Bebekan 17

I have been in France since the beginning of March. I will give you more details about the lively progress of the construction of the sanggar when I return to Indonesia on April 15. The day before my departure for Paris, we established the Village Organization of the Sanggar at a meeting with the elders of the village and the chief of the district. Together we chose its various members, men and women. The secretary of the district chief, a literate man, suggested that we enrich the name of the sanggar by adding a third word starting with the letter G, in accordance with the Javanese poetic tradition which is quite fond of alliterations (purwokinanti). He suggested to add the word “giri”, meaning “mountain”. Since a mountain is a symbol of solidity and nobility of heart in Javanese mythology, and since the sanggar itself is built on the side of a small hill, the proposal was unanimously accepted. So from now on the sanggar will be called : Sanggar Giri Gino Guno, meaning “the Doubly Useful Mountain”. Enin, a designer and a talented art critic from Jakarta, gracefully modified the logo accordingly. You will be able to see it on the blog "Bebekan 17" in a few days.

Just before my departure, Eli, an Indonesian woman about whom I have already written in previous letters (I had met her brother in Aceh at the time of the tsunami), contacted us to announce that she had finally found the money to set up the co-operative of “emping” (chips made from the barks of the “melijo” acorn). It is the Australian government which gave these funds to the small association of Eli. Asep is now building with the women of Bebekan five rudimentary houses which will serve as small co-operatives where the “emping” will be manufactured according to more “hygienic” standards than the “emping” manufactured until now by the women in their own dwellings. Each woman will receive a capital of 500.000 rupiah (45 euros) to buy a stock of acorns, plus 200.000 rupiah (18 euros) for the manufacturing equipment. Eli will take care of finding markets for the product. If our co llaboration with Carrefour can continue on better terms than until now, this hypermarket will also be a potential buyer. The co-operative is integrated into the activities of the sanggar which has many missions : cultural, educational, economic, artistic, public health and environmental. Eli had planned to coordinate five village cooperatives of “emping”, but until now only the one of Bebekan has been created rapidly and in a beautiful spirit of collaboration. In her mind the co-operative of Bebekan will serve as a “pilot scheme”, which is a great source of pride for the women of Bebekan.

While I was in Paris, a very dear friend and a brilliant anthropologist, Barbara Glowczewski, who is also part of the friends of Bebekan, invited me to speak about the Bebekan adventure in a seminar which she organized at the Museum of the Quay Branly on March 28.
Here is a summing up of the talk I gave entitled “House of the body, house of the heart”.
The village of Bebekan belongs to the village group of Gilangharjo, in the district of Pandak, department of Bantul, Special Province of Yogyakarta. It is located 30 kms south of the city of Yogyakarta. Its houses are built at the foot of small island-shaped hill surrounded by an ocean of green rice fields. The four hundred villagers are all landless agricultural workers, except for a few workmen, becak drivers and a civil servant, only one, who is a teacher. Of the one hundred houses which made the village before the earthquake of May 27, 2006, eighty-five collapsed in part or completely. They were a mixture of old and recent constructions, none meeting basic antiseismic standards. Two people died in the earthquake and several dozens were wounded. The three days which followed the earthquake were the more difficult days. Promised help did not arrive : there was no food, no tents, no blankets.

Coconuts, bananas and other fruits growing on the land of Bebekan were a blessing for survival. Aftershocks as well as the fear of a tsunami continued to haunt the nights of the people of Bebekan. Total destruction of the electric installations as well as the violent nightly downpours made the darkness even darker. God knows who showed us the way to this village. Asep, the coordinator of the voluntary first-aid workers of Yogyakarta, and myself, were carried along by the amazing energy of the “gotong royong” (community self-help) in order to try to raise Bebekan from its ruins, amid the total indifference of the local and international institutional assistance. We endeavored to rebuild not only a house to shelter the body, but also a house to shelter and comfort the heart. What is miraculous, it is that the absurd economic logic within which we operated (absurd because it was based on a day to day improvisation and sustained by a spontaneous network of fri endships and a kind of grace) does work. And it has continued to function for nine months in Bebekan. Let us call it "micro-assistance" (as opposed to the macro-help of the NGOs).