Railway travel in Indonesia and elsewhere offers many benefits, not least of which is a view into worlds hidden from the main roads.
Side by side the two massive oxen, the tips of their long horns clashing, struggle through chest-deep water and mud to pull a heavy plough through a rice paddy. A farmer – likewise wading in the muck – urges them on from behind. One of the oxen lifts his head to bellow as his partner lowers his own to push harder against the harness across his chest.
Then they are gone – hidden by thick leaves of bushes and trees before I have a chance to snap a photo. Rather, they remain where they are as I speed past in a railway carriage rushing across the island of Java, returning from Yogyakarta to Jakarta on a sunny July day.
This was not my first time riding the rails between those two cities. I took the train from Jakarta to Jogja (as Yogyakarta is popularly known) on my first full day in Indonesia more than five years ago. As I then gazed out the window, watching the crowded streets and kampung (urban villages) of the capital change into wet farmland and scattered houses and later into forested hills, I did not spy any oxen, but I did see many farmers tilling their sodden rice fields with unusual hand-guided two-wheeled tractors, mud splashing high as rubber and metal spun and churned.
Java’s countless paddies are full of men and women tending their crops under the tropical sun, their only relief from its heat their conical grass-woven hats and the small makeshift shelters that dot the land. The farmers are out there all day every day, planting or harvesting, digging mud to loosen soil or bank up retaining walls, carving channels to divert water, guiding their heavy tractors or oxen through the muck.
Meanwhile, I pass swiftly by, ensconced in my comfortable seat with cool air wafting into my face. Stewards push carts down the aisle to offer hot coffee, ice tea and spicy nasi goreng (fried rice to you and me) while cartoons play on the carriage’s entertainment system and the muted clickety-clack of metal wheels on rails lulls many other passengers into sleep. The destination is most of a day’s ride away, but once on board no one is in a hurry.
Trains have long been my favorite mode of long-distance travel over land. One of the reasons for my preference is purely selfish: The view is generally more varied and interesting. From the windows of a car or bus on a road one sees the fronts of things, how people want them to be seen. The faces of houses are done up to conceal the private reality behind them and those of shops, restaurants and other attractions are enhanced to convince travelers to stop and bide awhile, to consume something and spend money. On a road there is a connection between those who pass and those who stay: One can influence the other.
A railway allows no such social interaction. No one along the way can entice a train passenger to stop on a whim, so there is no profit in trying. A train becomes an immutable feature of the landscape, albeit one in motion. If it is not simply ignored, it is regarded with idle curiousity. At most, the only possible interactions involve children throwing stones at the passing carriages, mischievously seeing how many windows they can crack. Or people smile and wave at the passengers in an offer of friendship, but often the train passes too fast for them to discover if it is accepted.
So, from a train one doesn’t see the veiled front of things, but the exposed back. From an Indonesian train one sees families scratching out meager livelihoods as they inhabit rickety shacks built right up to the edge of the rail lines – illegal dwellings in perpetual danger of being bulldozed by local public order police. One sees better-off homeowners whiling away the time in their backyards, hanging laundry, tending to poultry, or just relaxing with friends. One sees adults and children heading to and from their workplaces or schools, or playing soccer, or racing pigeons, or courting in secluded corners. One sees dark jungle, seemingly empty, but no doubt teeming with life that chooses to remain hidden so it can peer out at the passing train in safety.
Also, trains are obviously better for the environment than many of the alternatives. Moving people in the hundreds, often by electricity, rather than with small exhaust-spewing vehicles is simply cleaner and more efficient. Indonesia has a lot of people who want to go a lot of places all the time, so a lot of roads are often heavily congested by a lot of automobiles. Indonesia may be late in trying to solve that problem, but it has now started. One of the ways is by improving and expanding its rail systems – both within cities and between them. Jakarta and other urban centers are building new commuter lines and the national government is funding the construction of the country’s first high-speed railway.
This is why Indonesia – which is by no means rich – is no longer an “underdeveloped” country, but a “developing” one. Perhaps a so-called developed country like Canada should follow Indonesia’s example and improve its railway network instead of continuing a bad decades-old policy of dismantling it.
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