“There is no Internet here,” I heard my friend’s aunt say, as I gaped at the “no signal” warning on my mobile phone. After three hours of narrowly overtaking oil tanker trucks and avoiding collisions with oncoming motorcyclists, our group of 12 managed to survive the journey from Padang, West Sumatra, to Paninjawan, a small kampung near Koto Singkarak.

Coming straight from the macet of Jakarta, the first thing we noticed was the ability to see more than 50 meters of road, seemingly naked without its burden of cars, trucks and motorcycles. But then again, you start noticing a lot of things when your phones stop crying for your constant attention, and e-mails are as distant and abstract as the cities from which they originated.

The first thing I noticed was just how long the day actually is. Without televisions, computers or phones, there really is not much to do once the sun bids farewell and saunters below the horizon. Free of distractions, our group slept soundly and naturally drifted awake around 5 a.m. to the imam’s orotund voice emanating from the local mosque.

 A very strange phenomenon then occurred. People started talking to one another. Moving a carpet outside onto the porch, we all sat on the floor and shared breakfast and tea together. Since there were no concrete fences studded with broken glass severing our connections to the outside world, neighbors from the street were able to casually walk up to us and join our animated discussion.

We listened and paid attention to what each person had to say. When “sorry, let me check my e-mail first,” “hold on, I have to take this call” and “not now; important deadline” are no longer applicable phrases, we woke up to the reality that the world was filled with those peculiar socializing creatures known as humans.

With breakfast over, our group teetered across a wooden bridge over an irrigation channel and strolled across thin ledges hemming the rice paddies, brown and ready for harvest. We paused and listened to a local farmer, as he recalled to which woman each particular paddy belonged. Darting between displeased water buffaloes, protective of their calves, we descended down the precarious mud path towards the dancing ripples of the stream below.

We stood there with the water lapping across our feet. Between the luscious green mountains, topped with banana trees ripe with their bounties, we could hear sounds of wet cloth being slapped across the slippery rocks, as a woman washed her week’s laundry in the stream.

After months in Jakarta, my feet had forgotten the reassuring firmness of dirt paths, the gentle tickling of a grassy field and the refreshing power of a rushing stream’s current. In the kampung, basking in the riches of the earth, the stars and the elements is an integral part of everyday life, not just one reserved for those the occasional holiday.

Alas, so used to city life, I did not know what I could do that did not involve reading electronically displayed text. So when our group decided to buy paint to touch up a local school, I enthusiastically joined them. Much to my surprise, we did not get into a car and drive to a paint store. Instead, we made our way, on foot, through the village. My time in Jakarta made me accustomed to thinking of the people in stores and on the street as obstacles to be outmaneuvered as quickly as possible. So it was quite surprising when our small party paused every few meters to greet a passerby or neighbor.

Often, these “passersby,” as I naïvely categorized them, were in fact relatives, or friends of friends of distant relatives. Regardless, by inviting us into their homes, offering us food and water, and sending us well wishes, my perspective completely changed. Their faces, some chiseled from years of hard work, some glowing with an inner fire, belonged not to distant strangers, but to close kin. Technically they were not related to me by blood, but, from the inclusive way they treated me, they might as well have been.

As we huffed and puffed up the seemingly never-ending hill winding towards the paint shop, we passed men with cowboy hats on their heads, leashed dogs in their hands, and nothing on their feet, making their way to hunt pigs. Skinny cows verging on the edge of malnutrition mooed at us, and tiny chickens chased each other between the dirt paths besides us. Occasionally, a small goat would peer out from under an elevated wooden home. Avoiding piles of rice neatly laid on plastic tarps on the street, we stopped at a neighbor’s home, as she patiently cracked open cocoa pods in preparation for resale in the local market.

When we arrived in the paint shop an hour later, cheerful greetings emanated from the store. We socialized for a few minutes, but politely declined an offer to stop and have a cup of tea. From conversation, we discovered that the store owner used to live in Jakarta. Ultimately she wanted to free herself from the mechanical mores of Jakarta and return to the communal customs of her village. Seeing how easily and happily we were able to transform a typically impersonal transaction into a journey filled with friends, relatives, stories, laughter, and community, the store owner may be on to something.

The writer, a native of Atlanta, Georgia, is currently traveling throughout Southeast Asia.

— All Photos by Munir Winkel

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