Gozney recalls Indonesian zest, spice

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."