We’d been planning our trip to Indonesia for some time and all of the events were coming quickly together toward the end of September, 2008. My wife’s US visa was set after over a year of trips to the pseudo American embassies (the American Institute in Taiwan) in Kaohsiung and Taipei. My daughter was also nearly 2 years old, which was a concern because 2 year olds fly for adult fair and children less than 2 get a substantial discount. The summer of 2008 was marked by huge spikes in the price of oil and airplane travel was getting more and more expensive. Moving internationally isn’t cheap and we had sold everything we accumulated in Taiwan for a fraction of its value. Getting the best deal possible was tantamount to our transitioning in a financially responsible way to the USA.
We were desperate to see my wife’s family in Indonesia because her mother wasn’t doing well in her fight with diabetes. She was only about 58 years old at the time, but living in rural Indonesia had affected her struggle with the disease in a negative way. The family lacked the financial resources and knowledge to manage the disease properly. She had already lost a toe and was experiencing advanced diabetes.
Tourist visas on arrival for Indonesia come with a maximum of 30 days so we decided to stay for nearly an entire month. This way AC could spend some serious time with her family, Aliya could meet the Indonesian side of her family, and I could really experience my wife’s family. I figured that if I had a way to keep busy photographing and making videos there I could pass the time in productive way.
I bought a special device while still in Taiwan that is essentially a camera memory card reader and hard drive combined. I have never owned a laptop computer, and this was the least expensive option to make sure I always had free space on my digital camera. I didn’t know it at the time but being at my wife’s house for a month was going to be one of the weirdest mind trips I would ever go on.
Some of the highlights of the trip for me were seeing and documenting so much of the culture and countryside from where my wife grew up, quitting smoking cigarettes, inventing bamboo ball, allowing Aliya to see and experience Indonesian culture and her family. I ended up taking over 60 Gigabytes of photos and videos while there. I was armed and ready and shot nearly everything with my trusty Canon Powershot S5 IS. It isn’t the sweet DSLR Nikon D90 that I have now but it was great for this trip. If it weren’t for that camera, I would have gone off the mental deep end for sure. AC spent a lot of time with her family helping out preparing for events, so for long stretches, I was basically alone, language-less, in a remote land.
After some consideration, we have decided to make a series of blog posts that will attempt to show what life is like in Indonesia and most specifically, Indramayu through the many videos and pictures that were taken. The working title of the series is Faces of Country.
