Recently I spoke with a young man who said he’d had difficulty overcoming a feeling of shame about being gay. I don’t remember ever feeling shame about that. However, memories of incidents where I behaved badly still haunt me.

One of them occurred in Indonesia, on the bus to Cemoro Lawang.

The mountainous area around Mt. Bromo in Indonesia is home to a small and relatively isolated ethnic group, the Tengger. They can’t grow rice, the Indonesian staple, on these steep slopes and at an average altitude of 6,900 feet, so they plant their crops—corn and potatoes—on terraces and between rows of trees.

Our bus struggled uphill. From my window seat I gazed, fascinated, at the rugged landscape. We passed a Tengger woman climbing a trail than ran parallel to the road. On her back was a load of firewood bigger than she was, but she seemed to be having no trouble. I pulled out my camera and took a photo.

I’ll never forget the outraged stare on her face. Was she some creature in a zoo, on display for the entertainment of wealthy foreigners who rode in comfort while she hauled fuel home to cook food for her family? I sat back in my seat, ashamed. The bus chugged on.

I had no idea what Tengger culture was like, what stories they passed down to their children. Certainly the icons of European civilization, those whose words we had been taught to memorize, meant nothing to her. At the time I couldn’t help thinking of Hamlet, and paraphrasing: “What’s Shakespeare to her, or she to Shakespeare?”

After climbing Mt. Bromo (which I described in the previous post), I took the bus back to Surabaya and caught a train to Yogyakarta. In the station, waiting for the train, I was amused when a 16^th-century English song trickled out of the loudspeakers in between arrival and departure announcements. When did “Greensleeves” make it to Indonesia? I wondered.

While waiting to meet my friend Aline in Yogyakarta I visited Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist temple. It’s massive, all right, but I didn’t find it beautiful.

Neither of us was impressed with the Ramayana ballet, perhaps because we didn’t know the story, didn’t understand the language, and had no idea what characters the dancers portrayed. Also, the gamelan music seemed very alien to me—as does Hindu religion in general. Today I might look in the mirror and say, “Who is Rama to me, or I to Rama?”

Of course a group of Indonesians might find Swan Lake equally incomprehensible.

Aline got sick during our stay in Yogyakarta. Fortunately, my guide book had lists of resources, including the name of a local physician who spoke English. We hired a becak, which is what they call a cycle rickshaw. It was fine going along the level streets, but unfortunately the doctor’s office was up a hill, so Aline had to get out and walk the last block or so. The becak driver pedaled his now empty vehicle to the top, and then collected his fee.

The doctor made a quick diagnosis and prescribed a remedy. During the visit I had the opportunity to chat with him for a bit. He had the air of a benevolent patriarch. I don’t remember how I got to know his wife. The two of us went for a stroll together. She was obviously well educated and spoke excellent English, yet she seemed rather subservient—like she was used to kowtowing to the man of the house.

The doctor’s remedy worked well—Aline was as good as new in a couple of days.

The next day we caught the train to Jakarta. This time we thought we were ready to go native and ride third class. Our conveyance resembled the superannuated New York subway cars I rode as a child, with rattan seats. Some seats had holes in the bottom, but Aline and I managed to find an intact pair. There was a toilet at the one end of the car, but needless to say, no water for flushing—when you pulled a lever, a flap opened at the bottom and deposited your pee or poop on the tracks.

The guidebook had warned us about theft, so I clutched my combination suitcase/backpack closely for the duration of the trip.

I had two weeks left to explore Indonesia before I had to return to my teaching job. I was interested to read that the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra were matriarchal, so I booked a flight to Padang, the provincial capital.

To be continued…

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About “Greensleeves” and the diffusion of music around the globe:

I learned recently that the tune of “Greensleeves” is based on a melodic formula that originated in 16th-century Italy and spread through Europe and across the channel to England. Did that song arrive in Indonesia during those Renaissance years, with the Portuguese sailors who introduced European music to the Spice Islands while trading for cloves and nutmeg? Or was it spread by modern technology? I still don’t know.

Some Indonesian music has moved in the other direction, spreading out around the world. In the 17^th century the Dutch brought slaves from one of their colonies to another, from Indonesia to South Africa. In the mid 20th century, South African musician Miriam Makeba learned a song from the descendants of the Indonesian slaves, the lullaby “Suliram,” and recorded it. I learned it from her LP.

Years later, while camping in Yosemite with my lover Max, we were visited by bears. They climbed the tree where we had hung our food, broke the branch, and tore the packs open when they hit the ground. Though we didn’t dare come out of the tent, I started to sing “Suliram.”

“Why are you doing that?” Max asked.

“So they know we don’t want to hurt them,” I replied.

The bears may or may not have appreciated this introduction of Indonesian folk music to the California wilderness, but they tolerated my off-key rendition and left us alone.