Australian writer/performer Jan Cornall is currently in Jakarta, midway through a four-month Asia Link writer's residency, funded by the Australia Indonesia Institute and Arts New South Wales. She is hosted by Teater Utan Kayu (TUK) and lives in a nearby kost (boarding house).
Cornall, who participated in last year's Utan Kayu Literary Biennale and the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, is working on a novella while conducting writing workshops for TUK and associated arts communities. Here, she shares her first experience of kampong life.
If you want to do some serious writing, take a room in a kost in a Jakarta kampong! When the call of Roti Roti (a bread vendor) wakes me at 6 a.m., followed by all the beeping and squeaking and ding-dong donging of the other sellers that follow, I get up, turn my computer on and start to write. And from the small table in my upstairs room looking out over the street, as I muse over sentences and paragraphs, I watch the kampong day as it unfolds.
If anyone in the neighborhood wants to know the latest movements of their spouse, child, teenager or errant aunt, they should ask me. I know who walks by at what time, who sweeps where and when, who buys the most breakfast meals from which vendors, who goes to the pasar and comes pack with morning jajanan, whose tiny paper kite is flying the highest, and what time the dragon wagon flies by, its music blaring, filled with happy children.
I know who has the best pisang goreng, bubur ayam, bakso, and at what time my favorite seller with her baskets of sweet jajanan pasar is due to pass.
I feel like a time lapse camera, for it seems that no sooner have I gotten up to sit at my desk, then I am going to sleep and it starts all over again.
Some people are shocked when I tell them where I am living. ""No air-con!"" they exclaim. ""Why didn't you take an apartment in Menteng or Kemang,"" they ask, and then the inevitable question: ""Aren't you lonely?""
It's such a friendly place, I tell them. It's hard to be lonely here. Even when I am at the computer all morning and don't go out of my room until noon, the sounds of the house and the kampong keep me company. When I do go out for my morning jalan-jalan, I meet friends everywhere. Because I have been around for a while now and have been away on trips and come back, almost everyone I pass greets me.
Some invite me to sit and talk, like the group of retired gentlemen who meet each morning to chew the fat on a sturdy corner bench -- built for old people like them, they joke. Kids call out to me to practice their English and in the evenings if there is music on the street, I will stop and join in for a while, amusing them no end with my subtle dangdut moves.
Arriving home really does feel like arriving home, as there is always someone to talk to: ""How was your day, Ibu Jan?"" and ""Where did you go today?""
Of course I have moments of loneliness, for I am in a completely unfamiliar environment. There is nothing here that is the same as my life back home, except when I go to the mall, and hanging out in the mall has never been my favorite pastime.
Loneliness is one of the occupational hazards of being a writer. You would think we'd be used to it, but it's always finding new ways to creep up on you, and you have to learn to make friends with it all over again.
But there is a certain tension in unfamiliarity that is good for writing. At first, difference is exciting and exotic. When that phase passes and you realize you are just an observer looking in on others' lives, you start to have the experience of the alien abroad. You feel your difference acutely and more, for the sense of belonging in this society seems so strong, you wonder where it is in your own culture and the home you left. Then you feel really alone!
So what do you do? Write, write and keep on writing.
Writing is what I have always done to find a sense of belonging no matter where I am. And loneliness helps me to get there. Its keen experience fuels my need to express the thoughts, feelings and observances of life going on around me. And while I write, I no longer feel lonely.
I feel like I am in the flow of life, just like the flow of movement around me in the kampong all day long. And as I watch the orange sunset through the criss-cross of electricity wires above the kampong street, I start to feel part of this picture too. I am the bule writer in my room with a view and whether I feel like I belong or not, I am welcomed here, I am known here; for as I know all their movements, they know mine.
The food vendors know what I like to eat and when, the neighbors know all my comings and goings, and my housemates know me most of all. They already tell me how much they will miss me when I leave, and I feel the same.
When I am back in my familiar environment, I know I will be homesick for all the sounds, smells, tastes, warmth and friendliness of kampong life.
And how will I get back here? Write about it, of course.
pasar: market jajanan: snacks pisang goreng: fried plantains bubur ayam: chicken porridge bakso: meatballs jajanan pasar: traditional snacks jalan-jalan: a walk; to take a walk dangdut: popular music with Hindi and Arabic influences Ibu: mother; Mrs. bule: Caucasian, often derogatory
