Gozney recalls Indonesian zest, spice

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia is many things to many people, but for departing British Ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Gozney, it is the mixture of the smell of mango fruit, durian, es kelapa muda (young coconut in ice and syrup), and kretek (clove) cigarettes that make him sigh, "Ah yes, I'm very glad to be back".

It is also a place of memorable nature adventures, a rich place to indulge in birdwatching, a friendly country where one is free to chat with local people, and an exciting place to watch the changes brought about by reformasi.

Indeed, Gozney's attachment to Indonesia goes beyond the four years he acted as ambassador for the British government here. The 52-year-old has not only traveled extensively across the country, but can also speak the language fluently.

But despite being named among the best speakers of Bahasa Indonesia at the 8th Indonesian Language Congress last year, Gozney modestly downplayed the win saying it was because he was constantly in the spotlight explaining his country's foreign policy in Afghanistan and its travel advisory against Indonesia.

"I don't kid myself, it's not because I'm the best foreigner who can speak Indonesian. I'm not the most fluent Indonesian speaker, but it's because I was the one who came to people's attention because I kept popping up on the television screen and was always been interviewed on the radio," he told The Jakarta Post recently.

Gozney first started studying Bahasa Indonesia in 1974, when he was assigned as third secretary to the British Embassy in Jakarta a year after he joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

His first impression of Jakarta at the time was that it was a reasonably well organized and lightly populated city. But, of course, that was because he had spent a few days in Bombay, India, prior to his arrival at Jakarta's Halim Perdana Kusuma Airport.

"My immediate reaction on getting off the plane is, oh this is quite well organized, when I say lightly populated that sounds silly, but this was definitely an improvement on the pressures, the one felt in Bombay," Gozney said, chuckling at the recollection.

He spent his first six weeks in the country studying Bahasa Indonesia at the Yogyakarta Teacher's Training Institute (IKIP) and lived with the family of a lecturer of English there. He then underwent another six weeks of the same kind of training at IKIP Bandung, West Java.

"It's interesting. Sometimes the best people to teach a foreign language to newcomers like us are the people who normally teach English to Indonesians, because they could see my problems as a mirror image of the problems their pupils had learning English," Gozney commented.

The combination of formal training and a willingness to mingle with ordinary people proved effective for Gozney, and after a year he could conduct conversations in Bahasa Indonesian with ease.

"It took about a year to feel at home, to feel comfortable, to be bold enough, to be brave enough, to go out and meet lots of people."

"You need to get to a certain point where you can speak the language well enough to make the Indonesians feel comfortable going into Indonesian, preferring to talk in Indonesian even with a foreigner who was still learning," he said.

Although admitting that he has not been doing it much these days, Gozney said that one of his breakthrough points in speaking Indonesian fluently was when he started to dream in Bahasa Indonesia.

"If you've been busy learning it, and you've been talking to lots of people, and you wake up in the morning and suddenly you realize your dream was in Indonesian, from that point onwards then it is much easier to talk to people and to find that your conversations were a mixture of things".

Gozney's first term in Indonesia ended in 1977, and after assignments in Argentina -- where he met his wife Diana -- Spain, and Swaziland, he came back to Indonesia as Ambassador in 2000.

What he discovered was a very different landscape from what he had left behind, but that the things he liked about the Indonesian character was still there.

"It's only quite special countries I think where the combination of a friendly, genuine, welcome to foreigners, a genuine wish to talk to foreigners, meet foreigners, make friends with foreigners, if the foreigners want to do that ... but not to the point where they will hassle you, where they will press you, where you will feel overwhelmed by people's interest, and that's pretty general in Indonesia even if you go a long way away from the places where foreigners usually go. And that's a nice combination."

The Gozneys' love of nature and bird life was indulged to the fullest on their holidays and trips across Indonesia. Gozney, his wife and two sons enjoyed a week on a phinisi ship in 2002 traveling from Lombok, Sumbawa, and Flores; a diving holiday in Bunaken, North Sulawesi, for the new year; and several trips along the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan.

In the bird's head of Papua, Gozney encountered the endangered Black Palm Cockatoo (Probosciger aterrimus) in the wild, "a very big black cockatoo with a crest and a red face, and it is a splendid bird".

His fascination with bird life had begun as he was growing up in England during his many bicycling trips around his hometown in Oxfordshire.

"There's something about those little creatures with a highly developed metabolism, highly developed physiology. They are very complicated small creatures, very light in weight and yet very powerful for their weight, otherwise they wouldn't be able to fly. And that is bewitching for some of us, (while) other people are not interested," Gozney said going off into a reverie.

Gozney's next assignment may not be in an Asian country, it may be "a long way away from here", and it may even be "a challenging country".

But some parts of the life he had in Indonesia will always remain with him, "being able every morning to get up and go for a swim before breakfast ... life in the tropics has its real charms like that, and that I enjoy a lot."