🇮🇩🏙️ « Cities are like palimpsests » announced the professor in my first ever class of urban studies. “What I mean is that, just like scriptures are erased to make room for news ones on a palimpsest parchment, cities have layers and layers of history and culture written over them, some visible some not, but all entangled in the complex picture of their current day form.” I have thought about this metaphor many times in my life and often thought it true. And once again I was reminded of it while roaming the streets of Jakarta.
We had entered the monstrous city after an eight hour train journey which saw rich food forests give way to vast plains of rice, and then modern slums, while the chili plants on the side of the train tracks morphed into mounds of plastic. I expected Jakarta to be something like a slap in the face and it did not disappoint. We found the sheer scale of the city and the concentration of people something literally awe-some. All layers of society are represented here from very poor to very wealthy, but the infrastructure and the endless gleaming skyscrapers certainly show Indonesia is a fast growing modern nation and we both found it somehow more orderly than what we expected.
Jakarta and its satellite cities have a population of 30 million, larger than Australia and almost half the population of France. Named Batavia under Dutch rule, and renamed Jakarta by the Japanese, the capital city quickly became the symbol of the young nation’s ambitions for prosperity after independence. Today, it boasts hundreds of modern skyscrapers still fringed by traditional food stalls on wheels and more than can be counted giant air conditioned malls. These temples of capitalism, consumerism and modernity sit alongside as imposing symbols of the free post-colonial Indonesia.
One evening, we felt dwarfed while walking around the Istiqlal Mosque, which opened in 1978 and commemorates independence (Istiqlal). The largest mosque in South-East Asia, it can host up to 200,000 worshippers under its cupola – the diameter of which is 45 meters to commemorate the year of Independence. Then President Sukarno insisted for the mosque to be built in this location, close to Merdeka Square (Freedom Square), and facing Jakarta’s Cathedral, as a symbol of religious harmony and tolerance – one of the five pillars of the Pancasila, the nation’s founding principles. While Indonesia experienced religious tensions in the 1980s and 1990s, a “tunnel of Friendship” was built in 2020 between the mosque and the cathedral – reinforcing the powerful symbolism of these monuments. Interestingly, Masjid Istiqlal was built on the former Queen Wilhelmina park – the last Dutch Queen to rule over the Dutch East Indies.
The palimpsest was also evident in the old town. “Kota Tua” interestingly combined imposing white buildings in classical colonial dutch architecture reminding us of Amsterdam, with the bright red lanterns and gates of the adjoining China town.
Beyond architecture and history, it is meeting with friends, former colleagues and a random encounter that made these two days in Jakarta nourishing despite the city draining my energy. We enjoyed discussing Australian-Indonesian relationships with Kirby, our diplomat friend and host. We learnt that the Australian Embassy in Jakarta is Australia’s biggest embassy, which shows that Australia puts more emphasis than we think on its biggest neighbour. We questioned a corporate lawyer specialising in palm oil about the impact of EU zero deforestation policies while sipping delicious coffee in an underground market. Answer: more paperwork and transparency but not much actual change on the ground yet. We discussed politics and the progress – or lack of – on Indonesia’s Net Zero 2060 target with Tim’s ex-IEA colleagues Peggy and Quatro and my former CWC colleague, Guntur.
I took the opportunity of meeting with Peggy, the first woman with whom I felt I could have this conversation, to enquire about the role of women and gender equality. If the past month had left me hopeful that the condition of women in the largest muslim country in the world looked more advanced and emancipated than I had expected, Peggy’s responses sobered me up a bit. Entrenched patriarchal traditions mean that most families still focus all educational efforts on sons and on finding a good husband for their daughters. And as they now also have to work to support their families, women carry it all: work, housework, husband, kids, parents. While most men just work and come home to relax. Dare I say many western women in the decades following WWII must have felt the same, and many probably still do. The stubborn optimist in me wants to think that progress is on the horizon, but perhaps patriarchal structures will be harder to bring down in a country where religion is at the heart of the nation’s identity.
These two days in Jakarta left me feeling a bit sick with pollution, but also filled with food for thoughts. I am convinced that many layers are yet to be added to the palimpsest, especially as Indonesia moves its political capital to a new, not sinking and more central location in the archipelago, Nusantara on the island of Kalimantan. My wish is that more smart and strong women like Peggy and the university graduate daughters of friends and strangers we met along the way get to write on the parchment. Women. Life. Merdeka!
We are now in Sumatra and about to leave for a 5 day trek in the jungle, looking forward to immersing ourselves in nature and hopefully meeting orangutans and other wildlife 🦧
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