In previous blogs about Indonesia, I shared stories about our time on Borneo and Sumatra. This time, I’d like to take you along to the island of Java. It is a long skinny island with the capital city, Jakarta, on it. Java is one of the most densely populated islands in the world with more than 140 million people. I spent most of my time in the city of Surabaya.
I flew directly from Jakarta, Indonesia to Balikpapan on the island of Borneo, to do school visits at an international school. The island of Borneo consists of Kalimantan, the Indonesia portion as well as Brunei and east Malaysia. I’m struck by how clean everything is: streets are continuously being swept by city workers with tiny bundles of branches. I don’t understand how people, especially the children, stay so immaculately clean while living in shacks and walking dirt roads. The children wear bright white socks, school uniforms starched and pressed, hair all combed and perfect. Yet all around is dirt and dust…En route to the airport, the taxi driver comments that there is a lot of unemployment since logging of the rain forest became illegal. Has that really stopped?
The librarian emailed me: “Would you like to come and do school visits? I have 4 schools that would love to have you. We’re across Indonesia.” These are the invitations I dream of. And so we packed our bags and flew to Indonesia to do school presentation in Pekanbaru and Duri on Sumatra, in Surbaya and on Borneo (Kalimantan) in Balikpapan.
