Over the Bridge

Exploring Madura's Backroads

Originally published in Venture Magazine, April 2011

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Venture-Travel-Magazine/110370632349708 

It is 8am and Surabaya’s morning rush hour is going at full tilt. A turbulent maelstrom of bikes, bemos, buses and SUVs is grinding through the heart of the gargantuan East Java capital, Indonesia’s second largest city. I, astride my motorbike, am in the thick of it, and I’m looking for a way out. Fortunately I know exactly where to find one.

I weave between the wobbling commuters and head north along hectic streets. Soon I’m riding along a new highway. Two years ago this was a road to nowhere, petering out amongst the fishponds and kampungs, but now it’s a mainline to fresh air and green fields.

The Suramadu Bridge rises ahead, a great hump of concrete and reinforced steel vaulting across a five-kilometer-wide channel. I pause at the toll gate to hand over the Rp3000 fee, and then hit the throttle and blaze across the spans. To the left an expanse of pale water opens. I can see the great fleets of cargo ships at anchor off Surabaya’s Tanjung Perak port. The sky arcs overhead; I cross the apex of the bridge, the breeze whistling in the orange suspension cables, and drop down into Madura.

I whizz past the ranks of new gift stalls that line the approach road, make a U-turn to access a little side lane I discovered on my last visit, and am soon riding through rice fields. Glossy banana plants line the ditches and ranks of palms and bamboo march towards the distant ridge of limestone hills. The air is clean and full of the smells of fresh vegetation.

Beyond a small village in a shady grove of trees I park my bike at the roadside and scramble up a steep rise to the top of a stony outcrop where I sit back in the rough grass and breathe deeply. Insects whistle softly and birds are singing. A warm breeze carries with it a whiff of salt and freshly tilled soil, and green treetops expand in all directions around me. There is not another human being in sight. I smile and glance at my watch – 9.30am. Only an hour and a half has passed, but I am already deep in Madura’s tranquil countryside, and Surabaya is nothing but a distant smoggy smudge on the southwest horizon…

***

I first visited Madura more than four years ago. I was living and working in neighboring Surabaya at the time and it seemed like an obvious place for an out-of-town weekend adventure by motorbike. It was only when I told my Indonesian friends and colleagues my plan that I learnt about Madura’s atrocious reputation.

The island is Java’s closest neighbor, a 140 kilometer-long hulk of low hills, forests and fields riding offshore like a ship at anchor, but no other place in Indonesia has such a negative reputation. According to my friends Madura was hot, dirty and disgusting. The local specialties sate (miniature kebabs) and the soto (hearty soup) were tasty, but those were the only things that counted in its favor. The Madurese people, they said, were rough, rude, aggressive, and quite possibly dangerous. I’d be lucky if I made it back in one piece.

When I discovered that none of them had actually been to Madura, I was all the more determined to go and see for myself. And how glad I was that I hadn’t listened to the slanderous stories! I soon discovered that Madura was a beautiful island, a tranquil retreat from big city chaos, and a place where sandy back-roads through the palm trees led to deserted beaches. As for the local people, they were warmly welcoming and full of humor. The only thing my friends in Surabaya had been right about was the sate and the soto – they were delicious!

Before long this much-maligned island was my first choice for an escape whenever the heat and noise of Surabaya wore me down. I would ride my motorbike to the Tanjung Perak port, drive aboard the rusting car ferry to Kamal, and then blaze away for a weekend of exploring.

I tried to convince other people that they should cross the Madura Strait and see for themselves, but no one would listen. Negative prejudices about the place run deep in Java, where rebel princes and mercenary armies from Madura caused headaches for the rulers of the ancient Majapahit and Mataram kingdoms, and where Madurese migrant workers in modern cities are often viewed with suspicion.

But now it has become a whole lot easier to reach Madura, and for the first time a few other inquisitive explorers are discovering the truth about this misunderstood island…

***

On 10 June 2009 the monumental Suramadu opened to traffic. Long planned, long delayed, and costing Rp4.7 trillion, it is the first major interisland bridge in Indonesia and a feat of engineering to boggle the mind.

The idea behind the bridge was to boost the economy in Madura, but the bridge has had another side effect. There is no more waiting at the ferry port, no more traffic jams; getting to Madura is suddenly quick and easy, and inquisitive Surabaya residents and travelers from further afield are starting to visit. Most don’t get much further than the end of the bridge where a mass of souvenir stalls and cafes has sprung up to serve this unexpected tourist trade, but there’s a whole island waiting to be discovered.

My own favorite Madura journey – one that I repeat whenever I get the chance – is a full circuit of the island. I ride first along the main southern road through the towns of Sampang and Pamekasan. In the dry season the countryside takes on an ochre-tinted dustiness, but after the rains it is overwhelmingly green. The road passes through open, airy forest, winds over the knuckles of the limestone hills, and bends along the stony foreshore.

The best place to be based for an exploration of Madura is its most easterly town, Sumenep. People in Java will tell you that the Madurese are uncultured and crude, but this little royal city is a refined, charming and friendly place. It was once the seat of a Sultan, and is home to a kraton, a palace, the last one still standing in East Java Province (of which Madura is a part). There are Dutch-era villas in the backstreets, a mosque with the most striking and unusual gateway I’ve ever seen (it looks like a pyramid of yellow and white icing), bustling covered markets, and a hilltop royal graveyard full of sacred tombs. The whole place has a sleepy charm, with the rattle of the becak (pedicab) still ruling over the roar of the motorbike once you leave the main roads.

But it is the countryside beyond Sumenep that shows Madura at its very best. Tobacco fields and dense forest give way to sprawling stands of palm trees and the road finally stutters to a stop at a huge, empty expanse of yellow sand backing a blinding blue ocean. This is Lombang Beach. On the weekends families from Sumenep drive out to drink fresh coconut juice and to dip a tentative toe in the ocean, but on a weekday you’ll have the place to yourself.

Beyond the beach the countryside is wilder and more rugged with stony fields running right down to the shore. This part of Madura looks more like the Mediterranean than Indonesia, and as I travel along the bumpy lanes here I can sometimes imagine that I’m on some sun-bleached Greek island.

There’s softer countryside and another beach at Slopeng, due north of Sumenep, and villages hidden in the trees where they still make traditional carved masks for wayang topeng dance performances. This is where some of the very best pieces on sale in craft shops in Bali and Yogyakarta are made.

I love to ride my bike along this north coast road, past fishing villages with brightly painted boats jostling in narrow inlets, empty beaches and white-walled settlements where they make fine batik. Eventually the hills on the left fall back to wider, broader rice fields with pale mosques standing knee-deep in the greenery, and the road turns south through Bangkalan, the main town in western Madura. And from there it’s just a short hop back to the bridge.

I’ve been doing my best to champion Madura as a travel destination ever since my first visit. It’s always been a hard sell, but thanks to Suramadu’s bridge over troubled waters there’s no longer any excuse not to make the journey along the island’s unbeaten tracks to empty beaches, quiet corners and warm welcomes. One day soon the world might catch on to Madura’s potential as a travel destination; you might want to get there first, before everyone else…

***

Today I have no time to make the journey east to Sumenep. This is just a spur-of-the-moment coming up for air, of the kind I’ve often been making since Suramadu opened. I scramble back down the hillside and climb back into the saddle, passing on through more shady villages and open fields where farmers are plowing with yoked brown cows, and then turning back onto the broad approach road to the bridge. But before I pay the toll and return to traffic jams and diesel fumes I have one more stop to make. It’s 11.30am, almost lunchtime, so I pull over at a roadside warung for a bowl of soto – it is delicious, after all… 

© Tim Hannigan 2011

Making a Rare Connection in East Java

The Suramadu Bridge

Originally published in the Jakarta Globe 04/01/11

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/lifeandtimes/making-a-rare-connection-in-east-java/415023

“You know, I used to work breaking stones,” says Sutia, a 25-year-old Madurese woman, as she reclines in the shade of her little tented cafe beside the approach road to the Suramadu Bridge. “Really, just that, just breaking stones into little pieces for building. Now I have a warung. Nice, right?”
A steady stream of cars, buses and bikes roars past, heading south for Surabaya from the Madura hinterland. Every so often a vehicle pulls over beside the long rank of warungs and souvenir stalls, and a gaggle of perspiring sightseers clamber out, squinting in the hot sun, looking for a length of Madurese batik, a bowl of soto, or a kitsch tee shirt commemorating the enormous bridge they are about to cross.
Eying the potential customers, Sutia grins. “Madura is getting business from Suramadu,” she says.
Sutia and dozens of her compatriots from the villages around Kwanyar are reaping the rewards of an unlikely little tourism boom, a windfall of one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in Indonesia in recent years – the Suramadu Bridge, 5.4 kilometers of steel and concrete stitching two of the archipelago’s most uneasy neighbors tightly together.

The great green loadstone of Java and its unruly outlier, the long, low island of Madura, are separated by a narrow channel. But the gulf between the two islands is enormous, for Madura has a decidedly unenviable reputation.
In centuries past it was a wellspring of rebel princes who ransacked royal Javanese courts or turned mercenary for the Dutch East India Company. In more recent years economic migrants from its poor, dry countryside have crossed the straits to bring their gritty work ethic, their tasty soto and sate to towns and cities across the archipelago. But according to myths touted by many Indonesians, especially those from Java, the people of Madura are uncouth, uncultured, and possibly dangerous. Their homeland has always been a place to avoid at all costs.
But in June 2009 all that changed with the opening of the long planned, long delayed Suramadu Bridge. Comprising 28,000 tons of steel and 600,000 tons of steel alloy, and requiring an estimated outlay of Rp4.7 trillion, the bridge joins the northeast suburbs of Surabaya to the south coast of Madura (the name – Suramadu – is a contraction of Surabaya and Madura).
Suramadu was intended to encourage economic development in Madura, which was previously connected to the outside world only by rickety, rusty ferries. But the bridge is such a striking piece of engineering – with enormous suspension spans and a fine view from the apex – that it has become a tourist attraction in its own right. And with travelers from Surabaya and beyond now making tentative weekend outings across the water to discover that all those awful stories about Madura were wild exaggerations, locals have experienced a business bonanza.
Within days of the bridge opening to traffic the first stalls had sprung up along the sides of the four-lane northern approach road that connects the crossing to the nearby town of Bangkalan. Now, 18 months later, there’s a linear city of tented cafes and stalls stretching some two kilometers inland on both sides of the highway.

A little way up the road from Sutia’s warung a 34-year-old local man called Ayub is minding his stall. “If you come here on Sunday it’s so crowded,” he says; “there are tours from Surabaya, from Central Java. There was even a tour from Lombok the other day.” According to Ayub some of these travelers are heading for the sacred Muslim tombs at Bangkalan and Sumenep; a few might even be venturing for the untouched beaches and beautiful countryside of the island’s far northeast. “But most of them just want to look at the bridge. They come across, turn around and go back,” he says.
All of the stalls are owned by people from the immediate vicinity, and the whole network has been set up informally.
“You don’t need to pay anything to build a stall here,” says Ayub’s friend, a young woman called Juli; “this is the people’s land!”
And with minimal outlay on a few lengths of bamboo and a few strips of tarpaulin, a whole new world of opportunity has opened.
“Locals here used to work as various things,” says Ayub; “some were farmers, some had no job; a lot emigrated.” Ayub himself spent two years working in Malaysia, another two years as a food hawker in Jakarta, and more time crewing a cargo boat plying the waters of the Java Sea. But now, with a wife and two children in a village within walking distance of his new stall, he has happily come home. “Suramadu gave me that chance,” he says.
Outside more shiny SUVs and are pulling up. Housewives from Malang and families from Sidoarjo are bargaining over take-home trinkets.
“Java people used to be scared of Madura,” says Ayub, “because they never came here, they didn’t know. It used to be rare for anyone to come here without an important reason because it was slow and expensive. It cost more than Rp100,000 for a bus on the ferry; it’s only Rp60,000 now. They can come just for a look, so they know Madurese people aren’t so bad!”

The only losers have been the hawkers who once worked the vehicle ferries that slithered between Surabaya’s Tanjung Perak port, and the old gateway to Madura at Kamal, several kilometers west of the bridge. A few ferries still make the crossing, but traffic has slowed to a trickle and some of these traders have shifted their attention to Suramadu, and now wander between the stalls as they used to ply the decks of the ferries.
The prime spots have long been snapped up, but the expansion continues with new warungs popping up far inland. According to locals both sides of the road have their advantages – the inbound northern side is where most visitors stop to eat, but the outbound southern side is the favored spot for souvenir shopping and photo opportunities.

A kilometer from the bridge on that southern flank, where the road rises over the first bank of limestone hills, stands Pak Imam’s warung. Twelve months ago his was the final stall, but today it merely marks the halfway point of the strip. Pak Imam, who worked as a motorbike taxi driver in a nearby village before the bridge opened, has watched the burgeoning city of stalls grow around his recently refurbished warung where he sells tea, coffee, and traditional Madurese soto – yellow soup with rice and meat.
“Madura used to be an isolated place,” Pak Imam says. “The people here didn’t know anything; we were just farmers – or fishermen if we lived by the sea. But now we have the bridge we will know about the world; we won’t be ignorant anymore.”
From the threshold of the warung, with its rickety bamboo benches, steaming soto cauldron, and luridly colored soft drinks, the high-rises of central Surabaya show through the haze to the south. Pak Imam, noting the speed of development that has met the arrival of the bridge, acknowledges the potential downsides.
“Of course, if Madura becomes like Surabaya there will be traffic jams and pollution and we’ll all be stressed like city people,” he says, “but if nothing changed we wouldn’t know anything and we’d just be farmers and fishermen.
“There’s no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. What I mean is nothing is all good or all bad; every good thing brings some bad with it, but as far as I’m concerned this bridge is mostly good, not just for Madura – for everyone...”

© Tim Hannigan 2010

Balinese Heritage in a Madura Village

The Nyadar Ceremony near Sumenep, Madura, Indonesia

Originally published in Bali and Beyond Magazine, September 2009

http://www.baliandbeyond.co.id/beyond.html

The murmur of Sanskrit mantras drifts through the village beneath the white-flowered frangipani trees. In the shade of a communal pavilion old men with batik headcloths prepare offerings of leaves, petals and holy water for the spirits of the ancestors while women load ceremonial platters with sacred rice. But this is not Hindu Bali; this a remote village near Sumenep on the Muslim island of Madura. Here a community of salt-makers hold annual ceremonies to give thanks for their prosperity, and to commemorate their ancestors – a party of Balinese soldiers.

Madura is separated from East Java by a narrow strait. Some time soon a bridge connecting the island with the nearby city of Surabaya will open, and airline Merpati plans to start flights to Sumenep from Surabaya and Bali. But for now the only way to reach Madura is by ferry.
A history of rebellion against the kingdoms of old Java, coupled with mass immigration from the island in more recent years, has left many Indonesians nervous of the place – and hardly likely to recommend it as a holiday destination; few people visit. This is a shame for the Madurese people are among the friendliest you’ll meet, the landscape of limestone hills and rice and tobacco fields is remarkably beautiful, and there are some perfect, deserted beaches scattered around the eastern coastline.
Madura’s reputation as rough and uncultured proves wildly unfounded in the old royal capital of Sumenep which boasts a fine palace, or kraton, the last surviving in East Java Province. Long the seat of Madurese kings, people here are proud of their refined and courtly traditions. Beyond Sumenep there is plenty more to explore. Aside from beaches and beautiful landscapes there is fascinating traditional culture. In the village of Slopeng you’ll see the very best of the carved dance masks found in Bali’s upmarket souvenir shops being made by craftsmen who learnt the trade from their own fathers. In other villages batik and inlayed woodwork are specialities. But nothing is quite as fascinating as the mysterious ceremonies known as Nyadar, held by the people of Pinggir Papas.

Pinggir Papas lies beyond the fringe of the forested land southeast of Sumenep. The village is surrounded by a stark moonscape of salt pans and every adult in the community works in the salt industry. According to legend, the process of making salt was discovered many centuries ago by Angga Suto, a local holy man. Angga Suto was walking across the mudflats surrounding what was then a poor fishing village, when he noticed that the seawater that gathered in his own footprints evaporated to leave a crust of fine, white salt crystals.
But it is not just their trade that makes the people of Pinggir Papas unusual. Other Madurese confirm that the salt-makers speak a strange dialect, said to be riddled with Balinese words, for their forefathers came from Bali.

In the 1560s, the story goes, a Balinese king led an army against Sumenep. They landed on Madura’s eastern coast and advanced on the royal capital. But the Madurese soon drove the invaders out, torching their camps and destroying their warships. One small band of Balinese soldiers fled the battlefield and found their way to a salty village on the coast where they begged for asylum. It was given, on condition that they converted to Islam, and the refugees settled in Pinggir Papas, intermarrying with the locals and creating a unique syncretic culture all of their own.

More than four hundred years later, this Balinese heritage still finds expression in the Nyadar ritual. Three times a year during the dry season, on dates fixed according to the full moon, the people of Pinggir Papas leave their work on the salt pans, don traditional dress, and cross a narrow river through the mangrove forest to the neighbouring community of Kebun Dadap where Angga Suto and the other revered ancestors are buried.
The sacred tombs stand on a low hilltop amongst the trees beside the river. It is here that the Nyadar ritual is held. Every family brings a package of petals and shredded leaves – reminiscent of the daily Balinese offerings – to place before the ancestral shrines.
Nyadar is the most important time of year for the people of Pinggir Papas, and even those who have left Madura to seek work in the big cities return for the ceremony. And when the gate of the complex that houses the tombs of the ancestors is opened a spectacular, though good-natured, struggle erupts to be first into the inner sanctum. Old men in batik sarongs leap over gravestones, pushing younger men aside in their mad dash, while bulky women in headscarves jostle with their own husbands and sons for a prime position.
Once everyone has squeezed into the inner courtyard, prayers mixing Sanskrit and Arabic are made and the tombs are anointed with petals and holy water. Villagers mark their foreheads with a murky paste made from rice-water and betel nut – another mysterious echo of Hindu practice.
As the sun sets the people of Pinggir Papas do not return home across the river. Instead they take refuge with the villagers of Kebun Dadap and spend the long, hot night preparing offerings of rice to be heaped in a neat cone on special plates known as panjeng – an important heirloom for each family.

In the first light of the next morning the village alleyways are deserted. The salt-makers have returned to the shaded ground near the tombs for the second stage of the Nyadar ritual. Here an enormous spread of upturned red and black baskets sheltering the rice offerings makes a bizarre sight.
A traditional religious leader known as a kyai leads the ceremonies, reciting a string of Arabic prayers, Sanskrit mantras and fragments of old Javanese and Balinese, blending the sacred languages of Islam and Hinduism into a seamless chant. Four old men called pangolo assist the kyai. They wear patchwork waistcoats of coloured cloth, passed down through the generations and only used during the Nyadar ritual. Their task is to make a careful count of the rice offerings.
When prayers are over villagers open the baskets and scoff a few handfuls of the rice, now blessed by god and the ancestors. Then they hurry home to Pinggir Papas where the sacred rice is dried, and a little added to the cooking pot each morning during the coming year, passing its luck and blessing into the daily meal. Within half an hour the place is deserted, only a few scraps of leaves fluttering on the soft breeze to mark where the ritual took place.

The people of Pinggir Papas are proud of their unique heritage, and for them the Nyadar ritual and the memory of Angga Suto is at the heart of their culture. They are happy too for respectful visitors to watch the events – and even to share a little of the scared rice with them when prayers are over. And although they consider themselves to be devout Muslims, they are proud of their Balinese heritage and of the hospitality that saw their ancestors given asylum on this remote coastline. The Nyadar ritual is their way of showing this.

*****

For information about the Nyadar ceremony, or about Sumenep and the rest of Madura (well worth a visit at any time of year), you can contact Kurniadi Wijaya of the official Sumenep tourist office. He can be reached on (+62) 081 79330648 or at kurniadi@consultant.com

© Tim Hannigan 2009

Salt of the Earth

The Nyadar Ceremony in Eastern Madura


Originally published in Jakarta Post Weekender Magazine, October 2008


http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/10/26/salt-the-earth.html


The village of Pinggir Papas is deserted. It is a stark place, near Sumenep in the far east of Madura, surrounded by a patchwork of glittering white salt pans, a barren and strangely wintry landscape, despite the fiery breeze.
Almost every adult in the village works in salt manufacture, a major industry here for centuries. On a normal day there would be dozens of figures at work out on the pans, raking over the drying crystals, shrouded against the blazing sun. But on this Friday afternoon in August there is no one, and in the village itself flimsy wooden doors are bolted and windows shuttered. The people of Pinggir Papas have important matters to attend to elsewhere.

The Nyadar ritual of Pinggir Papas is held three times each year between July and October, with dates specified according to the stages of the moon. The biggest ceremony comes in mid-August. The ritual is connected by legends to the coming of Islam, the founding of the salt industry and a history of warfare. It is at the heart of the salt makers’ identity.

The afternoon sun is dropping away to the west and the light is taking a copper-colored glow. The villagers are gathered on the banks of a muddy river that runs through the mangroves west of Pinggir Papas, the men dressed in sarongs and black pecis, the women carrying cloth-wrapped baskets. They are waiting for the fishing boats that will ferry them to the far shore, for Nyadar, though it is celebrated only by the people of Pinggir Papas, is held in the neighboring community of Kebun Dadap where the ancestors of the salt-makers are buried.
The ancestral tombs stand in a neat courtyard above the river. Kebun Dadap lies beyond the salty wastes of Pinggir Papas and here frangipani trees with sugar-white flowers break the fading sunlight. Red-tiled roofs and neatly painted white and green walls shelter the resting places of revered forebears. Most important of these is a man named Angga Suto.
Angga Suto – a local leader at some unspecified time in the early Second Millennium – is credited with both introducing Islam to Pinggir Papas, and inventing salt production. The story tells that he discovered the process after noticing that the seawater that filled his footprints in the clinging mud around the village evaporated to leave a crust of salt crystals. A commemoration of this man, and a thanksgiving for the salty prosperity of Pinggir Papas, is the focus of the Nyadar ritual.

Kebun Dadap, a village of simple white bungalows, is crowded. Nyadar is the most important time of year for the people of Pinggir Papas, and even those who have joined the huge Madurese diaspora return home for the celebration.
On a shaded pavilion outside the tomb compound, women are working to blend packages of leaves and petals – offerings for the ancestors – into one sacred mass. Each family has brought their own package, but it is handed over and added to the communal pile.
As evening approaches the crowd gathers before the gateway to the tombs. A dozen old men and women – direct descendents of the people buried here – hurry inside the compound to undertake secretive preparatory prayers. Overhead the sky is clear and pale and a full moon floats between the stands of bamboo.
A kyai – a village religious leader – conducts the waiting crowd through a chant of simple Arabic – la il aha il Allah – more and more urgently and insistently until the elders reemerge. Then the most dramatic element of Nyadar erupts: a hell-for-leather rush to enter the complex. All the usual conventions of deference collapse as men, women, young and old struggle to run through the narrow gateway and across the outer courtyard in search of a prime position within the inner sanctum. People push and shove, stumbling over gravestones and dragging others down with them. It looks more like a rugby scrum than a religious ceremony.
Once everyone is inside, a low hum of prayer begins to rise from the crowd. Offerings of petals and leaves are placed before the headstones, the tombs are doused with holy water from old brass pitchers, and villagers dab their ears and foreheads with rice-water – a strange echo of Hindu practice.
As darkness falls people filter back out and into the village and a bustling night market gets underway, the alleyways a mass of hissing paraffin lamps and glowing faces. But the people of Pinggir Papas do not return home. Instead they seek shelter in the houses of the Kebun Dadap locals – who play no other part in the Nyadar ceremonies – and begin to prepare for the second stage of the ritual.

***

The hint of Hindu practice in the Nyadar ritual may be more than a coincidence. Locals in Sumenep say that the people of Pinggir Papas speak an unusual dialect that “sounds like Balinese”.
According to legend, in the 1560s a Balinese army attacked Sumenep. A fleet of warships landed and Balinese soldiers torched fishing villages and advanced on the capital. But the Madurese defenders were victorious; the Balinese ships and camps were destroyed. Many of the invaders killed themselves rather than face defeat, but one small band fled from the battlefield to Pinggir Papas where they were given refuge on condition that they converted to Islam.

***

Saturday; the morning after the night before. The stalls of the night market have been cleared away; the alleyways of Kebun Dadap are silent and the villagers have returned to the area around the tombs. The ground is covered with upturned red and black baskets. During the night the Pinggir Papas people cooked a ceremonial meal of rice, chicken and eggs. This food, an offering to God and the ancestors, has been heaped on the platters known as panjeng that are the most important heirlooms of each Pinggir Pappas family. The red and black baskets have been placed over this food and the final stage of Nyadar is about to begin.
A group of elders in Balinese-style head-cloths enter the tomb compound to pray while the other villagers wait in the rising heat. Four ancient men are moving through the crowd. They are dressed in harlequin waistcoats dappled with rag-bag patches of color. On their heads are twists of gold and black batik. The hereditary duty of these men, called Pangolo, is to count the rice offerings.
As the elders return from the tombs everyone takes their place on the open ground under the trees, sitting cross-legged amongst the rice baskets, hands cupped in prayer. At the centre of the crowd the Kyai leads the ceremony, his head bowed. Clasped to his chest is a bulky object wrapped in tattered red cloth. It is said to be the sacred weapon of Angga Suto himself. The Kyai mutters a string of prayers and mantras. Fragments of different holy languages drift through the air: Arabic, Sanskrit and old Javanese.
When these prayers are finished the plates of rice – now imparted with the blessings of Nyadar – are uncovered and a chaos of chatter erupts as people hurriedly scoff a few symbolic mouthfuls. Then, with almost the same urgency that they rushed the tombs the night before, the rice is covered, wrapped and lifted onto heads and shoulders. The villagers dash to the river bank, eager to return to Pinggir Papas where the rice will be dried in the hot sun and a little added to the cooking pot each day throughout the coming year to ensure success and prosperity. Within half an hour Kebun Dadap is deserted, only a few scraps of leaves and paper to mark where the ritual took place.

For the people of Pinggir Papas the Nyadar ceremony is a celebration of their unusual heritage. Like so much in Indonesian religious practice, currents of older traditions run through it. For the locals however, Nyadar is very much part of Islam and the fact that their Hindu ancestors became Muslims as a condition of their asylum is an important point. But they are proud of their Balinese connection.

As the crowds disappear into the morning one Pinggir Papas man named Munir is still sitting in the shade of the pavilion in the graveyard, watching them go. He says that Nyadar is a sign of respect for the village ancestors, the leluhur, the people who came from Bali.
“Nyadar is the most important thing for Pinggir Papas people. Everyone must follow it, even if they have already left the village,” he says.
But Munir is not rushing back across the river to Pinggir Papas: he has lived in Kebun Dadap for a decade.
“My wife is from Kebun Dadap,” he says with a smile. “The Kebun Dadap people don’t join Nyadar, but there’s a connection between us because we stay in their village on the night of Nyadar.”
On that long murky night more than a few pairs of shy eyes meet over rice pots and panjeng. “There are lots of marriages between Pinggir Papas and Kebun Dadap people,” says Munir, grinning.

© Tim Hannigan 2008

Travelling in Madura

Madura, Indonesia

Originally published in Jakarta Post Weekender Magazine, October 2008



http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/10/26/traveling-madura.html


There’s more to Madura than salt and ceremonies. The long, low island riding off the north coast of East Java has one of the worst reputations in Indonesia, renowned as a place of sharp tempers and sharper knives. Bull races, tasty sate, and even a certain much-mythologized quality in the local women fail to attract many visitors. For the most part Madura remains the butt of a bad joke. The reality is a different story. With two days to wait before the Nyadar ritual I set out to discover just how different.

It took four hours to drive the length of Madura by motorbike from Kamal in the west to Sumenep in the east, passing through fields of tobacco and Indian corn. Along the way I passed the head of the bridge that is gradually creeping across the Madura Straight and that will soon link the island with the Javanese mainland. It was dusk when I rode into Sumenep, the limestone hills inland rising stark against a fading sky.

Sumenep is the antithesis of all the negative myths about Madura. A refined and truly friendly town, here the familiar “hello mister!” was always backed up with a polite and interested engagement as I walked along the quiet streets.
Sumenep was once the centre of an independent kingdom and the town is still home to a fine kraton and a royal mosque. Locals are eager to point out that the reputation of Madurese as rough-spoken and aggressive only applies to the people from the west of the island. They are also genuinely proud of their courtly heritage, and the royal tombs on the hilltop of Asta Tinggi outside the town are a place of pilgrimage.

After a night in Sumenep I headed onto the back roads. In the port of Kalianget I paused in the shadow of derelict warehouses. This place was once the centre of the Dutch salt industry, and the roads were lined with colonial villas of shuttered windows and white columns.

The Madurese have been troublesome neighbors for centuries. During the Majapahit and Mataram eras Madura’s royals proved hard to control, refusing to pay tribute and sometimes crossing the Madura Straight at the head of rebel armies. This reputation as a wellspring of renegades and rabble-rousers, coupled with large-scale immigration from Madura in more recent years, goes some way to explain the nervousness felt by many Indonesians about the Madurese. On their own territory though, they are strikingly hospitable.

I made my way to the empty beach at Lombang at Madura’s eastern tip. There was no one about but a lone coconut seller snoozing under the trees behind the great expanse of yellow sand and bright, wind-charged ocean.
Beyond Lombang the light streamed through stands of palm trees and the road bent away in a strip of smooth blue asphalt, leading me to the village of Dasuk on the north coast. Here the narrow lanes splintered in different directions amongst the ricefields.
Stopping to ask directions, a man named Mosa’i invited me into his family compound, a place of soft sunlight and grinning children. The villagers were eager to chat, offering me tea and posing self-consciously for photographs.
Later Mosa’i led me to another hamlet where topeng dance masks have been made for centuries. The skill is a hereditary one, passed from father to son.
The villagers were amused by Madura’s fearsome reputation. It was true, they said, that all Madurese men knew how to wield the traditional sickle known as a clurit – in cultivation and in battle – and there had been conflicts in the past. But, they pointed out, there had been bloodshed everywhere in the past – even in England.
As I sat on a white veranda chatting with Mosa’i and another man named Hari, the sunlight slipped away from the village and the sky paled behind the palm trees. They invited me to stay the night, but the Nyadar ceremony was the following day and I wanted to return to Sumenep.
I left with an invitation to return the next time I was in Madura – and there surely would be a next time – and rode away along the field boundaries into the dusk.

******

Anyone thinking of visiting Madura would do well to contact Kurniadi Wijaya of the Sumenep tourist office. He’s a licensed guide and can organize tours, but will be just as happy to chat and prime independent travelers with invaluable information.He can be reached on 081 79330648 or at kurniadi@consultant.com


© Tim Hannigan 2008

Madura – a Much Maligned Island.

The little-visited island of Madura

Originally published in Bali and Beyond Magazine, October 2008

http://www.baliandbeyond.co.id/bnb_oct_08/beyond.html

People warned me not to go to Madura. It was hot and dirty, they said, with nothing to see. And the inhabitants of the long, low island that lies off the north coast of Java were rude, aggressive, and possibly even dangerous. But none of the people who told me these things had ever been there. I was looking for an off-the-beaten-track destination easily accessible from East Java, and the terrible rumours only made me inquisitive: I went, and I discovered how wrong people were about Madura…

Madura is dwarfed by its southern neighbour, Java, but it is a big place, 160km long and 35 km wide. The gateway to the island is the sprawling East Java capital of Surabaya, a thirty-minute flight from Bali. Madura is just twenty minutes from Surabaya by ferry across a narrow channel crowded with shipping, but it is a world away from the hectic metropolis.
Madura is overwhelmingly rural, with small, orderly towns, far removed from the gridlocked cities of Java. A ridge of low limestone hills runs its length, cloaked in dry forest, and the level plains are a patchwork of rice fields and villages. And as I travelled east from the ferry port at Kamal, the first thing I noticed was just how beautiful it was. The fields were heavy with ripening rice, running out to banks of dark trees, and neat clusters of whitewashed, red-tiled houses stood back from the road. Inland there were craggy outcrops of weathered stone, and by scrambling to the top of one of these I was rewarded with a fabulous panorama of forest and fields sprawling south to the pale blue of the channel. There was no sign of the filth and squalor people in Java and Bali had warned me of; in fact it all seemed remarkably neat. And as for the infernal heat – well, this was Indonesia after all, so of course it was hot, but a light breeze was stirring the treetops, and there was not even a whiff of traffic fumes!
I travelled on eastward sometimes passing close to the coast, sometimes bending inland. In the late afternoon I reached my destination, the little town of Sumenep.

Sumenep is definitely the best destination in Madura, a grid of clean, lazy streets where brightly decorated becak (pedicabs) trundle by. It was here that I chose to spend a couple of nights. Virtually no tourists visit Madura – perhaps put off by the ill-informed stories of Indonesians from other parts of the country. But there are a few simple hotels scattered through the towns, and it took no time to find a bed.
Sumenep was a wonderfully friendly town. People were not used to foreign visitors, but they were eager to chat and as I wandered the streets I was met with warm greetings. It seemed that the negative stories I had heard about the Madurese people were far from the truth.
Sumenep has a handful of interesting sights, and the next morning I wandered from the crowded traditional market at Pasar Anom to the remarkable Mejid Jamik, the town’s oldest mosque. The mosque was built in the 18th Century by the ruler of East Madura, and it is fronted by a remarkable tiered gateway of stark white edged with yellow. It seemed to glow in the morning sunlight. Not far from the mosque is the keraton, the palace, a miniature version of the famed royal houses of Yogyakarta and Solo. I wandered the cool hallways, admiring the fine woodwork, and the decorations of the little pavilions in the courtyard outside, shaded by towering banyan trees. I found more notable architecture on an airy hilltop on the edge of town where the members of the old royal dynasty that once ruled Madura are buried. The mausoleums were crowded with pilgrims who come here to pray at the graves, and to make offerings of delicate flower petals.

Sumenep was a charming little place, and I wondered why it saw so few visitors, but once I headed out into the countryside beyond the town I became more bemused by Madura’s lack of tourists. The eastern part of the island is gorgeous. Narrow lanes wind through stands of tall palm trees, and cut through level rice fields of rich emerald green; side tracks open suddenly to gentle coastline and blue water, the horizon marked by the offshore islands of the tantalising Kangean Archipelago.
At Lombang Beach at the eastern tip of Madura a great sweep of yellow sand lies in front of a bank of whispering casuarinas trees, and following the rough track north along the coast from there, I found many other tiny beaches, utterly deserted beside the wide blue of the Java Sea. The next day too as I travelled on along the north coast road, passing through fields, palm stands and bustling fishing villages with inlets crowded with traditional white boats, I passed many stretches of clean, empty sand.

Madura is famous for a few things. Its crafts are renowned. In the little hamlet of Tajjian I was shown the intricately carved and decorated masks known as topeng, used in the dance versions of the great Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Villagers in East Madura have passed the skill of carving from generation to generation for hundreds of years, and traders from Yogyakarata and beyond still make their way there to buy the pieces. Madura is also famous for its batik. The silks and cottons here are decorated with some of the most elaborate and intricate designs anywhere in Indonesia. Motifs of birds and flowers in rich, deep colours are the norm, and in the batik-making village of Tanjungbumi with its warren of whitewashed alleyways, I was shown some of the most gorgeous pieces of cloth I had seen, far more impressive than the staid, formal designs of mainland Java.
Another famous Madurese export is its food. Throughout the archipelago simple stalls sell sate and sotto, renowned Madura specialities. But of course, locals will tell you, it is only on the island itself that you can taste the little kebabs of skewered chicken, and the deliciously fresh-tasting chicken soup as they should be eaten.

And Madura is famous for one more thing; indeed it has only one acknowledged tourist attraction: bull racing. As an agricultural heartland cattle have always been important on Madura, and out of a fun way to plough the rice fields a spectacular, high-octane sport developed. Every year in the Dry Season great championships are held in the towns of Madura where teams of two bulls and a man race a astonishing speeds across a hundred-metre course.

There were no bull races when I went to Madura, but I didn’t care. I had discovered that the island had a wealth of other attractions. There was beautiful countryside, pleasant, slow-paced towns and a cluster of historical sights; the food was good and the traditional crafts were still practiced as they always had been, without the effects of mass tourism. The coastline was dotted with clean, unspoilt beaches, and the whole island was the ideal place to sample a traditional part of Indonesia completely untouched by tourists. And above all, the people were delightful. Everywhere I went there was open hospitality and good humour.
As I made my way back to the western part of the Island, and back across the channel to the chaos of Surabaya, I was very glad I hadn’t listened to the terrible rumours.

© Tim Hannigan 2008

Real Madura a haven of peace, tranquility

The Rarely Visited Indonesian Island of Madura

Originally published in The Jakarta Post 08/04/07

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2007/04/08/real-madura-haven-peace-tranquility.html

Tell the average Indonesian that you're going to Madura for a holiday and he'll laugh.
Then, as the realization that you're not joking dawns, jaws will drop; concerns may even be expressed for your safety.
Madura rides like a ship at anchor just off East Java's north coast. It is as big as Bali and rich in culture and sights, but it has a terrible reputation and no one visits.
It was the tales of filthy towns and villages, aggressive, rough-spoken people and infernal heat (all from people who had never been there) that made me determined to go and see for myself.
So, one Saturday morning I rode my motorbike to Surabaya's Tanjung Perak port. As the ferry slipped across the busy channel the grim silhouette of the docks fell behind and a more attractive coast of dense forest took shape ahead.
The dire warnings of Indonesian friends faded in my ears. Twenty minutes later I was breathing in clean air as I rode between sweeping rice fields.

Lush fields, deserted beaches

The road from Kamal to Sumenep, my destination at the eastern end of Madura, stays close to the coast, winding through broad vistas of rice fields, and stretches of cool forest.
Limestone outcrops rise among the hills that form the center of the island, and there are neat and delightfully friendly villages of red roofs hidden in the trees.
The journey was a pleasure as I skirted fishing villages, made detours down narrow lanes, and paused to chat with happy, easy-going locals. All the way to Sumenep I wondered why such a beautiful, charming place had such an awful reputation.
Sumenep is undoubtedly the nicest place to stay in Madura. It is a charming town of quiet streets where brightly decorated becak (pedicabs) roll by.
The great gateway of the Agung Mosque glowed in the sunlight next morning. Its heavyset, tiered faade was painted white, and edged in yellow, and a narrow passageway led to an elegant mosque with a three-tiered roof and a cool, airy interior.
It is one of the oldest mosques in Java, built in the 18th Century, and certainly one of the most striking. From the mosque I made my way across Sumenep's central square to the old palace or kraton (the last remaining in East Java province).
It was a quiet spot of high ceilings and soft breezes. A young man, Yanto, who worked in the nearby museum showed me around.
He pointed out a huge, sprawling banyan tree in the garden which was already standing in the 18th Century when the kraton was built. He also led me to the Taman Sari, a compound of pools and gardens where the women of the royal household used to bathe.
The baths are empty now, but for a few large goldfish, and Yanto told that at night the garden was haunted by ghosts. After a visit to the old royal cemetery at Asta Tinggi on a hilltop just outside the town where the faithful come to pray, and a quick stop in the bustling Pasar Anom market, I set out east on a deserted road.
The countryside was even more gorgeous than the day before, the forest now dominated by tall coconut palms, and the rice fields greener and richer, touched with a film of light mist.
The road ran close to the coast, and often by picking through the trees I found deserted beaches where a strip of tilting palm trees bent away and the shapes of small islands showed offshore.
At lunchtime I reached Lombang Beach, where a vast stretch of yellow sand backed by a bank of casuarinas trees faces a broad sea.
There were a few warung (food stalls) under the trees and I ate a bowl of tasty soto, Madura's most famous dish. It is a yellow soup with a delicious, lemony flavor mixed with rice, vegetables and shredded chicken.
Beyond Lombang the coastline hardened as the central ridge of limestone pushed up against the coast. The soil was thinner here and ribs of gray rock showed through the surface.
The villages were fewer, and there were many spots where a patch of clean beach lay utterly empty close to the road.
As I drove I asked myself over and over why this beautiful landscape was not crawling with tourists. I was glad that it wasn't, but baffled none the less.

Big-city gridlock a world away

That evening back in Sumenep I met a charming young man named Adi. A native of Sumenep, he works for the local tourism department and also acts as a guide.
He was a mine of information, whetting my appetite for a return visit with tales of all the places I had missed, and tantalizing talk of deserted islets of pure white sand and crystal-clear coral seas in the sprawling Kangean archipelago east of Madura.
He had his own theory about Madura's terrible reputation. Most outsiders form their opinion from the large numbers of Madurese migrants who have left the island in search of work.
Madura is beautiful and tranquil, and its people are laid-back and friendly.
Coming from such a place, Adi claimed, the clamor and chaos of the big cities of Java and beyond disturbs and unsettles the Madurese, and they respond with ill-temper and harsh words, a poor advert for their homeland.
The theory had some merit: after just two days in Madura I was relaxed and unwound, but the very thought of Surabaya gridlock was enough to sharpen my temper!
The next morning I crossed the central ridge where villagers were plowing fields of rich red earth with teams of cattle the same color as the soil. I reached the northern coast road at Slopeng village.
Here a great bank of sand knitted with palm trees, shelters the road. But stop anywhere and scramble up the dunes and you will meet a glorious panorama of empty beach, stretching far in each direction, and a shining blue ocean scattered with fishing boats.
Adi had told me that this area was famous for topeng, the carved masks used in the dance versions of the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics.
After an enjoyable wild goose chase through palm groves and rice paddies in the bright sunlight I found the hamlet of Tajjan where Pak Suraji, a topeng-maker lived.
As I sipped delicious green tea, a Madura specialty made from pandanus, he showed me his collection of masks, all carved from the local bintaos wood and skillfully painted in bright colors.
There was snub-nosed Semar the clown, hideous Ravana, handsome Arjuna, and a multitude of others. Pak Suraji told me that the masks had been made in the area for centuries, the skill passed from generation to generation.
His collection was not for sale: They were heirloom pieces used on the occasions when the villagers stage a dance, but in another hamlet nearby I bought a mask of Arjuna, decorated in fine red and black.
Madura is proudly Muslim. Arabic names are common and as you drive along the back roads you will pass men collecting donations for new mosques, and schoolboys in black peci caps walking home from village pesantren (religious schools).
But people in Java had painted a picture of something approaching Taliban-era Afghanistan. The high Hindu-culture of the topeng dances, and tales Adi had told of southern villages where spectacular Balinese-style ceremonies are held, proved that this was not the case.

Irresistible batik

The road west ran through friendly fishing villages where brightly decorated boats were moored in narrow inlets. I stopped several times to swim in the warm waters off deserted beaches. The hills were green to the south and running cloud dappled the sea with purple and turquoise.
In mid-afternoon I reached the village of Tanjungbumi. Back from the road a warren of white-washed alleys clustered around a glittering mosque.
In a cool courtyard of shade and broken sunlight I admired exquisite batik sarongs, the work of Hajji Affandi, a kindly, soft-spoken man.
Madura batik is famous, characterized by motifs of flowers and birds, with hints of Chinese art. The best pieces are made of silk, and painstakingly decorated by hand, sometimes taking several weeks to complete.
Tanjungbumi is one of the centers of batik-making, and there are many workshops hidden in the white alleyways.
I had not intended to buy anything, but one piece, an intricate spread of birds and flowers in rich reds and greens was the most gorgeous batik I had ever seen: I was unable to resist.
My special souvenir safely in my bag, I rode on. As the land softened and the hills fell away I turned south again.
Here, elegant new mosques stood beside the road. They were far more pleasing than the modern mosques of Java, and I stopped beside one particularly startling Mughal-style building.
A jolly man, Pak Suni, led me to the rooftop. I was not far from the port at Kamal now, bringing my journey full circle. As I looked out over the colored plain of rice fields and villages, the sea shining golden in the lengthening light, the hills dark behind, I wondered why it had taken me so long to come to this marvelous place.
Half an hour later, as the ferry slipped over the murky brown water of the channel back towards the grimy smudge of Surabaya I was certain of two things: I would be back to Madura before long, and the next time I heard someone bad-mouthing the place, I would be sure to set them straight!

© Tim Hannigan 2007