Java Homecoming

Being Filipino, I have the tendency to think that all roads lead to the Manila, it being the center of the universe. I fail to add of course, my universe. And being the center of the universe, it builds its own reality, an overwhelming preponderance of seriousness and gravity which travels with me, along with the actual baggage that I have to weigh and check in. Can you imagine how much more the airlines could charge if they could only figure out a method of weighing the local worries and concerns that passengers bring with them when they check at the airport?



Fortunately, and with satisfying consistency, the premise that Manila is the center of the universe thoroughly shatters on each trip. There are, it seems, people and world out there that don’t give a hoot about Manila and could not care less if it sank like Atlantis into the sea. They have the right idea. The right
perspective. That release and relief is why I must travel. To get my head right, I need to break free of Manila’s mind-numbing concentricity.



The last trip I took was to Java. No, not the programming language which takes precedence when you Google up Java. No, not the hoary World War II-vintage term for coffee that’s quickly
going the way of the dinosaurs, if it hasn’t already. I mean Java, the island in Indonesia. Yes, it’s still there. No, it’s not an island off Bali. Bali is an island off Java. Java is much bigger than Bali. Yes, it is.



I enjoyed my trip to Java without once seeing Bali. I’m saving Bali for another trip. My trip to
Java was akin to a surprise homecoming. How could I have known that I actually had family – cousins twice, thrice removed if you like - living in other parts of Asia? They looked like me, they spoke a language that strangely sounded like mine but was just slightly on the edge of my comprehension, they had a similar
temperament, had rice with their meals, and wore shirts that looked like colorful renditions of the Filipino’s loose and ivory colored national costume. It was a great trip!



My first hint of familiarity was the language. There were so many words in Bahasa Indonesia that
meant pretty much the same thing in the Philippines. Its words seemed to be derived not just from Tagalog but from the entire gamut of Philippine languages.
Nasi from Kapampangan in Central Luzon, ikan from Northern Luzon, ini from the Visayas, putih from Tagalog and a slew of others. When I got back from that trip and did some research, I discovered that Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia were actually sister languages that shared words and word characteristics, that my Tagalog had ties to languages as far away as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Taiwan. Now that
is so cool!



For the longest time there had been this anguishing about how the Philippines had lost its real culture because it was all alone there in the middle of the water and the big bad Spaniards, Americans, Japanese etc. etc. had come along and had taken its soul away. But as it turns out, the Philippine languages continue to link it to its regional identity! I don’t have to go to one extreme where I am abashed about
being messed up by the colonizers, as one camp of social anthropologists would have me believe, and neither do I have to go the other way and get defensive about the fact that colonizers did have their way with the Philippines. Filipinos are still part of the Asian family. What a relief!



Then there’s food. Indonesians, like Filipinos, eat rice. It’s a staple. That solves more than
half the problem of having to adjust to the food. In my trip to Java, I discovered that they liked a lot of vegetables in their diet. Filipinos, the Manila Filipinos anyway, eat a lot more meat. Indonesians replace the protein requirement by a heavier consumption of tofu. Tofu is also commonly found in the Philippines but is not eaten as much. But all that’s a minor difference. Rice remains the staple food.



Whenever I’m in a new place I want to walk. Walking lets you see things and in Solo, Indonesia, I saw the national flower of the Philippines – the Sampaguita - growing by a wall. The Sampaguita (Jasminium sambac) does that in the Philippines. Grows by walls. But doing here what it does 1031 miles away in Manila gave me pause. A little later, I found Atis (Annona squamosa)happily growing near the Solo train station. Again, I had to stop. Later on, I discovered that these plants are endemic to the region. They were not my plants, they were our plants. Now how do you like that?


I didn’t get to stay in Indonesia very long. Just two weeks. But I’ll be back, longer this time, and I’m looking forward to it. I sure would like to poke around my cousin’s backyard and see what they’ve been up to all this time. There’s nothing like having family.

Originally posted on April 29, 2010 11:38 am