Adventures in Jogja - This & That

Although I had originally escaped to Jogja for a little bit of R & R, it turned out to be a rather intriguing place that caught my attention and curiousity about how and why the local people live and behave as they do...

Case in point...I had heard about the local practice of 'jamu' from some friends in Indonesia last year so I decided to check it out myself...basically it is Indonesia's idea of herbal medicine, the ingredients of which you can buy in the local market (see below) and then boil up into a concoction to combat colds and coughs and any number of common (and not so common....) ailments. I am generally not too keen on ingesting random concoctions, so I opted to learn how to make and apply a paste for a home-made facial :-)

To learn more about jamu, here's a video about some of Indonesia's 'Jamu ladies'....http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8428474.stm

I also went on a tour of the main religious sites in Jogja - ranging from Buddhism to Hinduism to Islam to Christianity and beyond - which, in practice in Jogja, all seem to sort of 'merge' together and also encompass various local, animist practices, to some degree or another.

To illustrate - after learning about the history of various religions that came to Indonesia over the past 1000+ years, I visited a local Christian church - and just as I was starting to feel 'at home', I realized that just behind a wooden cross (photo below) there was a huge altar of sorts, where local people still sacrifice live animals, the thought of which sent a series of chills up my back...

Travelling between sites, I came upon a sort of 'buddha factory' - kind of eerie to see so many idols lined up in perfect symmetry, waiting to be sent to the oven to be fired....

And I've seen barbed wire around church yards in other places, but the sight of it still causes me to wonder what the world has come to, when holy places are some of the most vulnerable...

Finally, I saw this women selling fresh flowers at a little kiosk near my hotel - I spoke to her in my limited Bahasa Indonesia and she explained that she sells the flowers to people so that they can make burnt offerings to various gods and gurus they believe in....her business thrives in Jogja!

PS Since I returned to Timor-Leste, I have really noticed just how much the Timorese people follow animist practices and believe in spirits and demons - for example - one of my staff members had twins about a month ago and sadly, one of her babies died last week; while visiting her and her family to share my condolences, I overheard one of her friends tell her that the baby died because she ate chili peppers while she was pregnant (!) - and another one of my staff members had some sort of seizure (seems to be epilepsy...) in one of our offices last week - he and several others believe there needs to be an exorcism to get rid of the demons in his body.....mind boggling....!