Open Writing

The city of Ujung Pandang lost its traditional name of Makassar in the Suharto era, but soon after he departed, the name of Makassar was reinstalled. Ujung Pandang is a fairly non-descriptive name, meaning ‘Pandanas Point’, but the history of the Makassarese goes back many centuries, as does the Bugis. Some readers may remember the name “anti-Makassar”, which is a cloth or nowadays often a paper cover on the back of an armchair or aircraft seat, to prevent the once-famous Makassar hair oil from staining the fabric.

Amongst the visiting expats were various scientists and anthropologists, who would join in with our mad Saturday antics and come along to the Hash for a day out and a few beers. One of these turned out to be well-versed in the Makassarese and their contacts with Australia.

When we first took up residence in our new house, I couldn’t help thinking that a lot of the folk looked somewhat aboriginal, and had the very slim legs so common to these folk. What I soon discovered, to my shame for never having learned this at school, was that the Makassarese had been coming to Australia for hundreds of years, trading with the aboriginal clans along the coast of the Northern Territory. They would sail down each year, and set up camp along the beaches, and dive for trepang, or bech-de-mer, the sea slug.

The aboriginal men would assist with the diving, and some of the women inter-married with the sailors and returned to Makassar with them, mostly to the street where we lived. In Australia, each aboriginal clan had its own language, and no doubt communication between distant tribes might have been a problem.

Makassarese became the lingua franca of the coastal clans, with many words still in use today, “Blander’ being one of them, to describe white people, being a corruption of “Bellander - Hollander”,

When the seasons changed and the wind direction shifted, the trepang fisherman would sail back to Makassar, where the smoked and dried catch would be offered for sale to the Vietnamese, Thais and Chinese, who used these as an aphrodisiac. One of the many items offered for barter was ceramics. These were for ever being offered for sale to tourists and expats, some being hundreds of years old.

The city itself has nothing special to commend it. The Dutch once flattened the place to make a point or two, and it was rebuilt. A large fort was repaired, and is used today as a museum. In the 1930s, the city looked pretty good, with wide streets, public buildings surrounded by parks and gardens, a good water service and an excellent harbour. Following the Japanese invasion and then a war of independence lasting up to 1949, things tended to run downhill. Forty years later, the Japanese were back in town, this time trying to resurrect an aging and leaking water supply that was running well in the 1930s, and plans no-where to be found.

The population had increased enormously, and during the dry season, clean water was in great demand. The Indonesians have abhorrence for rain water tanks, and were aghast when I told them that I collected rain-water on the farm, as there was a common misconception that it would be polluted. If water came from the town water supply, it was OK for washing in, and if boiled, it could be used for drinking. Every house had a water tank on the flat roof, filled from the town water as the water supply was very erratic, and usually only came on in the early hours of the morning. This meant getting up and priming the pump to get water up to the roof.

The city drains were also in great need of enlargement and repair. The Dutch had again installed a good working system of drainage and monsoon drains, and these ran to a canal which flowed into the sea at low tide, but even the simple ‘cat flap’ gate to let water out but not in, was beyond repair.

To the drainage problems must be added the problem of garbage disposal. The open drains outside each house were used for everything, and plastic bags were, in my mind, the greatest cause of minor local flooding and blocking of larger drains in the system. The plastic bags ended up in the sea, and it was like swimming at Kuta Beach in Bali, where swimmers usually have their feet tangled in plastic. Another problem was that the turtles often mistake plastic bags for super-size jelly fish, and these get stuck in their stomach and are a common cause of death.

One of our expat friends was an engineer from Poland, and he often recounted how the local government didn’t want to associate themselves with the new drainage program, as ‘it wasn’t going to work’. The main reason behind this was that Makassar is extremely flat, and the locals couldn’t see that the water was going to go anywhere. However, following a very wet monsoon season, and those drains already completed working fine, there was much more cooperation, and greatly reduced flooding in that area.

The university campus was a sea of water after heavy rains, and it was not unusual to see a car on its side, having misjudged where the road ended and the drains began. One of the most modern buildings was a large satellite communications complex, which was used for campuses in the eastern part of the country to hold conferences and exchange research and academic ideas.

This was one of the few buildings where there was carpet on the floor, white glazed tiles being the norm. At the first sign of rain, all carpets would be rolled up and stored off the floor. As the satellite complex was on ‘high ground’, about 60cm higher than the rest of the campus, I enquired why the carpets had to come up. In this case it was not flooding, but rain coming through the ceiling from all sides.

It was clearly a case of blocked gutters, and I asked when they were last cleaned. No-one had any idea if they had ever been cleaned, and anyway, the department had insufficient funds to pay the $1.00 necessary to hire a man to clean up. A local bamboo ladder was purchased by Mike, and I volunteered to go up and check things out. As suspected, the gutters were full of debris from the time of construction, plus a few years’ worth of algae and grass had completed the job.

We donated the necessary dollar to employ someone for the day, and left the ladder with them, and the matter was fixed. As I alluded earlier, taking the initiative and possibly offending the boss must be avoided at all times.

In fact a Dutch scientist did a survey of staff attitudes between some Asian countries and the USA, and Indonesia came out strongly as ‘keeping the boss happy’ (asal bapak senang) was more important than production targets or even family matters.