Candlelit Stories

Power outages are almost a daily occurrence in Jambi and their regularity has instilled a pattern in life.  If the power goes out around noon I know it will be out for about three hours, leaving me without a fan for the hottest part of the day.  It also regularly goes out at 6pm and then I know it will last for one or maybe two hours.  My family here takes this inconvenience in stride by lighting a few candles and I like to think that I am helping when I loan Sumi my headlamp while we cook dinner in the dark.  Last night with the electricity out, everyone gathered to eat together on the floor in the living room and chat.  Now sometimes I let my mind wander when there are full blown Indonesian conversations going on around me but I guess I am getting a little better at the language and could not help but pick up that Bapak (Sumi’s father) and Sumi’s niece were talking about the Japanese.  This man is 72 years old (and looks even older) so I was extremely interested to hear what he might be saying about back in the day of colonialism.  Quick history: the Dutch maintained colonial rule over Indonesia until 1942 when the Japanese arrived and “liberated” Indonesia, occupying it until their surrender in 1945 (during which time 4 million Indonesians died from famine and forced labor) and Sukarno’s subsequent declaration of Indonesian independence. 

Well tonight Bapak was telling us about life under the Japanese; he was just 7 years old living on Java at the time, but remembers his family reduced to eatting banana skins, grass, and whole cassava plants because they were always hungry under Japan’s harsh rule.  Forced slave labor was rampant then and according to Bapak’s story, his father ran away from the Japanese three times before they finally captured him and put him to work building roads and bridges.  However, even while working for the Japanese there was not any more food.  Then Sumi’s niece Ocha asked if life was harder under the Dutch or the Japanese and he replied that the Dutch were still worse. 

The conversation kind of died there but I was deeply intrigued by this narrative and insight into a history I studied at college.  It is amazing to be living with someone who has lived through colonialism, a courageous and successful independence movement, decades of authoritarian rule, and now democracy.  I would love to learn more from him but will save it for the next “lampu mati” night.