Saturday, September 17, 2011

Charles in Indonesia

A photograph of me, taken in the mountains near Bandung, Indonesia, sometime in 1974. The photo was taken by Willem van der ( ), whom we had known in Saigon during 1970-1972. Willem took the picture. I was sitting inside the little beer hall on a rickety chair, looking out over a deep and lush-green valley; Willem was standing outside his back to the vertiginous drop. 
I was in Indonesia as part of a team from the Asian Development Bank to identify and describe possible development projects.
Willem was the First Secretary of the Dutch Embassy in Djakarta, and we were on our way to the mountain guesthouse of the Dutch Embassy to escape, for the weekend, the steaming heat of Djakarta. Willem had all the instincts of a “get away” driver at the wheel of his new German sport sedan but none of the skills. The road from Djakarta to Bandung was steep, winding, and heavy with traffic in both directions - taxis, trucks, trucks loaded with logs, buses packed with passengers inside, on the roof or holding on outside! Willem looked everywhere except the road, changing gears noisily as we went up the mountain, passing on curves, pointing out sights as the road followed the side of the mountain, straight up on one side, straight down on the other. I never expected to make it to the guesthouse, much less back to Djakarta!
Just before the guesthouse we stopped at a rustic roadside stand for a cold beer, very much needed. Willem, using my Nikon that I had loaded with ASA 400 Kodax color film and, in spite of the cloudy and foggy atmosphere the sensitive lense and fast film froze my trembling lower jaw!
The guesthouse was not as attractive as I had expected, but comfortable, dating from the 1920’s. Unlike the guesthouses that I had known in French and English Africa here there was no houseman to serve (usually in a not very white uniform consisting of a shirt, shorts, and barefoot) nor a reasonably good cook in the kitchen. Dinner that night was from a can.
The following afternoon the drive back to Djakarta was equally thrilling!
Chapel Hill, NC January 20, 2005

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