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Wet rice cultivation in Indonesia Epilogue Epilogue In this final part of the thesis, I would like to give a personal reflection on the experience of the five months that I spent in Indonesia. I will shortly discuss on the lessons I have learned, the things that went well and the things that have to be done better next time. I will also review some problems that I experienced while being ‘in the field’. Note that the first part of this epilogue consists of personal oriented lessons and the second part of educational oriented lessons. First of all, I must confess that my passion is not really focused on doing anthropological research. However, I am convinced that one should be open minded, not only in thinking, but also in acting. Going to Indonesia was the first time for me to go to a developing country. Quite soon, when I arrived in Jakarta, I was confronted with a totally different culture. Moreover, the differences between ‘the poor’ and ‘the rich’ people are overwhelming. I will never forget this one man, lying literally in the gutter with hardly any clothes on his body. To be quite honest, I was wondering if this man was still alive. But seeing other people’s misery is undoubtedly a fact with which you have to deal with in Indonesia every now and then. Staying with the people of the Kasepuhan also confronted me almost each day with the differences between rich and poor. Numerous times people remembered me: ‘you are rich and we are poor’. In the beginning, this is quite hard to hear. A number of times I tried to explain that the term ‘poorness’ can be seen as quite a relative concept. When I told them that there are also poor people in the Netherlands – according to our Western standards – they just would not believe me. In addition, when I told them that poor people in the Netherlands would be rich in Indonesia, they just stared at me without understanding anything of what I said. Naturally there where other difficulties while being in Indonesia. One of the obstacles was language, especially in the beginning. During my preparations for the research in the Netherlands, I followed only a minor course in Bahasa Indonesia. When I arrived, it appeared that I was not able at all to have a descent conversation, let alone a professional interview. Luckily, the basics of the Indonesian language on the streets are not that hard, so in the end I managed to deal with this problem. In West-Java however, the first language is Bahasa Sunda, which is totally different from Bahasa Indonesia, the second language. Therefore, considering the language, living with the Kasepuhan was quite hard in the beginning. Another thing I found hard in the beginning was the lack of privacy. It made me realise that I was very much used to privacy, without really knowing it. Apparently, we can afford a quite individual way of life in the Netherlands. We can simply choose whether we want company or not. In Indonesia, this is not possible at all, probably because people are in many ways dependent on each other to make a living. Together with the funny habit of Indonesian people to be curious, this made it sometimes hard to work out field notes, while children and even adolescents continuously grabbed away my writing pad to have a look at it, even though they could not understand the writing. Considering the research, I realised that having a notebook computer is very handy, in order to find back information easily, and to save time writing my report. On the other hand, electricity was only scarcely available where I lived. But it would have been handy to work out the field notes in the city, every two weeks or so. Considering interviewing, I realised only afterwards that the interviews that were supposed to be semi-structured, were often unstructured. With the processing of the gathered information this caused some trouble because it was sometimes not possible to compare interviews. This has undoubtedly leaded to a decrease of validity of the research. Next time, I have to pay more attention to this, while spending my time in the field. Nevertheless, I also found out a strategy to check some information provided by the Kasepuhan. Every two weeks, I went back to a town at sea level, called Pelabuhanratu. 76
Wet rice cultivation in Indonesia Epilogue Each time I selected some information that I was not totally sure about. This absolutely lead to new insights in the life of the Kasepuhan. In this manner, I was able to discover the real face behind the mask of the Kasepuhan. To be more precise, without this strategy I would not have been possible to conclude that the Kasepuhan are in fact more Hindu than Islam. In this case, the mask is Islam, and the face is Hindu. Naturally, this is only a short summary of everything I learned. It is assumable that one does not always notice the lessons learned and the experience gained, until the first time that circumstances demand that they are used again. Only in those new situations, it becomes clear that those lessons and such experience from the past are truly priceless. Wageningen, October 2006 Bas Bolman 77
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