At night, close your ears

At night, close your ears

In Jakarta, the hurly burly national capital, the virtue of
politeness seems to have been gradually driven to the outskirts.
The humming tune of Muslims glorifying the name of God every
evening during this holy month of Ramadhan is drowned out by the
deafening explosions of firecrackers. The sound of the exploding
fireworks, tossed up or thrown on the ground by young children,
is such a nuisance that the entire community, regardless of
religious affiliation, feels greatly disturbed. Many have begun
to lose their tolerance. Parents, notably those who are not so
well educated, are at a loss as to how they can teach their
children to behave.

Isn't there anyone out there with good manners, capable of
teaching these parents? Today, people jokingly say that even the
devil himself has left the city to seek asylum in another, more
civilized province.

Some of the fathers who frequent the mosque every Ramadhan
evening have complained that the problem of children's education
is not an easy issue to address in the current drive toward
modernization. They once took their children to places of
worship, but the youngsters would just make a lot of noise and
disturb the serenity of the atmosphere. Now they ask their
children to go elsewhere to play. The result? Children lighting
firecrackers, closing their ears and throwing them in the air or
on the ground.

This is perhaps the noisiest by-product of the emergence of
ill-behaved urban children, although lately only one casualty has
been reported in a firecracker-related incident.

A baby was killed when a fire gutted the home of a firecracker
maker in downtown Jakarta, after his products, which he had not
had time to sell, exploded in July this year. But in the
provinces, in incidents not involving children, firecrackers have
claimed many lives in all sorts of locations, from a traditional
religious school to a boat.

Ethnic Betawi (the indigenous Jakartans) have been playing
with these dangerous and disturbing toys for a long time. This
small time game is of course not recorded by history but the
Betawi people have been very much influenced by Chinese culture.
The Chinese themselves were here long before the Dutch and their
number sharply increased after Governor General Jan Pieterszoon
Coen renamed Jakarta as Batavia and made it the capital of the
Dutch colonial power. From the beginning, the Chinese had
undergone acculturation with the local people and married into
the local population, while most locals spoke the Malay dialect
and later called themselves Betawi, a corruption of Batavia.

Though the Chinese influence on the indigenous people was very
strong among the Betawi living on the outskirts of the city,
there was also a strong Arab influence, especially among those
living in other parts of the city.

The Arab influence was felt particularly strongly through
Islamic teachings but the biggest Chinese festival, Tjap Go Meh,
attracted Betawis as well as the Chinese themselves. Tjap Go Meh
falls on the fifteenth day of the Chinese New Year, which also
marks the beginning of spring. Later, the festival grew so large
that it was celebrated in different parts of the city on
different nights. When Glodok, in the downtown area, was given
the honor of opening festivities the whole of Jl. Gajah Mada was
closed to traffic from Harmonie to Kota. The Betawis were proud
of saying that old women who never went out even during the Idul
Fitri holidays ventured into the streets to celebrate Tjap Go
Meh. Firecrackers also played an important part in the festival,
although it was nothing compared to the hullabaloo we see today.

But in 1954 the Jakarta authorities banned the Betawis from
taking part in the door-to-door begging dragon dances, which
followed the main Tjap Go Meh festival. And tragically, in 1960,
the military authority, which ruled supreme under the protection
of president Sukarno, banned Tjap Go Meh for good.

In any case, given the close-knit relationship between the
Chinese and Betawi communities, it would be difficult to abolish
the firecracker-burning tradition. The chairman of the Indonesian
Ulemas Council (MUI), Prof. Buya Hamka, has tirelessly urged
people here to scrap the tradition because it represents neither
Indonesian nor Islamic culture, but the people remain adamant.
The problem is made far more complex by the reluctance of the
police to uncover and close the firecracker home industry in
rural areas and right here in town, where it operates in the full
view of the public.