Guess What? Tubagus Bachtiar Rifai

A parent's love sometimes unintentionally brings trouble to their children, but noted agriculture expert Tubagus Bachtiar Rifai never thought it would lead to the extreme: Crocodiles.

"Once a week I used to contact my son who was on duty on Buru Island from the radio at the Defense Ministry," said the former head of the Indonesian Science Institute.

His son Firmansyah, a medical doctor, was posted on the island for political prisoners in his early professional years during the 1960s.

"When he told me and his mother that we could just call him once in two weeks we were so happy," he said, "We thought he had begun to settle down."

But they were quite wrong. "He had very different reasons. It turned out that every time we called him he had to cross a river full of crocodiles." This, said Rifai, was very difficult to envision for an elderly citizen in Jakarta.

"I could only imagine crocodiles in the zoo," said Rifai, 69, enjoying a reunion last week with another former head of the institute, Samaun Samadikun. (anr)