JP/xx/PLURAL

JP/xx/PLURAL

Spicy distinctions in a Betawi-Palembang marriage

Emmy Fitri
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Of all the cross-cultural marriages that are possible, one would
think that a couple from Java and Sumatra would have the least
difficulty in adjusting to each other. But that is often not the
case as we find out with Yulian and Arnita

Dinner was ready, served on the round dining table.

A bowl full of sayur pucung (Betawi-style fish soup), rice,
fried gabus (freshwater fish), and a selection of raw vegetables,
or lalap. A pot of hot tea stood next to a water jug.

The food was enough for all. There were at least nine adults
with five noisy toddlers and children. All related. The family
had gathered to recite the Koran that evening.

And while others cheerfully scooped the food onto their glass
plates, Yulian Fajri, who had already started eating, suddenly
rose from his seat and dashed into the kitchen, not far away from
the dining table.

Nisin, the householder, Yulian's father-in-law, started
giggling. "He cannot eat without sambal (chili sauce)," he said
between his chuckles.

Yulian's wife Arnita just looked at the kitchen for a second
and then returned to her food.

A few minutes later, 30-year-old Yulian was back in his seat.
He placed a small chili pounder next to his plate.

"Different tastes. Sumatran tastes are so strange. Breakfast,
lunch and dinner with sambal," Nisin said.

Sambal, perhaps, may seem a mere triviality but for Yulian it
is basic. He grew up with it, and now he swears that he could not
swallow rice without it.

The advice of his mother is still clear in his mind: "Hala
nyakah bini yang dek tau nyambal" (Don't you marry a woman who
cannot make sambal).

Advice which went unheeded by Yulian when he married Arnita.

Love, apparently, conquers all. Including a passion for
sambal.

"I was frustrated during our first week of marriage. I rarely
ate at home and she often got angry because of that. Then I took
the initiative. I taught her how to make sambal," Yulian
recalled.

Try though she may, even Arnita's best efforts did not satisfy
her husband's passion.

"It was a bit tasteless. It doesn't have to be hot, just
tasty," Yulian recalled as his dragged on his cigarette, sated
after a tasty sambal-filled dinner.

"Now I make my own sambal. She can cook anything she likes,
but I make the sambal."

In his hometown of Baturaja, sambal was a compulsory item on
the family dining table. It could be any kind of sambal, from
just a plain pounded chili and garlic, to young mango sambal or
the typical calok sambal (with shrimp or fish paste mixed in).

Baturaja is a relatively idle town, despite the nearby
presence of a cement factory and at least three oil palm
plantations. It is the capital of Ogan Komering Ulu Regency, and
is located some 120 kilometers north of Palembang.

The son of a tailor father and a kindergarten teacher mother,
Yulian left his hometown in 1997 to seek his luck on Java Island.
He went to Sukabumi, West Java, where he worked for a timber
firm for one year. He left the job following an accident which
resulted in his left thumb being severed by a timber cutting
machine.

His brothers and sisters -- all married to neighbors and
friends -- enjoyed "easy lives" with their parents.

"I just had to get out. Life was too predictable there. If you
didn't own land you became a civil servant, or ended up
unemployed, waiting for your inheritance," Yulian said.

The second of five siblings, Yulian graduated from a technical
high school. His modest education did not deter him from seeking
work in Jakarta, which has little mercy for unskilled and
inexperienced migrants.

But Yulian took any kind of job he could get, from working as
a porter with a loading company to a job on an offshore drilling
platform. Not an easy life.

Rude barriers

Arnita believes that her two-year-old marriage remains strong.
The friction that occasionally occurs is part of the ups and
downs of a balanced union.

But she still doesn't comprehend why her husband is so
insistent on her learning to speak his language -- a native
dialect of Palembang called 'Ogan'.

Living and working in Jakarta, she sees no point in her and
her future children learning such an obscure language.

The dialect, though, remains a catharsis for Yulian.

"When he gets mad or there is something he wants to complain
about, he uses his native tongue. I just reply in Bahasa
Indonesia, I don't care now," she said.

She has also learnt that only time will allow her husband to
make the necessary adjustments to accept the predominantly
Betawi-style diets and culture prevailing in her father's home.

At first she found it "rude" for her husband to, for example,
leave food untouched on the dinner table and go get something
from outside.

Arnita said her husband did not like Betawi cuisine at all,
claiming it tasted funny.

"I'm not a bad cook. In fact, I have cooked for my father
since I was in junior high school. We do eat sambal, but it is
not the kind he wants," said Arnita, whose mother passed away in
1999.

"But I believe he'll get used to it," she said.

The couple had a brief courtship with Yulian proposing only
after their second meeting. Although he considered ethnicity
important, he initially did not know his future wife's ethnic
background.

"Eventually I did ask. I am from Sumatra and make a living in
other people's homes. I am a guest here so it is important for me
to adjust to the manners commonly practiced here," Yulian
claimed.

He said he was compelled to "behave well" especially because
Sumatran people were easily associated with negative stereotypes.

The Bataks, he said, were often labeled as being rough,
outspoken and short-tempered, while Palembang people were stamped
as criminals.

When Yulian and Arnita agreed -- over the telephone -- to
begin a relationship, they admitted that they were both excited
at the prospect of being paired with someone from a relatively
different background.

Eight months later they were married.

Arnita who was then 20 years old said she agreed to marry him
because she thought it was about time for her to settle down.

"Girls of my age in my extended family have already got one or
two children. I am considered old," she remarked.

She also gave up her job in a garment factory in Cakung, East
Jakarta, preferring to become a housewife. Now seven-months
pregnant, Arnita is looking forward to a new addition to the
family.

Good and bad

From their initial unexpected meeting on a bus, Yulian and
Arnita had to deal with serious challenges as their marriage
neared.

These problems often centered around the day of the wedding
and how it should be held, in the Betawi or Sumatran style.

The Betawi people still believe that there are good and bad
days for a wedding. In a Betawi wedding, Yulian would have to
provide various seserahan (gifts) for each stage of the
ceremony's five stages.

But Yulian believed that the wedding would be much simpler and
cheaper if it were held in Baturaja, based on Sumatran customs.

Being the youngest of seven siblings, Arnita however was the
favorite of everyone in her family. And her elders were insistent
on throwing a special wedding for her -- their way.

A potential impasse was avoided when Arnita's father decided
at the last minute to just conduct an Islamic ceremony.

"That basically solved the problem," she said.

The wedding became the most modest reception the family had ever
hosted. A moderate-sized tent was erected in front of the house
with only neighbors and relatives invited.

The house, an old building with a high ceiling, is located in
an alley, some 80 meters from Jl. Raya Bogor. In the late 1970s,
it used to be the only building on a 200-square-meter plot.

Little by little the land was sold by Nisin for his children's
needs -- education, weddings, etc

What's left are just three small houses on the right-hand side
of the main house that are rented out.

Even though many native Betawi have been pushed to the fringes
due to the rapid growth of Jakarta, they maintain strong linkages
and retain the habit of living in close proximity to one another.
Arnita's family is no different.

"I can always find aunts or uncles to talk to here. Or I can
invite my nephews or nieces to accompany me at home. They live
not far from here," she said.

Despite differing perceptions, she does not believe that
marrying a Betawi man would have been any easier.

Arnita's says that she once asked her husband why he did not
try to find a Baturaja girl or a Sumatran girl to marry.

"Sumatran girls are hard to handle," she quoted Yulian as
saying. "They don't listen to their husbands."

"He said that when fell in love with me, he didn't know what
background I came from."

As their marriage matures, both Yulian and Arnita are learning
how things like sambal and language are not issues that should
cause friction in their marriage. But neither should they be
ignored.

The key is to find a compromise.

"I let him make his own sambal as long as he eats at home. He
may use his dialect at home or with the children later as long as
I am not forced to speak it too."