because they are just the 2nd home of their owners, their “weekenders”. We passed a nightclub that advertised a cover charge of Rp350,000 (around $40), which is the average monthly wage of a servant in Yogya. Apparently most of the wealthy here made their money during the Asian Financial Crisis, because they had investments in dollars, which blew from Rp2000 to Rp22,000 in value in the space of a few months.
Christmas yesterday was fun, if not a little unusual for me. These days I’m used to just small gatherings of my immediate family, usually around 5-10 of us. Yesterday there were around 40 people at the house. It was strange because you can tell that the norm isn’t to do something for Christmas, because everyone called it a Christmas Party. This was a strange idea for me because it just seems natural to have a gathering on Christmas day, and a Christmas Party is normally something you attend before the day itself. It also made me identify myself more as a “Christian” - in Australia you can celebrate Christmas Day without really being religious, but over here if you want to celebrate it properly you need to seek out Christians. It made me see Christmas more as an event of significance to my cultural background, and not just a norm that everyone is involved in. There were a lot of family members there, along with some “friends” who you could tell just came along for the food and present. The food was catered, and Tatap’s family, as the hosts, provided everyone with a present. It didn’t seem like people reciprocated by giving them a gift in return. The day had a routine to it, at 12 people started coming over and chatting, then at about 2 one of Tatap’s sisters led everyone in prayers and hymns. After that we ate, and Paul and I were stuffed to the brim by lots of people saying “oh you have to try this dish, its the local delicacy in the area I’m from”. Once that was done, Tatap’s sister decided to hold a singing competition, with each family performing a song. Seeing as pretty much everyone there were church-goers and members of choirs, these involved one family member playing the piano while the others sung and harmonised. Paul and I were told we had to perform a song, and so we split up and hid for about an hour until it was all over. Then it was present time, and one person would go and fetch a present that was in their name, then choose another and call out that person’s name. I was given a souvenir tshirt of Jakarta, as was Paul. Once this was done it was time for everyone to go.
Paul and I had a lot of fun chatting to people yesterday. At the end of the day we’d made a few friends, swapped stories and learnt some more about Jakarta. It was a good workout of our Indonesian, and I was pleased to realise that I was able to hold my own in a room full of strangers speaking another language. In terms of insights into Jakartan mindsets, some was eye-opening. Particularly when I was talking to a woman about the beggars in Yogya, and she spoke of them with such disgust, saying she calls them the “lazy people”, particularly the street kids. There were a lot of really well dressed Jakartans that popped in, wearing clothes often worn by the upper classes back home. One thing is for certain, there are a lot of really, really rich people in Jakarta. It was a really different experience to what I get in Yogya.
