A HOME AWAY FROM HOME
The first house I lived in in Indonesia stood at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in the vast suburban acreage of eastern Surabaya. It was the archetypal middle class dwelling, with a heavy green gate in front, a garage to the left, and a narrow porch opening to a cool space beyond. Immediately inside the front door was a long room, stretching right to the back of the house, with a sofa, TV, and dining table in the middle. Three bedrooms and a bathroom opened directly into this communal space. At the very back, tucked discreetly to the side, was the kitchen, and beyond that was a tiny yard, and opening onto that tiny yard was an even tinier bedroom where Sutinah, the maid, lived. That’s right: the maid; we had a maid; I’ll talk about that later.
I’ve lived in various other Indonesian houses in the years since, and they are almost always a variation on this simple theme. The emphasis is always on being in the company of others, and that’s what that space at the heart of the house is for—hanging out with your family.
An old-school middle-class home in Jakarta of the kind rapidly giving way to modern villas and apartments.
A typical Indonesian living room.
BEING AN ANAK KOS
When a young Indonesian leaves the warm cocoon of the family home to head for college or work in some far-off city, they don’t end up living on their own in a studio apartment. They move into something called a rumah kos. This is usually translated as “boarding house”—which conjures up grim Dickensian visions of gruesome landladies and drafty corridors. But the classic rumah kos is usually just a family home with space for a lodger or two. And the classic ibu kos (“landlady”) is less a gimlet-eyed Victorian tyrant than a surrogate mother—though she’ll certainly keep a close check on her lodgers, particularly if they happen to be girls (most respectable rumah kos only take lodgers of a single sex). There are also purpose-built rumah kos, which are more like budget hotels with a dozen or more identical rooms, but they’re not such nice places to live, and they don’t always have such wholesome reputations.
Oh Mandi! The Indonesian Bathroom
Traditional Indonesian kamar mandi, “bathrooms”, aren’t quite the same as what you might find back home. For a start, they don’t usually have a bath. What they do have, though, is a big tiled tank called a bak mandi, full of unheated water, with a little plastic scoop for sloshing it over yourself—which is how you take a shower, Indonesian style. It’s actually both quicker and more refreshing on hot days than standing under the meager trickle of an underpowered showerhead (though these days, modern middle class homes usually do have a conventional shower as well). Traditional squat toilets are vanishing from middle class homes, replaced by sit-down flushing toilets, usually with a sort of squirting hose contraption in lieu of toilet paper—you’ll get used to it!
I’ve been an anak kos (“lodger”, literally “boarding house kid”)—a couple of times—and they were great places, full of that unmistakable Indonesian social warmth. It’s almost impossible to find a house for a short-term lease in Indonesia, but your board in a rumah kos is paid by the month. For economic or educational migrants from poor backgrounds a budget rumah kos is the only affordable accommodation option, but around the swanky private universities in major Indonesian cities you’ll find rumah kos complete with swimming pools and monthly rent that runs into the hundreds of dollars. The main attraction of these places is the chance to live communally, to find a home away from home—because in Indonesia a house without other people in it is no home!
Floor-level seating, tea, snacks and cigarettes—the essential elements of hospitality in a traditional home.
Helping Hands: The Pembantu
“You have a maid???” exclaim my British friends when I’m living in Indonesia. “You don’t have a maid???” exclaim my Indonesian friends when I’m living in the UK…
Having live-in domestic staff is as much a middle class necessity in Indonesia as having a television. I’ve met Indonesians who simply can’t comprehend that while I was growing up my parents—a teacher and a journalist—not only didn’t have a maid; they couldn’t possibly have afforded one. “But who did the housework?” they ask, aghast, and when I tell them they’re still more incredulous: “Your dad???” Wages for domestic staff are very low in Indonesia (the attraction for young women from poor rural backgrounds is that with room and board provided you can, in theory, save everything you earn), so even families on relatively modest incomes can often afford at least one maid. Those with more cash to spare might have a whole gang of them.
The Indonesian word for maid is pembantu, which literally means “helper”—a somewhat softer concept than “servant”—and in many middle class households the pembantu is almost a member of the family.
A THIRST FOR LEARNING, BUT AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM THAT OFTEN FALLS SHORT
It’s an image that defines the Indonesian morning. From straggling villages on far-flung islets to classy suburban compounds, the roads are alive with noisy chatter of 55 million children heading for school. They go in early—usually at 7.30am—and they’re generally done by early afternoon when the flow reverses, the same neatly uniformed horde fanning out towards food stalls, hang-out spots, and homes.
Heads down! Struggling through the dreaded Ujian Nasional.
All Indonesians are supposed to go through 12 years of compulsory schooling. From the ages of six to 11 children attend Sekolah Dasar, Elementary School, usually abbreviated to SD. Kids in SD wear white and brick-red uniforms, and they definitely set the color scheme of the Indonesian streets first thing in the morning. After that it’s on to Sekolah Menengah Pertama or SMP, Junior High School, for three years. The uniform for SMP is usually white and navy blue. And then there’s three final years of Sekolah Menengah Atas, SMA, Senior High School, where the students wear white and slate-blue. The school year starts in mid-July, with a break in December and another break wherever the end of Ramadan (defined by the lunar calendar) happens to fall.
Remarkably, for such a vast country with a great deal of inequality, Indonesia manages very nearly 100 percent enrollment at Elementary School level. And Indonesia also manages near-universal literacy, with no meaningful disparity between male and female literacy rates. But if that all makes it sound like an educational Eden, you might, unfortunately, have to think again.
Indonesia routinely scores appallingly in international assessments of skills amongst school children. It’s a conundrum fit to make you grind your teeth: how can a country with a universal schooling system and total basic literacy do so badly? But you don’t need to go very far beyond the school gates to start finding problems. For a start, Indonesian education puts an old-fashioned emphasis on rote learning and memorization of meaningless information. When I was teaching English in a private language center it often seemed that my main job was undoing all the damage done in state schools, where kids were drilled in convoluted formal grammar by teachers who could barely speak English themselves.
Secondly, on paper Indonesia might have one of the best teacher-to-pupil ratios on the planet (in fact, several critical World Bank reports have actually claimed that Indonesia has too