Bulek Eye

A middle aged Dutch guy around Banda Aceh urged me to “stay in and keep your head down” on Independence Day recently. I was pretty sure we were safe, being non-Dutch and it being 63 years on the day the Indonesian booted their colonizers out. Still, I put on a red soccer jersey with white trim, so as to have the national colors merah and putih amply represented before we headed out to one of the village fields for some freedom hoopla. We were hoping to see the “greasy pole.” That’s where a couple of local yahoos climb a coconut trunk lubed with motor oil to win prizes tied at the top — everything from a mop to a kid’s bicycle (village elders hang the prizes before they prop up the trunks, on the night before). But greasy pole wasn’t on yet. First it was time for the tug of war.

Two different sections of Lamlagang’s men set up at either end of the rope. I started to get a little jumpy. In this case, unlike every other on the other side of the planet, I was pretty much the biggest human being in the crowd. A friend from the village worked on me “Come on, we need you.” I demurred, then at the last minute ran back out toward the rope. “Ya bulek!” the guys were clucking on the line. They were shedding their sandals to get a better grip on the woodchip-lined field. So I took off mine as well.

When the whistle blew, I don’t remember it being any easier than a good tug o’war up in the American north. I got the sense that the whole thing was happening below my center of gravity. I slid along the woodchips. I dug in and pulled back. My feet started to burn, but my arms were aching more. The middle flag danced toward us and away. Finally, mercifully, we won by a hair. And I looked down to see that I’d lost two layers of skin right on the ball below my big toe. The rest of the crew was running to the other end of the rope for a rematch while I ungracefully limped to the sidelines. Bulek, one and done. Now it was the ladies clucking at me, with their simple, elasticized headscarfs shading  them from the searing heat. My wife asked quite gently why I had thought to remove my sandals.

Bound up and hobbling I sat with the kids to watch the greasy poles later in the day. But a group of guys in torn clothes conquered all in roughly two minutes. One after another they climbed over each other, stood on the lower man’s shoulders and hugged the grease. The fourth guy reached the top, and, grabbing a paper mache` flag, gonged the event kaput. I wanted to see how they got the bikes down but they guys at the top were in no hurry to move them.

Instead, we caught the tail end of the military exercise at the parade ground downtown. Civil serveants in their khaki uniforms standing near us gabbed away as the honor guard silently passed the governor’s entourage in full, white officers dress on what looked like an old Dutch veranda across the field. Soon, droves of fatigued army rangers and dressed up police cadets exit marched out onto the street just next to us, only to jam up as they ran out of real estate and turn every which way searching for a new direction to march. They finally gave up, set their machine guns down and started smoking.

Maybe it’s a sign of a maturing nation, that, even in a restive province, independence day is more pomp than circumstance. We’ll take the tug of war, over a real one. Mundane is something to strive for. Sometimes you need a little flesh wound, though, to remind you of that. Passing by the Lamlagang village celebration grounds that day, another guy was having his foot wrapped up from the tug’o war. “Pahit!”  It stings, he said. And we won’t soon forget it.