A foreign view of RI, sans tears or fears

A foreign view of RI, sans tears or fears

Dewi Anggraeni, Contributor, Melbourne, Australia

Semar's Cave, an Indonesian Journal
John Mateer

Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2004, Western Australia

Paperback, 334 pp

In the last decade, readers in Asian countries have come to view
travel accounts with an increasingly critical eye. Asians are
taking themselves and their cultures more seriously, and realize
that a great number of travel journals published in English to
date have been written by Western people about their experiences
in the "Orient".

Often the fact that a story is told by a Westerner about an
Eastern country is enough to make the readers of that country
feel defensive.

In the best of times, it is not hard to offend when writing a
story about people and events which happen in another culture.
Now, it is no longer hectoring or expression of explicit
contempt, or explicit condescension, which cause anger in people,
but various subtle attitudes of superiority that cause different
degrees of irritation.

John Mateer's Semar's Cave, an Indonesian Journal stands out
as an exception to the above because, while he observes
everything around him, he also observes himself.

To begin with, as a poet who has lived in South Africa and
Australia, Mateer has the sensibility and vulnerability which
lend the kind of pull and magic to his book that novels usually
have.

Unlike most travel accounts, memoirs or journals, Semar's Cave
contains no photographic images. The lack of these images is
hugely compensated by Mateer's style of story-telling. He draws
detailed and intricate images with his words, seeming to have his
mental eyes always on alert.

The story, as a journal, is told in a linear fashion, and in
the narrative present, which gives the reader the sensation of
participating in the experience.

Semar's Cave tells as much about Mateer as about the people he
encounters. He does not step on Indonesian soil completely
unaware of its historical background, neither does he feel he
knows so much -- and so much more -- that he could teach the
local people a thing or two.

There is an inherent humility which hovers in the now
conscious, now subconscious level, which readers born and bred in
Indonesia, can fully relate. It is a humility we subconsciously
carry because we know that not one area in Indonesia has
identical mores to another, so wherever we go, we learn something
new.

Mateer metaphorically takes one or two steps each day, further
into the society, always trying to place himself in political and
historical contexts, and wearing his vulnerability on his sleeve.

Semar's Cave is about Mateer's experience during his writing
residency in Medan, North Sumatra, which took place just after
Soeharto's forced exit as president, when tension still filled
the air after the 1998 May riots.

He records the restlessness and fear of those who were
politically aware, and the laid-backness of those who were not,
or at least, who gave the impression of being unaffected, by the
political upheaval. And he does this by recording his own
reactions to his surroundings: the people he met, their place in
history and the social structure, and their self-perception.
Conversely, he also continuously tries to assess people's
reactions to him.

The place, the people and the surroundings are not a mere
backdrop. Mateer paints them as real as he himself and his own
cultural and psychological mores.

Not everybody he meets is beautiful and gorgeous and kind and
eager to help, but neither are they all mean and nasty and
hostile and opportunistic. The reader learns of all sorts of
people in Medan alone. Mateer as a narrator is rarely judgmental
about cultural aspects, yet he is consistently personal. He is
pleased, he is disappointed, he is impressed and he is angry.

Toward the end of the book, the reader also gets a glimpse of
how Indonesia, or rather living in Indonesia, affects some
expatriates, from Australia and elsewhere.

Though you may not get any belly laughs from reading the book,
you may smile from time to time, from its subtle humor, be it
intended or not.

Semar's Cave will be interesting reading for Indonesians as
well as those from other countries, because in it John Mateer has
painted a wholesome people in a wholesome society. They are not
without serious problems, but they are certainly rich in culture
and humanity.