Cilacap Town

South-Central Java, Indonesia, arrived by the Express from Jogja that was hailed at the station as it was on its way toward the road. With Paijo the becak driver guiding everything was easier, and a decent translator into the bargain. 

The Express meant no change of vehicle would be needed, four dollar fare. Along the road passengers hailed the old 70’s wagon roadside, while as part of his job the assistant conductor hung from the rear door calling to any others that looked likely.

The young assistant conductor, as Paijo had termed him, helped haul the luggage—usually large, expertly tied bags and boxes—and rapped on the curtain-rail with a steel disk to signal the driver for stops. The assistant did not collect fares, that was left to the senior up front, who made his rounds every so often. Chaperoning young girls was the extra benefit for the young chap. One pretty teen properly scarved and wrapped had a solicitous father awaiting her at her stop, a man who jogged for the door in order to help his girl down. Nevertheless, fallen to the assistant, the lad conveyed without boasting shortly after she had alighted. Thus far twice she had been his, and biasa, biasa, good hopes for again and again.

Some kind of police or military conference in town made the search for a room difficult, five hotels all full to the gills. Eventually a Rp550k was taken after almost three weeks of the cost-cutting losmen in Jogja at Rp9k. Hot water, aircon and fresh towel luxury.

Unexpectedly, Paijo came from a fairly well-to-do family, the mother in her mid-seventies head of a large kindergarten where a clean room had been offered. The second son Seno —wheat in Serbo-Croat—drove a perfectly maintained old 4WD Jeep that proved useful in the final round of room-hunting.

In Jogja Paijo was now in a Rp350k monthly room, rather than sleeping in his becak, but of course the old mother still fretted over her eldest son. 

We made a party for dinner at a lesehan not far from the water on the second night, where Paijo's table-manners caused some embarrassment. There had been a short tour in the Jeep searching an appropriate eating place for a pescatarian, including a pass along the beach where the raging sea was sighted and the wooded coast of Nusa Kambangan. The previous month the Australian Bali drug pair had been executed there

The rice fields en route on the bus from Jogja had been captivating after Singapore. Wide, wide fields peopled only sporadically with bent figures in straw hats. In Montenegrin alpine regions the first Spring shoots of green in the hills were unexaggeratedly said to hurt the eyes. Here on the Equator the fecundity was more comfortable. What was striking here was the extent and scale of the intensive cultivation. It seemed highly improbable that every stalk of rice visible had been planted by hand one after another over so many days. The scale was immense, defying all imagining.

A couple of days before departure Paijo had wanted kuda for supper—horse flesh. It had run out at the street stall where it could usually be found and Paijo had settled for a skewer of emprit. The emprit fed on rice stalks in the paddies, Paijo had explained. Outside the bus window tall white birds with a wide wing-span resembling ibis had wheeled over the fields and landed in no doubt ravaging clusters. The skewer Paijo had taken held small portions of brown coloured, soft-looking flesh, like innards.

No, not emprit here, Paijo explained. Those other birds that he gave another name were difficult to trap.

In a front yard of an old handsome crumbling house on Jendral A. Yani, the main street of Cilacap, a pair of white plaster storks from the Australian lawns of the sixties came to life passing the front fence. Colourful, striking, largely mute birds were on offer around the main market, garishly coloured love birds among them. As in most cities, there were no birds in the air. The caged birds through the urban kampungs of Jogja were much less common in Cilacap, only occasionally an overhead twitter in the town-centre.

Raised footpaths reminiscent of the old cowboy boardwalks delivered a walker from the dirty roadway, where honking drivers demanded passage. There was a good deal of the wild west through the town. 

Rickety wooden structures, cantina eateries and numerous Mexican hombres loitering. After Jogja, the Chinese store-keepers and the churches reappeared.

A short trip revealed little new of the Malay world. We had missed the chance to explore the paddy with a friend of Paijo’s who had offered escort. Among the other suggestions had been the prospect of an investigation of the little peasant huts, where people escaped the sun and took their noon-day rest. The makeshift shelters that rose no more than three feet high dotted the fields. On their bicycles workers wheeled large bundles of produce along raised and tamped narrow ridges. It was mainly men out in early June; the women had likely played a larger role in the planting.

At night away from the main strip the streets were dark. In front of the supermarket on Jendral Yani tables, chairs and various stalls gathered a variety of groups—families, a mainland Chinese work-crew it looked and a group of forward young girls heavily made-up. Had there been a single other Caucasian sighted in three days? There must have been many in recent weeks with all the attention on the Bali pair.

Language difficulties at the train station brought some confusion over the return leg back. Paijo and Seno were in fact right: there was no direct train to Jogja. The only train leaving the platform at Cilacap went one-way to Jakarta. If one wanted to head east by train, Kroya an hour away was the link.

It had to be bus again, 4-5 hours if we were lucky. (From Kroya the train was little over two.) We dithered over the alternatives; in the end making the connection at Kroya with minutes to spare. Aircon would make Paijo ill, he said; it would be the cheaper bus for him.

          While we awaited the Kroya bone-rattler, a convoy of either police or military streamed by sirens blaring. There must have been a dozen and a half 4WDs, a large Polici Akademi bus and sundry others, lights flashing, sirens and horns, a megaphone added from one of the lead vehicles.

The procession was staggered: two or three cars; a minute or two gap and two/three or more others. Gaps, more cars, sirens and lights. Shiny, late model vehicles, though not luxury items, mostly with darkly tinted windows. Little attention was given to the procession by the bystanders. Paijo had ignored the announcement from the leading vehicles and could not provide translation.

The convoy had torn along as rapidly as they could on the narrow, busy roadway. Elders on bicycles kept a steady posture as they pedalled along. People on the street presented the usual bedraggled frieze while these chariots thundered. There was a touch of the surreal in the circumstance. One recalled old filmic recreations from China and Japan where a local potentate or daimyo passed through a barefoot, kneeling populace.

Some older officers of high rank had been observed at the Chinese eatery at the main Jendral A. Yani traffic intersection, where large banquet tables had been crowded with impeccable uniforms and high-polished boots. The manager and staff accommodating the gathering were clearly flustered in their duties. The younger troops displayed a familiar swagger and confidence in what was clearly the highly-prized, resplendent uniform. In their demeanour and manner the seniors suggested another order of magnitude in their standing.

For many weeks and months the power struggle between the police, the military and the KPK—the Corruption Commission—with all the allied business and political interests, together with the new administration of Jokowi working against years of accumulated privilege and entitlement, had been played out in the newspapers. Accusations and denials, claim followed by counter claim; functionaries ignoring court orders, legal devices manipulated, abrupt forceful actions, bargaining and temporary strategic truces. It was difficult to cast the Javanese into the historically documented role of brutal, pitiless killers and murderers. Some minor inkling was afforded in Cilacap.