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<< Indonesia                           A Rainy Day In Badui Land

It's difficult to imagine in today's rapidly homogeonising (is there such a word) a place that has truly stuck in a time warp. Especially a place so close to a capital city. Welcome to the Badui people who live in splendid isolation just 38 miles from Rangkasbitung, the setting for Max Havelaar and a mere 4 hours or so from Jakarta.

Imagine a place where there are no roads, no electricity, no traffic jams, no computers. A world where people work the land and are essentially self sufficient. There is no money because there is nothing to buy. They feed themselves, clothe themselves and heal themselves. It sounds like a wet dream for Khieu Samphan the apparent intellect under Pol Pot, an agrarian utopia which cost millions of lives in failed experiments in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, China under Mao and North Korea under pappa Kim and his son but it's a reality in the mountains and valleys of a small area of West Java where the Badui live much as they have done for ever and ever amen.

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The Badui are divided into two. The luar live in close existence to the outside world and often pop outside to trade. They are more liberal if you like, some wear the traditional black garb, others are more relaxed. They act as a protective shell to the dalam or inside. These more conservative types cannot leave the area without permission from the leaders and for example if they want to go to Jakarta or Bandung, which they do sometimes to sell honey, they have to walk and give an indication of how long they will be way. The walk to Jakarta takes 3 days!

As I walked around I was struck by two things. One was the absence of man made noise. What a treat that was to walk in the jungle and hear the noises only of the beasts who live there and the occasional clack-clack as women worked on hand operated mills, knocking up handicrafts for the tourist trade.. The other thing of interest was the apathy that greeted me. There was no one following me, asking me for money, the most I got was sullen soulless eyes staring at me or through me. I couldn't decide.

I went to a couple of villages. Keduketug and Gajeboh. Don't bother waiting around for any public transport cos there ain't any, you're on your own. On my visit it was raining pretty persistently so we had to take shelter on more than one occasion but this was a good opportunity for the guide to earn his bread. About 5000 people live here with 600 dalam I was interested to learn they don't vote in the elections and that they don't have Indonesian ID Cards. Like I said, a country within a country but unlike the socialist dream states in Cambodia outsiders can come and go and there are no minefields blowing up those desparate to leave. One villager said he's been outside but there is nothing there for him which of course is true enough. The village is his life, all he knows.

The guide told me about a German guy who had spent 7 months living in one of the villages. He'd learnt the Sundanese language they used, learnt to eat like them and returned home but other than that visitors are tolerated but little more. On my way back to the gate I was followed by 3 young Badui, armed with parangs. I wasn't sure what they wanted so I stopped to let them pass and they watched them as they moved with sureness of mountain goats. A couple of hundred yards later they returned the favour, letting me pass. I had assumed this was so they could laugh at my cack footed attempts to go down a steep, muddy incline and wait for me to go arse over tit. I disappointed them though by keeping my balance, they should have seen me earlier in my adventure with a fast moving stream and a slippery pebble the size of an Easter egg. At a fork in the tracks I wanted to go left which I was sure was the correct path, in fact I could see the rice silos where we'd sheltered earlier, but they motioned me to go straight on. They were right and I found the exit. As I approached the symbolic gate to take a picture one more time my feet decided they wanted to be airborne and I landed on my arse just as the school was spilling out. Probably made their day that did, seeing a big, fat bule in a yellow jacket sat on his bum in the rain.