Ondel-Ondel in Jakarta
We were walking home from Playgroup this evening, as the sun was sinking low behind us. Over the cacophony of the busy city street, the bajaj backfiring, and motorcycles gunning their engines, car horns, and street vendors, a rhythmic clanging began to filter into our headspace. We looked up, and there were two ondel-ondel lumbering towards us.
Ondel-ondel are traditional Betawi puppets who are said to protect the neighbourhood from calamities and the wrath evil spirits. They lurch and stumble around the kampung accompanied by musicians and a young man collecting coins and small bills from residents, a modest fee meted out for protection from misfortunes great and tiny.
As we were walking our conversation tuned to spirits and superstitions, and I asked my friend, do all Indonesians believe in these things supernatural? Or are they just folk traditions of the past that lumber and lurch into modern, rational present?
Her response was interesting, she said, “I can’t say we don’t believe in these things.”
She went on to tell me stories of ghosts, and spirits, curses and ancestors. She told me of an forebear of hers who was cursed by a neighbour, may you and your descendents never be able to die. And the descendant lived on, unable to die, until her skin rotted away, her body nothing but bone, and her lungs kept on pumping in and out beneath her naked rib cage. She said, trust me. I saw it. With my own eyes, right in front of me. I can’t say that I don’t believe.
Indonesia is a funny place. There are skyscrapers and busy highways, hipsters in horn-rimed glasses eating red velvet cake in a cafe with perfectly mismatched seating and exposed ceilings. There are multi-gazillionaires driving cars that cost more than I’ll likely ever earn in a year. Glittering malls, Western brands, Katy Perry blaring over the speakers in a traditional market with pot-holed streets where pedlars sell wax apples off the back of hand carts. There is all of this and still, you can see ondel-ondel lumbering down the main traffic artery of Jakarta, each and every Sunday, a sign that traditional culture is valued without conflict along side Katy Perry fans and urban hipsters on fixed-gear bicycles.