The Timor Man. Kerry B Collison

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      Chapter 3

      Kampung Semawi, Java - October 1965

      The line extended for kilometres. In some places, the bicycles were four and five abreast as the children free-wheeled down the gentle incline enjoying the lower temperatures and light humidity of the early morning. As they rode, they talked, laughed and flirted, occasionally pedalling, as they coasted down the hill. They were happy, innocent, and eager to get to school.

      The girls wore dark skirts, white cotton blouses and thin red scarves knotted loosely below the neckline. The boys wore similar colours, dressed in shorts or trousers, depending on their age, and white short-sleeved shirts without the distinguishing loose tie. The girls held themselves erect, poised like Parisian models, their backs straight, both hands elegantly touching but not gripping the handlebars as they maintained their positions in the column.

      Many of the young ladies sported waist length deep black hair. Occasionally, as the bicycles passed under the trees and then out of the thin shadows into the light, the sun’s rays would touch the fine long strands causing their well-kept crowns to shine with the care, the brushing and the natural aloe vera applied each evening by their doting mothers before they retired.

      Even though their appearance could cause one to think otherwise, these were not wealthy children and they wore sturdy sandals. Some wore white socks but only as an option as these were not a mandatory part of the school uniform. The boys wore an assortment of footwear. Most preferred a sandal not dissimilar to those worn by the girls, but more robust to withstand the perpetual pounding they suffered from the mid-morning and late afternoon breaks when the nearby field became a soccer battlefield.

      Occasionally a scooter would pass, and then slow, to permit the driver or passenger to converse with the slower moving twowheelers. To be privileged with a scooter did not, surprisingly, create peer group animosity as young Indonesians generally applauded others’ successes.

      Sharing was already a cultural trait well before the Marxist-Leninist philosophies crept into their lives. Thousands of years of cultural development had produced a people who had achieved a special ability to understand the import of preserving their way of life, to appreciate their history and respect their families and, at all costs, to coexist with their neighbours in their restrictive, suffocating dwellings. This same cultural force was also responsible for the occasional but sudden explosions of temper and violence which sometimes caused normally calm souls to run out of control, or run amok , often killing at random on a scale not understood in the West. Or at least that was so before militant religious sects eventually gained a foothold in the developed nations.

      The road to the school travelled directly through the rich rice fields, the black tar macadam raised several metres above the millions of individually owned sawah under cultivation, permitting traffic to pass unhindered. Each plot, some almost unworkably small, would have been farmed by the same family over and over for many generations. Ownership would have passed from father to son throughout the centuries, the unwritten titles rarely questioned or disputed. Often these fields remained as the only real security that these betel nut chewing peasants could really rely upon.

      Of course, the occasional dispute would arise as to just how much creepage had taken place when the padi fields were worked for it was relatively simple to enlarge ones area by widening the mud retaining walls over a few seasons. The gradual change to the miniature dam wall would go unnoticed as a few centimetres were added here and there until finally, after some years had passed, the plots size could differ in area considerably. If not kept in check, a farmer could conceivably lose land the size of a small suburban front yard over a period of ten or fifteen years.

      Coconut groves separated these magnificent green fields from the roads. Flowers grew alongside the pathways and Hibiscus hedges were planted between the small thatched-roof dwellings. The rich volcanic soil provided food for all, including the slow-moving long-horned water buffalo. They were used to till the heavy black mud, producing a bed of fertile ground waiting to be seeded to commence the growing cycle once again. Clumps of banana trees grew in isolated spots throughout the sawah, giving shade for the farmers during the heat of the day. During the wet season, children would casually snap a large banana leaf away from its tree and use the branch as protection from the rainy squalls. To the villagers, the banana and coconut trees were symbolic of protection such as a roof may give, although one would be foolish to sit under the latter without first examining the position of the nuts. Young maidens, when courting, would often say to their lover, ‘ Please don’t use me like a banana leaf, to be СКАЧАТЬ