Indonesia Banget #25: Eating With Hand

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This post is related to previous Indonesia banget post called The Floor Sitter. This is a very short Indonesia Banget post

Here in Indonesia, you can easily find people who enjoy eating with their hand instead of using spoon and fork. Spoon and fork are used after the Westerners came to Indonesia, chopsticks are used after the Chinese and Japanese came to Indonesia…long before they came, we use our hands. Till this day, many people are still using their hands.

I am going to exclude the overly rich people because those people already feel that using hand is disgusting.

When I say using hand, I mean RIGHT hand. The custom is left hand to wipe your ass and right hand to shake hands and to eat. NO ONE EATS WITH THEIR LEFT HAND, with or without the help of spoon. It is considered impolite and dirty to use left hand to eat.

Indonesia Banget 18: Floor Sitter

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Here we are in another edition of Indonesia Banget, where I shared about life in Indonesia.

I have noticed, from movies, that European had sat on chair since loooong time ago…but most Asian remained sitting on the floor even until this very moment. I am here not to talk about Asia, I will focus it on Indonesia.

I am going to exclude the really rich people here because most of them think that floor is too dirty to be sat on. The commoners (the one who aren’t too rich and, of course, the poor) are still sitting on the floor even though they already have chairs in their house. Chairs are clean and comfortable but floor gives freedom to sit in whatever position we like.

People sit on the floor in many ways, they can use nothing because they believe their floor is clean or they use carpet or tikar. Tikar is kind of like carpet but made of either bamboo or plastic. You can see the photo of my niece and nephew sitting on a plastic tikar >>
Most Indonesian used this kind of tikar. I once saw a VOA channel about a shop which sale tikar in USA, and that tikar is bloody expensive…here it is very cheap.

When we have special occasion, like family gathering, instead of preparing a lot of chairs we prefer to provide carpet and tikar for the guess to sit on.

In this photo below, these people had just finished working together. They helped the house owner to tidy up things after my brother’s weeding. The owner of that place is my sister in law’s father. As you can see, they were all sitting on the floor while eating their lunch. No one felt disgust with the state on the soil underneath them, a tikar is all they need to sit on. Imagine how many chairs to prepare to this large number of crowd? (this photo only showed 1/3 of all the people who were coming to help).

Indonesia Banget 17: Graveyards in West Sumatra

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Last month, December 2011, I missed my Indonesia Banget post. I had it in mind what to write but a very unfortunate incident happened, my mom passed away. I guess from now on, 17 of each month is no longer special for sharing about my country. This date has more meaning for me.

I was planning to share about Indonesian people’s habit but I changed my mind as today is a month anniversary of my mom’s death. I am going to share about graveyards in West Sumatra. Why is it special? Because graveyard in West Sumatra is different compared to other parts in Indonesia.  In Jakarta, where I live in, graveyard is open to anyone who can rent the land. I don’t know exactly how much because different area has different rent fee. In West Sumatra, most graveyards are free because they belong to suku (in English it could be called as tribe).

Let me introduce you to suku before talking about graveyards.

West Sumatra is a matriarch land where bloodline runs through mother’s side. In most part of the world, be it in Europe, America or Asia…family names are always based on the father’s side, children don’t normally used their mother’s family name. In West Sumatra, although people don’t use family name, but their suku is always following their mother. My mother came from suku Melayu, therefore my brothers and I are also Melayu. My brothers married women from Java, their children no longer have suku because father can’t pass down their suku to their children. When I have children, my children will be Melayu just like me. If my brothers married women from west Sumatra, their children will follow their mother’s suku, they would not be considered as Melayu.

I hope you understand what suku is by now.

Indonesia Banget #7: Death Ceremonies

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Just like what I have said in my top-5 monthly post, I am going to talk about something that related to Okuribito (a movie from Japan about death ceremony)

I can not cover ALL death ceremonies in Indonesia as all provinces have their own ways to honor the dead. I will share the most famous ones….well, at least famous amongst Indonesian.

There are 4 major religions in Indonesia; Islam, Christian, Buddha and Hindu… but, somewhere in between, there are still so many ancient beliefs, or religions based on their ancestors. For the 4 major religions,  the ways they treat their deceased are similar with those from other countries. Muslim will wrap the dead body in white fabric which we called Kafan, Christian will embalm the dead body and dress them in their best suit, and both Hindu and Buddha will cremate the dead body. However, there are some ceremonies taken place  before they buried the dead…this probably different to other countries.

Indonesia Banget #3 : Bedong

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The 17th day of October has arrived, time for another post of Indonesia Banget. This will be my 3rd post and the topic is about Bedong. It is a bit difficult for me to find the right pronunciation for this word, this is the closest that I can get: Be is pronounced like beu- and dong is pronounced like ‘doll’ but change the ll with ng that sounds like nk like in the word ‘bank’.

 

What is bedong? Bedong is the way people in Indonesia wrap their infant to make them feel warmer.

When I was little, I was wondering why they wrap the baby like that (see the pictures below), most people gave me the same answers, and it is either to make their legs stay straight or to keep them warmer. I believed in the first answer at that time (remember! I was just a little kid). They said that if they let the baby unwrapped, they will have a letter 0 legs or crooked legs. The wrapping will keep their legs straight all the time, so that they won’t grow up with legs looking like this picture below.

As I grew up, I saw movies and read books from other countries, simply said I knew better. Those people in Europe, America, Africa and other Asian countries do not practice this kind of baby wrapping and everyone seems to have normal legs. So, I came to a conclusion that the first answer was dead wrong because if it’s true, only Indonesian people have normal legs and the rest of the people in this earth have crocked legs.

Indonesia Banget #1

Finally…my 1st post for Indonesia Banget. To know more what Indonesia Banget means, please read the previous post (here).

On August 17, 1945, Indonesian people declared their Independence from colonialism… we are literally FREE from any Colonial Government, we are not a commonwealth country. I’m not going to talk much about the history because the main thing I want to share is the fun we had every year to celebrate our Independence Day.

Here’s a brief of Indonesian history. We were colonized by Dutch for 350 years. Then, The Japanese Imperialism came and took us away from the Dutch. Japanese were crueler than the Dutch but they also taught us something, the taught us how to use weapon and how to make a government organization. When US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan became weak and we took our country from them and declared our independence. We had to struggle to keep our independence because the Dutch wanted to return to our country. In the end, we keep our independence for ourselves.

I am not a nationalist person, I hate my corrupt government, but I am SO PROUD with our heroes.

Like I said before, I’m going to talk about our celebration and I am sure that you can not find this in other country

There are so many interesting competitions or games held to celebrate our Independence, from competition for kids to competition for grown-ups. Here are some that I can remember: