People had questioned her sanity in wanting to come here in the first place, but it was a dream. A dream like the one I’d had since I was a little boy as my grandfather toldstories of clearing paths through the jungle, examining rocks and soil for telltale signs, and finally marking a particular spot with ‘x’. His ‘x’ had turned into a gushing oil well and one of the biggest wildcat fields of the 1950’s. It was the same field that Exxon was still pulling thousands of barrels a day out of.
But it wasn’t the oil that had brought Jan to Sumatra. It was the way her Dutch grandfather, like my American grandfather, had described the people, the orangutans, and the jungle itself. It was a vision of a wild Eden imprinted on her that she had needed to see for herself.
The people on the bus with her were mostly Indonesian. Ethnic Indonesian. Acehnese Muslims with boxes of fruit, chickens, or bundles of clothing stuffed into the utility bags made from tarps too worn to be useful as anything larger. Some Christian Batak people on their way to the city of Medan. The Christians looked nervous. They had every reason to. Aceh was a mostly Muslim province. Throughout Indonesia battles between ethnic Christians and Muslims turned into deadly scenes rarely seen on Western TV.
The bus passed half dozen Mosques under construction in the first ten minutes. At each one women in full veils stood holding baskets on long handles and severe looking men with long beards and black headgear sat in covered shelters watching as passing motorists paid tribute to Allah and contributed much needed funds toward the construction of the Mosques.
The road was split up by makeshift roadblocks and orange highway cones. The bus had to stop and occasionally men with guns would come on the bus asking for additional contributions. The driver refused each time. Each time Jan expected a confrontation.
The bus hit the countryside and began picking up speed on the rough road. Jan began dozing She bounced in her seat and wok with a start. She looked out the window and saw the orange cones. It didn’t occur to her sleepy brain that there was no Mosque in sight. Then she was too distracted by the men in camouflage carrying automatic weapons. She saw the military vehicles as the bus came to a stop.
The soldier motioned for the driver to open the door. This time he could not say no. The door opened and three men came on the bus. They were small and looked hungry. They wore regimental patches identifying them as Indonesian Regular Army. A Javanese unit.
The oldest of the three, who looked no older than 17, spoke rapidly in Indonesian. She understood the part about rebel activity in the area and this being a routine check. She got her passport ready. Each of the soldiers spoke with the people on the bus. Sometimes they took their packages or bundles and passed them out the windows to other soldiers waiting outside. She presumed it was to search them for weapons.
The oldest one got to her. “Oh, Hello Miss…you Dutch, okay?” His smile didn’t comfort her. “Very nice bag…here…let me see.” Suddenly she was very glad she had put the bulk of her cash in the money belt she wore. The little bit of cash she carried was pulled from the bag and put in the boys pockets. “ You very good to help Indonesian Soldiers fight hoodlums and rebels, you have more bags here?” “No,” she swallowed and tried to look brave. ”This is all I have.”
“Maybe you like to stay with soldiers for a while…” he laughed and said something to the other two soldiers who also laughed. The three finished their examination of the bus and its passengers without having looked at anyone’s paperwork. Jan saw them take a few pieces of Jewelry from other passengers. They didn’t return the parcels they had unloaded. They left the bus and motioned the driver to drive on. The soldiers on the side of the road laughed and tossed things back and forth to each other as the bus rolled away.
The bus had gone perhaps five miles when it again slowed down. This time the men holding guns were dirtier. There were fewer of them than there had been soldiers. They didn’t look nearly as happy as the soldiers of a few minutes before. In fact they looked miserable and bedraggled. Some of them wore dirty bandages on their arms, faces, heads, or legs.
They didn’t speak Indonesian. They didn’t bother with asking the driver to open the door. They screamed out commands in Acehnese and fired their weapons in the air. The driver opened the door and everyone hurriedly got off the bus.
“What’s happening?” Jan asked the man who was next to her, ”What did they say?”
“They say we get off the bus quickly or they kill us all. Quickly, get off the bus.”
Jan stood up with the others and got off the bus. Several of the rebels outside were separating the men from the women and children. Men on the left, everyone else on the right. The rest of the men, boys really, were rifling through all of the contents of the bus. Tossing the remainder of the bags and packages out the door and windows into a pile that was pitifully small.
A man a little older than the rest of his comrades approached Jan. “Where you put your things? You tell me now? Where is money and things?” Trying to control her fear, Jan looked at the man “The soldiers took nearly everything just five miles back…they took it all..we have nothing left.”
“Foreign slut, you lie…no soldiers this close,” he was panicking. He screamed out orders to the rest of the rebels who threw their haul into a battered taxi truck then pointed their guns at the men and motioned them into the jungle on the other side of the road.
Jan couldn’t understand what it was they were saying, but she understood the tragic cries of the women and children around her. She understood the menacing motions of the gunmen as the men moved into the dense jungle. She understood the sound of sustained automatic weapons that came from the jungle.
“Why? Why?” She tried to get one of the women around her to explain.
“They say we helped the soldiers and so have hurt them. We must pay with the lives of our men.” It was a stoic young woman who explained. Jan suddenly wished she had given the rebels her money belt, maybe they would have let them go then. This was so unthinkable, so unbelievable. So unreal.
After about a minute of silence there came a rustling from the jungle. The men, all of the men, both rebels and those from the bus emerged from the brush. The passengers looked grim, scared, and humiliated, but alive.
The older rebel began to laugh when he saw the confusion on her face. “You tell people that Aceh must be free, you tell them we show mercy on you people, even though you help the soldiers. Next time, maybe we be not so nice.”
He spoke to the rest of the people, most likely translating what he had just said to Jan. The rebels around him began to laugh. They motioned with their guns that everyone should get back on the bus and then they melted into the jungle.
Everyone loaded back on the bus. It was silent for the rest of the trip. They passed several mosques when they approached the outskirts of Medan, but no one had anything left to give.
The Polynesian Hostel Beach Club Waikiki, Hawaii
(After four months in Asia I returned to the Pacific Northwest and lived in my Volkswagen until shortly after September 11th, 2001 when I bought a ticket to Hawaii and somehow became the manager of the coolest hostel in Hawaii.)
”Hey girls, wanna drink some beer, don’t worry, I’ve got condoms.”
It made everyone laugh except the Japanese girls walking by, who walked a little faster in their high platform sneakers and frayed denim skirts, fanny packs accentuating their perfectly shaped asses as they moved in that shuffling pigeon toe walk they all seemed to share. They didn’t really understand what had been said but correctly assumed by the raunchy laughter that followed it that it was inappropriate.