HAAS

Durenan is not a place you’re likely to know. It is situated between the larger towns of Trenggalek and Tulungagung on the main road, about 4.5 hours south of Surabaya. The road is primarily a two-lane route shared with scooters, and the average speed by car is 50 km/h. You can shorten the journey by an hour by taking a toll highway for the first 100 km. However, it is the home village of Nenik, whom I met in The Netherlands some time ago.

We took a bus from the Surabaya bus station and arrived in the dark. The entire journey from Saparua felt like an Indiana Jones travelogue: we began on the back of a scooter, then took a fast ferry, followed by an hour-long taxi ride, a nearly three-hour flight, another taxi, and finally, a four-hour bus ride. Upon arrival, I was too tired to do anything. The next morning, we had to leave at 7 AM to head to the mountains for an ancestral ceremony with her extended family.

The extended family lives in Pintu, an administrative district in the Ponorogo Regency. Pintu has a population of 1,667 residents. Practically all houses are farms. Pinto is another 2,5 hours from Durenan. For the occasion the family hired a bright coloured minibus to travel to Pintu. Below a typical Pintu farmhouse painted in Hello Kitty pink.

Typical East-Java farmer’s meal: white rice, vegetables stews, often made with some type of fish, a tiny piece of meat, boiled egg and krupuk.

While the two-day trip served as a social family gathering, it was also an occasion to honor the ancestors. We visited three separate burial sites. The first site resembled a typical graveyard, and the path leading there wound through the rice fields. After washing our hands and feet, we squatted around the family grave of five ancestors. Following a recitation of religious texts by one of the elders, we sprinkled flowers over the graves—three handfuls of flowers for each one. By that point, I could no longer squat; my leg muscles simply couldn't handle the Asian squat.

On the way to the graveyard I spotted my favourite vegetable: bitter melon. But I prefer the Surinamese name: sopropo.

The second graveyard had a little wooden construction dedicated to another ancestral grave and a plate with the family tree going back seven generations. The same ritual with recitations and the sprinkling of flowers was repeated. The oldest ancestor was buried in the mountains. We would visit that site later in the afternoon.

Into the mountains…

The final stage of the family gathering took us higher into the mountains. Our minibus driver wasn’t sure how to get there, so we followed another black minibus with more family members. At times, our two-wheel drive bus barely made it up the slopes; a four-wheel drive vehicle was almost a necessity. After about an hour, we reached our destination: a small house that was apparently the family's ancestral home.

The house consists of just one room for praying and sleeping, where both men and women share the space, even at night. Meals are enjoyed outside on the veranda. At the back of the house, there is a kitchen and toilet. The house has electricity and fresh water.

A little higher up in the mountains was the ancestral grave. I'm not sure if anyone is actually buried there. The "grave" is a small wooden structure next to a rock with striking features.

At the rock, another ritual was held. However, during the recitation of the texts, I suddenly heard hissing and growling. I saw Nenik’s sister's hands transform into claws, clawing at the muddy forest floor. The growling grew louder, and the people around her became agitated. It appeared that she was possessed by the spirit of a tiger. One of the men rushed down the mountain to fetch some water while other family members tried to restrain her, but her movements became increasingly violent and uncontrollable. The anthropologist in me wanted to capture everything on video, but I had only just met half of the family members a few hours earlier.

In the end four men carried her down to the house where everybody sat around her, singing and comforting her. The tiger spirit slowly left her and after twenty minutes or so, she was back to normal and it was if nothing had happened. “Oh, she does that all the time”, somebody explained to me. The night set in and the forest went dark.

While tigers were officially declared extinct on Java in 2003, they remain part of the cultural memory. The last reliable sighting of a Javan tiger occurred in 1976. I had already become fascinated by the Korean mountain god san-shin, who can shapeshift into a tiger. In Indonesia, there is a similar belief in tigers as protectors of forests and sacred places. Within the Kejawen mystical tradition, there is a concept of siluman harimau (tiger spirits), which are shapeshifters or supernatural beings capable of taking the form of a tiger.

The next morning

The next morning, the family gathering resembled any typical family gathering. We all took a walk together to a viewpoint, with the women wearing their pajamas. In the photo below are Nenik, one of her sisters (not the one who was possessed by the tiger), and her Dutch-Portuguese husband. In the middle is Yogi, a nephew who is still figuring out life. Currently, he’s working in a hotel in Bali and enjoying the Balinese nightlife. He joked that he believes in Allah, the Christian God, the Hindu gods, and Buddha if necessary to the hilarity of the family. While the family may be Muslim, there is tolerance toward other beliefs.

After our walk, two deer hunters stopped by. In true Indonesian fashion, we soon found ourselves posing with their guns, looking like Bonnie and Clyde. The guns were probably not loaded, but in hindsight, it didn't cross my mind at the time to ask. The Javan rusa natively occurs on the islands of Java.

The forest is filled with magic. Not far from the ancestral house is a small stream with a water source. I stripped naked and washed myself with the healing water using the plastic bucket. Everyone believes that the water can heal any ailment.

On our way back to Durenan, the family spotted a man on a motorbike carrying fresh bundles of harvested peteh beans. He was practically ambushed, and after some haggling over the price, we bought two large bunches of the beans. Some of the peteh beans eventually made their way to my fridge in Amsterdam.

Es Dawet Gempol Jabung

Normally, I am not a fan of sweet desserts or drinks. However, this es dawet gempol jabung, made from rice and coconut milk, was only lightly sweetened. I was fortunate, as this drink can often be very sweet. Some fermented rice grains floated in the drink, and a block of ice kept it cool. In West Java, this drink is known as es cendol.

The kitchen in the family home serves as the main gathering space. The house doesn't have a living room; instead, there is a reception room with furniture that nobody ever uses. The family spends most of their time in the kitchen, sitting on the floor while preparing food and eating. Although there’s a table with chairs outside, it remains unused. The rest of the house consists of nine bedrooms and six bathrooms.

Indonesians are serious about krupuk. These crispy crackers come in many variations, some made from cow skin and others from fish skin. Krupuk udang is the most well-known variety outside of Indonesia. On our flight to Amsterdam, we filled our checked baggage with food, each weighing 23 kilograms, with uncooked krupuk among our haul. Meanwhile, my carry-on, which contained clothing for two weeks, weighed just 7 kilograms.

The cheapest food you can find is paper wrapped pecel. The name refers to the peanut sauce. It is served on rice, boiled vegetables like beansprouts and any green leaf vegetable available, including a small piece of krupuk. This is not even street food, it is usually cooked by a nearby neighbour. It costs around 30 eurocents. Eat with your hands.

Between the road and the houses, there is a canal. As recently as the 1980s, the houses didn't have indoor toilets. At 4 AM, when it was still conveniently dark, villagers would hang from the bamboo bridges and relieve themselves directly into the canal. One day, the bamboo railing broke, and everyone fell into the canal among the floating excrement. Decades later, people still find this story hilarious.

Nenik’s sister has a little roadside restaurant selling Tahu Sumedang, a Sundanesedeep-fried tofu from Sumedang, West Java.

Location of the family home on Google Maps.

In the evening, we walked into the village to buy some take-away food: nasi goreng and satay. There’s no single correct way to make nasi goreng, and this cook was simply frying eggs, green vegetables, and rice over a high flame. As he cooked, he added a splash from each of the six bottles into the wok: chili pastes, ketjap, and possibly oyster sauce.

On the second-to-last day, I finally had satay. The price is per 10 satay sticks. Before I knew it, I was ushered toward the cooking station, waving the kipas (fan) as if I was grilling the satay. The cook was from Madura, and suddenly everyone seemed to know how to speak Bahasa Madura.

A day at the beach

From Durenan, it’s about 38 kilometers to the beach, or roughly an hour by car. Between the flat plains of Durenan and the sea are mountains. When we arrived, it was pouring rain—a true case of Kurosawa rain. When I checked my Radar Pro app, it didn’t seem like the weather would clear that day. We spent an hour drinking coffee and eating cow skin krupuk in a small café.

Around noon, the weather improved, and we drove to a popular beach. The narrow boats there are used for tourist trips, but I was more interested in swimming. I had brought my swimming trunks from Amsterdam, but they were deemed too revealing, so I had to buy a pair that offered more coverage. As is customary, I kept my T-shirt on.

At first, I ran into the sea where the family was swimming, only to realise there were sharp rocks hidden beneath the surface, and I cut my finger on a piece of coral. So much for paradise! Fortunately, 500 meters away, I found a narrow corridor with only sand. I stayed as long as possible in the warm water.

Peaceful silence

The next day, we explored the rural side of Durenan. Until then, I had only seen the ribbon development along the main road, which made Durenan seem like a very noisy village. However, walking perpendicular to the road, everything changed within a few hundred meters. Suddenly, a peaceful silence became apparent. Villagers use the paths between the rice fields for running or jogging. Some of the rice fields are privately owned, while others belong to the municipality.

Below is the nursery for rice plants. Once the tiny plants are big enough, each seedling is transplanted to the rice field.

Mobile shop on a motorbike. When I looked closer, I saw the man was selling fresh meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, and dried foods. It had everything you need to cook a meal.

This is what you can achieve with the earnings from more than a decade of kitchen and healthcare sector cleaning work in the Netherlands, typically working between 6 and 7 days a week. Nenik built this hotel on a piece of land she personally inherited. The hotel features four rooms, each with four bunk beds, and is intended as a student hotel for a nearby school. When fully occupied, the annual turnover should be around €6,000, which is enough to live on after retirement. However, like many first-generation migrants, Nenik faces the question: Should she fully migrate back to Indonesia as planned, or should she stay in the Netherlands to be close to her daughter and possibly grandchildren?

Epitaph

In the final hours of daylight on our last evening, we visited the family grave, about 10 minutes away by motorbike. I sat on the back of a driver who had one eye. It became evident that the flowers traditionally sprinkled over a grave can be purchased at the entrance of the graveyard. They consist of a mixture of white and red flowers along with green leaves.

The family plot in the graveyard was purchased recently. An unknown baby was already buried there, marked by a tiny unmarked grave that cannot be removed for obvious reasons. To prevent others from using the plot, the family built a wall around it, as this is apparently a concern. Weeds grow quickly in Indonesia, so we all spent time removing them by hand after sprinkling flowers and praying. Aside from the baby, the only other grave is Nenik's father, who passed away just a few years ago. At that time, I bought the family a goat to be slaughtered so they could serve satay kambing to the funeral guests.

Last home cooked family meal in Durenan: cooked vegetables and pepesan ikan, fish steamed in banana leaf with a spicy bumbu. Once you get the bumbu right, Indonesian cooking is quite easy. The journey home to Amsterdam was long: almost four hours by car to the airport in Surabaya, a flight to Jakarta, an eight hour flight to Dubai, and another eight hour flight to Amsterdam. Each layover was about four hours. It took me a week to recover from jetlag as I didn’t sleep for 33 hours.