[nasional_list] [ppiindia] On a slow boat from Ambon to Banda
- From: "Ambon" <sea@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@freelists.org>
- Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 22:26:29 +0100
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http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com ** Meanwhile: On a slow boat from
Ambon to Banda
Michael Vatikiotis The New York Times
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2005
BANDA, Indonesia The eggshell-blue afternoon sky meets the ocean along a plane
so perfectly horizontal it's hard to believe we are on the open sea. In bygone
days, the deep blue waters of the Banda Sea were as well known to the
navigators of Plymouth and Amsterdam as the English Channel and the North Sea.
In the 17th century, tiny volcanic islands poking precariously above the
surface with names like Ay and Run were the epicenter of a lucrative European
spice trade. Men fought and died over nutmeg and mace, which were once worth
their weight in gold.
The vessels plying these waters today are less adventurous, their cargo not
nearly as precious. Yet the islands, for all their vivid natural beauty, still
draw more than a fair share of trouble and violence that still arrives by ship.
I boarded the KM Bukit Sikuntang on a hot afternoon toward the end of the
Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Her beige flank, flecked with rust and the
stains of garbage, rose nearly three storeys off the crumbling quayside in
Ambon, the tumbledown capital of the Maluku (or Moluccan) island chain.
Boarding a state-owned Pelni liner is not a pleasant experience for the
un-initiated. I was advised to take a first-class cabin, but not informed that
to reach the comparative air-conditioned comfort of my windowless and cockroach
infested nook, I would first have to run a gauntlet of hot and restless
travelers in squalid third-class accommodation.
You have to travel at sea level to grasp the vastness of Indonesia, and the
sheer human variety moving along this ragged necklace of islands. It takes a
good day's flying and changing planes to make the journey to Ambon by air. But
this pales in comparison to the seven-hour sea journey just from Ambon to
Banda.
It's another four days sailing back to the capital Jakarta. Or you might opt
for the biweekly run a Pelni liner makes from the port of Tanjung Pinang an
hour outside of Singapore all the way to the West Papuan port of Fak-Fak. Along
the way you meet pearl divers from Aru, policemen from Seram and miners from
Timika.
Eastern Indonesia's remarkable natural resources are matched only by the
bewildering variety of people, cajoling one another in a regional dialect of
the Indonesian language that blends hard Malay consonants with the sing-song
lilt of a Latin language - a feature acquired, like faintly aquiline noses and
jutting chins, from the Portuguese who first claimed these islands for God and
Europe back in the 16th century.
The European legacy left the region, until recently, strongly Christian,
overlaying a tenacious Muslim community established earlier on by wandering
Indian and Arab merchants. The Chinese also frequented these waters, but were
content to just trade.
But the call to Muslim prayer that bursts from the ship's speakers as the sun
sinks below the horizon is a reminder that Indonesia's Muslim majority is on
the move, fanning out from over-populated areas of Java and Sulawesi.
Migration sowed the seeds of new friction and violence after centuries of
decline and langour. Between 1999 and 2001 more than 10,000 people died after
ships like the KM Bukit Sikuntang carried Islamic militants across the Banda
Sea to islands like Banda, Kei and Seram. They came to wage holy war after a
minor incident on a minibus resulted in a Christian killing a Muslim.
That was then, and the islanders are reluctant to recall the violence that has
greatly altered the religious topography of the islands.
On Banda the old Dutch church with its stately columns was burned down along
with most of the Christian dwellings when a violent mob hitched a ride on the
weekly ferry from Ambon.
Inside the ruins of the 17th century church a group of children play on the
foot-worn tombstones of early nutmeg plantation owners, or "perkeneers." A
passerby says that the Protestant Synod in Ambon has promised to rebuild the
church, which has to be one of the oldest in the archipelago. But the work is
slow - memories are still fresh and the Christians are not in a hurry to
reassert themselves.
The stunning beauty of these islands is hard to reconcile with the violence
that percolates through their history, like the old Dutch cannon that still
litter the streets of Banda.
The passenger ferries that come and go, landing people the authorities never
seem to bother checking on so long as they pay their passage, are a solid
reminder that trouble still travels by boat.
(Michael Vatikiotis is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies, Singapore.)
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