Traffic

Jakarta is not a walking city. Nor a tourist destination. This is a relaxed,10-million person sprawl pulsing with Range Rovers, taxies, motorcycles & bajaj. Compared with tiny Hong Kong’s hills & vertical efficiency, this island metropolis is flat, immense, & badly in need of public transportation.

Today—as for the last two days, & probably for the next two—we sat in traffic. Traffic, between bureaucratic stops (the police, immigration, American/Indonesian Exchange, Fulbright, the Foreign Researchers institute…) to make ourselves ever more officially documented. TRAFFIC. Which can be its own cultural exchange.
Be where you are.

It may be a while before I get my bearings. What looks like 2 easy turns on the map gets mazed with U-turns, one-ways, special lanes, & flow. Or…no flow. Asongan sell roadside snacks to idling drivers, also newspapers, cigarettes, & seasonal fruit—the red sycamore balls of rambutan, yellow star-fruit—from heavy carts.
Road rage? The collective calm is preternatural.

Given the sheer congestion, you’d think this would be the land of Minis, but I’ve yet to see a compact vehicle. Not a ‘green’ city, Jakarta. All them spotless & most brand new, the cars are 4-door sedans, like Camrys, and SUVs: Hondas, Chevy Blazers, Toyota Highlanders. Big’uns.

Bajaj—pronounced BAH Jai—are 3-wheeled, smoke-belching, bright orange rickshaws. They drive like roaches run. Are said to be like saunas inside. Though they seem only to annoy other drivers, they’re tolerated (it seems to me) out of a sense of nostalgia. What would the streets be without bajaj? Better, sure, but unfamiliar.

The rest are motorcycles. I’d estimate that a third to half of traffic are 175 cc motorcycles. They school & dart like minnows. Rain & shine, some carry 4-person families. Babies. Bushels of bamboo. Women in polyester skirt-suits sitting side-saddle. Most riders (men & women) wear jackets & pants, flip-flops & helmets—nearly 100% helmet compliance—some smashed on over lacey jilbab (Muslim headscarf).

There are lane lines, but these are decorative. JP, an ethnomusicologist Fulbrighter who sat in traffic with us, can’t wait to get to Bali: he’ll be there for a year, riding his own motorbike around the island. Driving here—especially a motorcycle—requires a degree of physical bravery I simply do not possess. But JP enthuses: the traffic has its own music, rhythm & flow. Road rules, he says, would only mess it up: this is cooperative & organic. And I see that, sure. I see the flow. It works. Then I ask, “What happens when someone gets hit? Do you think anyone has insurance?” But no one appreciates this unromantic question. Or answers it.

In 4 days I’ve seen only two bumper stickers. They read, in English:
I [heart] Humpbacks and I see dead people.

EPILOGUE to TRAFFIC:
Stumbling out of the taxi the other day, I spied a giant snail along the manicured lawn. In my bureaucratic coma, this was completely captivating: An escargot snail, wide & neat, with a pretty pointed shell and large enough to seem a charismatic animal, not just a slug. As moving vehicles go, it was just so...easy going. Its nautilus shell & undulating gait made me think of fairy-tale sailing ships rolling along a green sea. After hours in unmuffled traffic, I fell into a sort of trance with this creature: how peaceful it seemed, how elegantly trimmed. I would sail with you, I thought. A childhood wish: ‘The Never-Ending Story’ made a vessel of snails. Dr. Doolittle, too.
We might get there just as fast.