As Slow As Christmas! Part IV: journey

Jakarta will always be the largest city I have visited, and Nahaya village will always be the farthest "off-grid" I have ever been. Located on the Landak River near Ngabang, about 20 clicks off the paved road, it is accessible only by motorbike for much of the year, as the rainy season makes the dirt-track roads too soft for any automobile. The other option is a speedboat, which takes only two hours from Pontianak. This option, I have learned, is only available to the wealthiest persons wishing to go to Nahaya. On the back of my friend's motorbike, the travel time was more than eight hours, with a stop overnight at his mother's native village simply because we could not continue, due to fatigue.

Along the way, you might forget you are traveling through Indonesia by simply letting your mind wander wherever the panoramic views might take your memory. Round the corner and see a hill covered with green vines, and you would swear you were driving through Alabama or Tennessee in the month of June. Off the pavement, the road contains more than enough red clay to be located in Alabama or Georgia. It appears to roll on forever, as hamlet after hamlet that will not be mapped by GoogleEarth any time soon continues to drift past.



I went to Nahaya at the invitation of my friend and student Irwan's parents, who did not believe that a Western guy would actually visit their home. They are rubber growers, and their cabin near the village has no electricity or running water. A nearby stream provides what they need for bathing and washing, while drinking water is bottled. My friend and student belongs to West Kalimantan's Dayak nation, which accounts for about 1 in 4 persons province-wide.









However, Landak Regency (or county) is very much Dayak country.




Ahe, the local language, is related to Indonesian, but not the same. I amused a room full of seventh-graders with my attempts to pronounce its unusual consonants.

During our journey, I was tired to the point of illness and far from anything that might be considered familiar, but never frightened as I thought I would be. Probably, this is because I was never alone. To be as far "off-grid" as it seems to a Westerner, Nahaya and surrounding villages seem to be densely populated, and everyone depends on a vast network of friends and family. We joke in Alabama that the people in another small town "all know each other" or are "all related." Here in the middle of the forest is a place where people have always existed that way. Christmas was two weeks away. If ever you thought you were as far away from another human as you could get, in the next moment, you'd hear Christmas carols on tape blaring from someone's house, probably less than a quarter-mile away. Remote, yes, but with very close neighbors. So, I survived our long journey. My shoes didn't.









Off-grid people socialize on Saturday night the way some of my friends' parents remember from rural Alabama a generation ago. There's an old country store where everyone gathers after sundown, with a TV playing for anyone who doesn't have one at home to watch. There are cans of soup, dried provisions, and soft drinks on a wooden shelf. The three dozen people hanging around may be the only souls present for miles in any direction, but they are all you need. Everyone sits on wooden tables and benches, plays board games, or shoots a game of pool in the room next door until well past midnight, by the light of a loud diesel generator. The only request directed at a visitor from far away - please come back. Don't forget about us.
TIP: If you play pool, do not assume that the game is "8-ball" as it usually is in the States.

Most Westerners know the Dayak as the people of the longhouse, from the endless articles about them in National Geographic and other publications. The Ahe language group only claims one fully operational and still inhabited by their people as a home, not a tourist attraction. I was glad to be able to see it.















A wood sculptor whose studio was located in the longhouse explained through translation how spirituality and the Dayak view of the universe impact upon his art, which apparently has been purchased by collectors worldwide. Much of his explanation flowed from conservative Catholic teaching on human sexuality, which would make sense, given the fact that the Ahe people are nearly all more Catholic than the Pope. But it seemed (appropriate for an artist) highly spiritualized and esoteric. He's incredibly talented, but lost my liberal Western self after a few minutes of explanation.

My most memorable place to see was the cemetery at Mandor, site of one of the worst mass killings ever committed by the Japanese Army during the Second World War - with the mass graves to prove it. While it was a gruesome event to contemplate, the future came to life before my eyes on top of the ruins of the past. My friend and student met two other young men from his home area whom he didn't know before. They spoke the same language, are all into martial arts, became friends in about five minutes, and I think will remain friends for some time. A lot of bad things do happen here, but the Dayak are always there for each other. It simply appears to be their way.



Most young people in the Nahaya area like Western music from the 1980's, and stores sell tube after tube of hair gel, so that they can look like they are ready to go back in time to play in an '80's "hair band." I had serious high school flashbacks. Anyone having any Guns 'n' Roses memorabilia should forward it to me, since it would be a dream come true for Salia, a young teacher who teaches English to 89 seventh graders five days a week.