Day one, month seven !

Today is the first day of the second half of my first year in Indonesia (got that ?). As mentioned in my last post, I celebrated the end of the first six months by being invited to a party which I knew was something to do with the tradition of belis (dowry/brideprice). As happens so often in a completely strange culture, what I thought I was being invited to and what I was actually invited to turned out to be two different things. What I THOUGHT I was going to was the formal exchange of belis beween the groom's and the bride's families. However, what happened yesterday only involved the groom's family (about 200 of them !) and really highlighted for me how much of a burden this tradition places on the extended family. This was a gathering of the family from about 10 a.m. at the family home at Wolowiro about an hour and a half from Maumere. The sole purpose of the gathering was to pass around a tray (think of it as a large collection plate as in a church) to collect contributions from all present to put towards the belis that has to be paid to the bride’s family before the wedding. The family provided lunch (a Sunday lunch for 200 guests just seems to happen without any fuss here), cigarettes and moke (local hooch) for the guests, plus some music. We just sat on the ground, snacked, ate, chatted and contributed. This is one of the many differences here - people are quite happy to sit around for extended periods without anyone feeling that they have to provide entertainment.

A while after the plate was passed around, the total was announced by the MC and to my surprise came to just under Rr12 million (described by one friend as "lumayan", not bad). To put this in context, I believe that a nurse earns about Rp600,000 a month and an elementary school teacher about half that. I don't yet know how much the total belis will cost but I presume that this will be sizeable chunk of it.

The wedding takes place next month and promises to be a big party...

This week sees the final preparations for next Monday's holiday - Independence Day. Indonesia will be 64 years old on 17th August 2009 and, if the preparations are anything to go by, it will be a big day with an awful lot of marching. For the last few weeks, the streets have been filled with groups of government workers and school children practising marching to the sound of kiri, kiri, kiri, kanan, kiri (left, left, left, right, left..) and punctuated by whistle blasts. Every single class seems to have to participate so it is not unusual to see four or five separate groups practising on one short stretch of road. These photos were all taken in one five minute period :

The anniversary is also a good excuse to give the whole place a bit of a once-over so there are plenty of flags and banners, etc. Much painting has been done, but the paint is watered down so much that it will all wash off in the rainy season and need to be done again next year.