What A Challenging Country

Sometimes it is difficult when my foreign friends ask me about Indonesia, I have to think carefully before answer their questions. How is the situation in Indonesia? What about the Indonesian culture? How is Indonesians’ lifestyle? Believe me, it is not that easy to answer these kinds of questions. Indonesia is a pluralistic country, so it is difficult to generalize the situations. Indonesia contains more than 13.000 (or 17.000 yeah???) islands, its people has hundreds of local languages with more local dialects, different cultures, different lifestyles and so on.

Once I explained a friend about how plural Indonesia is, he asked me what united Indonesia. At that time there was only one thing on my mind, Indonesian language. Bahasa Indonesia is our official language, so mostly Indonesians speak 2 languages, bahasa Indonesia and their local language, not all though, some speak Bahasa Indonesia and English/Chinese/Urdu. Now, I think there is another thing that unites Indonesians, it is disaster, both natural and human made disasters.

Indonesia lies on the fire belt, so it’s been pretty shaking for centuries. Earthquake here and there in this country, ranging from minor ones (5 Richter Scale is still considered as minor ones for most people here in this country, especially after the tsunami in Aceh…Oh…it’s a minor one, only 5 point something) to major ones. It’s only Kalimantan (Indonesia’s part of Borneo aka my hometown) is the safest island in Indonesia, in term of earthquake vulnerability only. From Sumatera to Papua, all is shaking. Then sure another most common phenomenon, volcano eruption, again, it’s here and there (but Kalimantan). Indonesia has hundred volcanoes, some are the most active in the world, Mount Merapi for instance. Only these two? Nope…still a long list here, starting from flood, landslides, fire in the jungles, some armed conflicts, well you just name it. Just hopefully the eternal snow on Jayawijaya keeps quiet and sits still. I just can’t imagine if the mount is erupted and melting the eternal snow…it must be horrifying.

So, what unites Indonesia? Not the language, not the culture, but its proneness to disasters.