Ex-Patois

“Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men. But the old men who make peace have not the virtues of peace.” — Prince Faisal (Alec Guinness), Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

To my mind, the world is populated by just two kinds of people: tourists and travellers. Tourists want to make the world comfortable for themselves, and travellers are comfortable with the world as it is.

I have lived and worked in six countries, including my home country of Texas. In every case, I have sought to live as a native, learning the language and customs, eating the local fare, and assimilating as much as possible into the woodwork. The Great Surreptitiou... Paul, Ron Check Amazon for Pricing.

The moment I stepped off the plane in Jakarta, on Valentine’s Day 2008, it was obvious that my usual efforts were not going to work. At 190cm (6-2) tall, with red hair, blue eyes, pale freckled skin, and being left handed, I was never going to be inconspicuous amongst a population that was the polar opposite of me in every way. I would always be a literal giant that blended about as well as a peacock in a flock of pigeons.

I came here with the intent to stay. For a thousand reasons, I had shaken the dust of the United States from my sandals, and I was ready for new adventures and horizons.

All the languages and cultures I knew were European in origin, including Mexico which to this day “feels” like a Spanish colony. I had a sponsor in Indonesia to work on a coal mining project in deepest, darkest Borneo, and the idea of severing connections to anything I had ever experienced was profoundly alluring. When I stepped off the plane, I had one suitcase, $600, and I knew how to say “thank you” in the local lingua franca.

Since that moment, I have eaten creatures that I had previously only seen in zoos. I have lived in jungles so dense that 100m in the wrong direction and you are lost forever. I have scooped up coffee cans full of diamonds under the conveyor belt that loads coal on river barges. I have floated past Dayak villages, where I had to cover my head or risk seeing the women at the bathing hole, and thus finding myself instantly married, shotgun and all.

I have hiked 18 miles uphill to gold mines so remote that even satellite phones didn’t work — at least back then. I’ve had Bengal tigers purring on my lap and randy orangutans try to slip me a little tongue. I’ve drunk the blood of cobras and avoided lizards five times longer than I am tall.

All in a day’s fun for a traveller.

The borders of Indonesia are roughly the same as the continental US, and the population is about the same as well. If you take a globe and put your finger on Kansas and another finger on Jakarta, they are almost exactly 180-degrees apart. Just one of the many opposites to be found here on the Far Side.

I have found my niche in this strange new world, and to the extent that I can, I blend into the general milieu. I have learned the language, and bits of several dialects including my adopted Jawa. It is not an easy process, and more than once I had considered going in search of cannibalistic tribes. I have experienced both deference and hatred based on my cultural and racial phenotype, but there is always peace to be made from war.

If my experience has taught me anything, it is that there is always a Golden Mean. In the same way that a successful negotiation leaves neither side completely satisfied, there are benefits and compromises to every part of life. For the most part, humans are like water, they will always go to sea level if left unimpeded and unmolested.

Wars begin when invaders seek to impose their ways on another culture, and peace ensues when the parties find sea level. In many cases, this means the invader is either vanquished or vanquishes, though on rare occasions there is assimilation on both sides. Wars are started by tourists, and ended by travellers.

We are living in a time of war, where some entity has challenged the status quo. From all outward signs, that entity thrives on chaos, which is anti-human. All that most of us want is to be left unimpeded and unmolested. How Everything Became ... Brooks, Rosa Check Amazon for Pricing.

There are always the few, however, who cannot be happy without defying gravity. By sheer force of will, they seek to change sea level, forcing the oceans to rise or fall on their command. They are malcontents, and no amount of appeasement will ever satisfy them. They are like kids poking sticks into ant hills, just to see the colony swarm. They are the tourists for whom nothing is ever like home.

There can be no peace until the invaders are vanquished. Any attempt to accommodate them will only bring more outrageous demands. They do not want to assimilate, and if they win they only turn on each other. This is not a war of ideology, it is a war of attrition. Any ideology we perceive is just an excuse for chaos. If we seek appeasement, they will only change the ideology.

I did not come to Indonesia with the goal of changing the country to suit me. I came to change myself to experience Indonesia. This is the way of peace. As Prince Faisal notes, I know the means to find peace, though I do not possess the virtues of it. There are ways to achieve peace through negotiation, but storming the gates will only garner resistance.

Tourists go to strange and mythical places, stare at the natives from bus windows, eat at McDonald’s, and stay at cookie cutter hotels. Travellers get down in the trenches, go years without comfort foods, and spend long hours learning languages and customs. The tourist forces the locals to accommodate them and is universally hated, while the traveller squats with beggars and dines with kings, as the occasion demands.

Read the Whole Article