Sleepy little towns.
While we were heading off to an amazing waterfall, the road access to the attraction had been closed due to the recent eruption of Mount Semeru. Oddly enough, while we checked and checked we didn’t notice the closure until the day of our trip.
We agreed at the start of this trip that we would play things by ear. We quickly switched our plans and since the day before was a full, busy day we decided to head to Jember and head towards our ultimate destination to Mount Ijen. Jember was a rest stop but not without its uniqueness.
Reflect on a previous blog.
I had written a blog titled… All that you will ever be. This blog was about people not moving forward in life. The drive made me think very deeply about the state of Indonesia as a country. I had made fun of the Village or the Kampung before.
When I say fun I mean the meaning of going back to the village as being a village.
Well, I have to eat my words, because my vision of what the village was, was wrong. The village is much more of a village than what I can explain. When we think of a village we as North Americans think of a quaint little village tucked away in some nook of the countryside.
Not the village we imagine.
Before you think all villages are a pile of crap… There are some that I think I could live in. However, some of the villages we drove through made me think that it will be another 50 years before Indonesia can compete on any world scale. Driving through some of the villages reminded me of Hungarian villages back in 1990. Some are nice and have a beautiful little garden and are cared for. However, most villages are very dirty and not well maintained. It seemed that people have zero pride of ownership and they are ok with the rundown property.
We can say that they have no money to bring it up to another level. I will argue that this is wrong. Cleaning up your house and the area around it is free. It is all about a little bit of work and cleaning that cost nothing.
Let go.
So many properties are just in a state of disarray and they have no pride of ownership. Run down and dirty is how I would describe many or even most of these drive-through villages.
Compared to the small villages I have stayed in in Bali, they were a drastic change. I will go as far as shocking, especially as Surabaya, Jakarta, and Bandung would be the top cities I would say that people see from a Google search. However, this was a shocking sight for me.
I feel that the lack of education of the locals plays a huge part. From the way the kids are raised and the way the parents behave, this is an uphill battle. Lack of education for both the parents and the children will take decades to fix if it was even possible.
road trip, East Java, Surabaya, Bromo Volcano Traveling, Travelling Explore Indonesia, photography, travel blog Indonesia,
Zsolt Zsemba 