bogor through tinted lenses

i stood out like a sore thumb where i was standing along the main road outside the lone modern shopping mall in bogor, indonesia. among the single storey homes of the local community, the shopping mall resembled a white elephant, a failed attempt to integrate the kind of a comsumerist lifestyle among the local populace. it has 6 levels and 2 basements, but the number of unoccupied shop spaces and the lack of business activity particularly struck me.

maybe it was a friday afternoon that accounted for the lack of human traffic, but nevertheless, the number of school children in their uniforms was pretty astounding. i got reminded of how i used to do the same when i was in school, but there was something about them that disturbed me.

most were just sitting and lazing about. there were girls behaving intimately with guys and i wouldn't be surprised to find some of them making out in the many dark un-used corners of the mall - such was the extent of desertedness of the whole place.

in my red stussy tee-shirt, black bermudas and nike safaris shoes, i was so obviously not part of the local social landscape. i had decided not to follow the rest of the conference who went to visit the touristy taman mini in jakarta and stayed on to just catch my breath from the relentless pace at which the conference was going.

there was a small case of an information overload, and i needed to take a break. the original plan was to watch trainspotting on dvd in camp, but when the opportunity of a brief sojourn with ian and his friends into town arose, i decided that i should take it up - partly to try to look for cheap levis jeans for my sister and also to check my bourgeoning emails at an internet cafe.

in the end, while i didn't achieve both of my objectives in the bogor city centre, i still got more than what i bargained for.

i got alerted to social realities that i was unaccustomed to as a singaporean. the conference-cum-camp site we were based in ciawi, a suburb in the western java city of bogor was like an oasis in the middle of the chaos. yet in the chaos, there seemed to be a sense of archtypical, or even cliche, order in the chaos.

there were the many green and blue vans, which were the city's buses, who sipped about without a nary of botheredness about traffic rules. one green van-bus stopped in the middle of a three-lane roundabout in the city abruptly just to pick up passengers who swamped to the green van-bus from all around despite the teeming traffic. the car i was in had to screech to an abrupt stop, but nobody seemed to mind.

and then there was the number of beggars, street-vendors going from car to car and the general lack of order about the place. it was so difficult finding a place with internet access, but the meandering walk we took to arrive at that place was a walk into the social cross-section of the bogor population.

i walked past the homes of the ordinary indonesian, and i was particulary made aware of how shops sprout along arterial roads almost naturally. a road parallel to the main road was filled with service shops which was where we finally found a LAN shop - with 36k dial-up access.

it took me ages trying to load a website, which eventually led to a time out. but i spent most of the time looking at the shoes that we had to remove in order to enter, paranoid about having those expensive nikes stolen.

i ended up going out, so that i could wear the shoes, and across the shop from where i was, there was this bunch of little kids playing in a run-down school. if i had a camera with me, it would have been a field day for me. but i had deliberately not brought any so as not to distract myself from the main task of spending time with God and his people at the conference.

i ended up not being able to find any levis shops around or not any other major labels. all the shops were small businesses run by locals and the only "labels" were poor imitations - quite unlike those in bangkok. i bought 15 singapore dollars worth of chocolates and sweets as gifts at the supermarket for the people who took me down town, my small group members and other assorted friends i made back at the east asian regional conference.

which was something that triggered their hospitality in return. my female friend got us all lost in the heart of the wet market district of bogor when she wanted to buy ian and myself some traditional sour plums to take home. but getting lost was perhaps the best way in continuing my social education process.

when she rolled down the windows of the vehicle to ask for directions, the pungent cacophony of smells of the market place assulted my very senses. it was many times worse than the kind of smell i abhore in singaporean wet markets, and no adjectives could have described the smell that precipitated my nausea. it reminded me of how the typical south east asian city is usually portrayed in hollywood films - hot, humid, steaming and pungent.

the endless vendors selling the same things - bananas, chilli, spices and what have you, puzzled both ian and myself since it was nearly 4 in the afternoon. you would reckon most of the vendors to be packing up for the day, but they looked far like it. the way they layed out their wares on the roads where vehicles spout diesel fumes made us wonder how edible those food items actually were.

then our last stop was the bogor city botanical gardens. they had originally intended to drive us through, only the exhorbitant cost of doing that prevented them from doing so. in return, they bough local handicrafts as souvenirs for us, bought us iced tea and miniature hotdog buns from the roadside stalls for us - that were made miniature so that the local population could afford to taste cheese and sausagess, 2 very expensive commodities in bogor.

i gingerly accepted those because i couldn't bring myself to reject their hospitality. the iced tea made my stomach churn after about 3 sips. it could be all in the mind, but i felt distinctly queasy after that, so i went slow on the drink. ian finished it, and i suspect that was what caused him to fall so ill after that.

and while driving back onto the roads leading back to our base at the kinasih conference centre in ciawi, the urban land use transects that i studied in geography in school came alive. i was stuck at the poverty in the low lying areas of the city and the contrasting relative wealth of those who lived in higher areas.

on the way back, it occurred to me once again how the whole ciawi suburb is centralised along the main road that leads to the city - there is only one lane in each direction, which was the cause of the jams. it appeared to me that the whole of the suburb was just based along that road. they had modern convenience stores and cement mills and eating places standing side-by-side along the road.

by contrast, the peaceful tranquil environment of the kinasih cemerlang conference centre we were based at for the rest of the time we were there, felt somewhat like an anomaly. i was glad i went out to take a look at the real indonesia. what i saw in my 4-5 hours jaunt to the city served to re-emphasize the key themes of the conference about embracing our unique asian christian identity.