‘As a missionary,’ Jack was often reminded, ‘your purpose here is to raise the health standards of the local people, and meet their medical and surgical needs. I, however, am charged with caring for their spiritual needs, not you. And, as such, you should therefore refrain from referring to yourself as a medical missionary.’
Jack had worked tirelessly with Netty to establish the now successful clinic which provided medical services not only to Christian, but also to Tentena’s Muslim families. He understood that religious harmony prevailed throughout the district due to the wisdom of local authorities whose decision to implement power-sharing had removed the primary cause of most disputes. Strategic positions in district government were arranged informally so that a Christian appointee would be assisted by a Muslim deputy, and vice versa, the compromise bringing an appearance of social unanimity to the province. However, Jack’s superior, Nathan Glaskin scoffed at the system, citing the growing influx of Muslims into the region, predicting that there would be a significant shift in the social structure with the many thousands of transmigrants arriving from Java and other over-populated Muslim islands. When Jack raised this most delicate of subjects with Netty, she had confirmed that the Christian hold on such key posts had diminished considerably over the past five years and that there was, indeed, a resurgence of animosity between the two groups.
As he lay contemplating the possibility of future conflict, Jack considered the genesis of the archipelago-wide conundrum.
When Indonesia achieved independence from the Dutch fifty years before, the new leadership successfully resisted calls for Indonesia to become an Islamic state, offering the people pluralism and affirming a diversity of religions which embraced Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. Jack had read that the Republic’s founding fathers’ wishes were later frustrated by President Suharto who, in an attempt to shore up his presidency courted Islamic radicals, understanding that this alliance would, undoubtedly, lead to an escalation in attacks on Christian communities. These were the seeds of discontent, planted for political gain, destined to rip the nation apart.
Jack lit a kretek, the familiar fragrance of the clove cigarette soothing the moment he inhaled, an image of his mother looking down critically, intruding on his thoughts. He visualized her standing there waving a disapproving finger. He looked skywards and smiled. It was time to bid her farewell.
Jack McBride offered a silent prayer to his mother, the people of Tentena and Sulawesi’s fourteen million inhabitants. He cast his eyes across the horizon towards the east where the archipelagic province of Maluku accommodated a further two million Indonesian citizens, conscious that the majority were also Christian, their number spread across a thousand small islands covering a vast expanse of ocean. And, in that moment, he experienced the tug of history and vowed to visit the famous Spice Islands which had drawn Indian, Chinese, Arab and European traders to that destination.
East Indonesia –
The Moluccan Islands (Ambon)
Nuci recognized the modernized melody as one of the traditional Moluccan songs; the foot-tapping reggae beat lifting her spirits as she went about the household chores. She paused, a brief moment from childhood triggering images of her mother singing in church, the memory momentarily distracting her from the chore at hand.
Born into a Christian Ambonese family, Nuci had been raised in an environment of want and despair following the collapse of the Maluku independence movement in 1950, tales of those events as related by her father, caught in the cobwebs of her mind. Nuci recalled that both her parents had fought for the Dutch-inspired autonomous state of “East Indonesia”, the formation of the RMS, the short-lived Republic of South Moluccas, and participated in the Christian-led revolt against the Indonesian government.
As a child, Nuci had soon become aware that this close identification with the Dutch had stigmatized her people – branded as traitors by Jakarta – punished, when the Sukarno-inspired revolutionaries finally prevailed and the Moluccan Islands were absorbed into the Republic. She knew that many Ambonese Christians had either fled or were forcefully deported to the Netherlands, whilst those who remained behind suffered the ignominy of being treated as second-class citizens by their new colonial masters, the Javanese. During her formative years she became more aware that the Indonesian military had a very long collective memory, treating most harshly those ethnic minorities who had ‘betrayed’ the country during the War of Independence against the Dutch.
Nuci’s family had enjoyed the comforts accorded to civil service employees. She had attended a Sekolah Menengah Atas, her studies at the middle high school interrupted when her father was retrenched along with many others – replaced with Muslim workers transported from Java and Madura under the transmigration scheme. Ambon’s lucrative spice trade had diminished dramatically over the past century and, unable to find employment in what was rapidly becoming a Muslim-dominated provincial administration, Nuci’s parents had relocated from the capital to Benteng Karang village. Her father had found work teaching at the local school; her mother retreating into a world filled with hymns and prayer. Nuci married early, withdrew into a life smothered by domesticity and reconciled herself to life in Benteng Karang village; her childhood dreams now mists from the past.
‘Careful you don’t burn my best shirt,’ her husband, Lauren’s voice jolted Nuci from her brief reverie. Ignoring the interruption, she placed the charcoal-fired iron to one side then placed the white shirt on a homemade wire hanger.
‘I’d best get ready,’ she murmured lethargically, her eyes dropping to the traditional meat dish she had spent the early hours preparing. ‘We can have the patita before leaving.’
‘Think I’ll save my appetite for some more of Grace’s lalampa,’ Lauren said, immediately wishing he could retract the words.
Nuci’s face clouded, piqued from the last visit to Grace Matuanakotta’s home to finalize wedding plans between the two families. Nuci still smarted from Lauren’s overly gracious servings of the steamed rice finger dish that Grace had prepared. Nuci flared, hands on hips, ‘It’s only migrant street-vendor food…and if you prefer that Minahasa woman’s cooking to mine then why not just say so?’ She stormed from the kitchen before her husband could defend himself, mumbling as she bustled down the hallway.
Nuci’s mercurial mood swing had been triggered more by her husband’s wish for their daughter to marry within the pela gandung, a centuries’ old, Moluccan inter-village alliance social-bond structure that was based on an idiom of kinship, than Lauren’s penchant for the banana-leaf-wrapped delicacy. Pela villagers exchanged mutually binding oaths and had been known to drink one another’s blood at the conclusion of a pact. Before Javanese migrants had inundated the province, Moluccan Christians and Muslims had lived in relative harmony, the tranquility of interfaith relations protected by the pela alliance system. Under pela tradition, a village of one faith was “twinned” with a village of the other, with both charged to defend the others interests in the event of conflict.
Intermarriage between members of pela-tied villages was taboo, Nuci’s husband having successfully arranged for an exception arguing that Grace Matuanakotta had migrated into the area from Minahasa in the north, and her son could therefore be considered outside the pela constraints. Although Nuci sympathized with her daughter, accepting that her choices were severely limited due to the increasing number of pela villages listed within their fold, Nuci was obstinately against the match – fearful that Grace’s contumacious son Johanis, whose rebellious pursuits had placed him directly in the local authorities’ sights, was destined for tragedy.
At first, the village elders had been unreceptive to Lauren’s pleas on behalf of Lisa, arguing that it was a person’s village affiliation that determined with whom a person is pela, as reckoned patrilineally. Eventually, because Grace was now widowed and the elders harbored a desire to see the end of her son’s presence in their village the elders acquiesced, and the marriage plans moved forward – the meeting between the two families that day scheduled to finalize the wedding arrangements.
* * * *
Johanis