The outside of my house in Kuala Tungkal. It is an old house, a few blocks from the modern, built up part of town.

An incrediby normal middle class living room; also the living room of the house where I lived. Generally, there are three or four children playing around the living room, watching tv, or doing their homework. Add to that two babies, their mothers, and the father who is disabled and has a bed right behind where I am standing, and you have a feeling for where I lived.

This brand new building, right in the middle of town, is never opened. It is a swiftlet nest, with holes on the side walls where the birds pour in and out. The city is full of beautifully painted, seemingly abandoned, buildings like this.

The modern part of the town. Tungkal can be divided into three distinct sections: the fishing village, which is all on stilts, small and wooden; the old town, which is small and wooden, but far enough from the coast to be flat on the ground; and this, the modern part of town. Almost all of the buildings you see are actually swiftlet nests above the first floor.

The house of the leader of the Women's Farming Group in Beranitam Kanan-- one of the two focus villages of the women's farming portion of my research. The house was in the middle of a cocoanut plantation; most houses had this elaborate pattern of cocoanut husks to keep thier lawns from getting mucky when it floods.

One of the rivers, less pleasantly known as parit (ditches) in Beranitam Kanan. The rivers go up and down with the tides, but are always high enough for boats to pass through. There is an intricate system of these ditches-- dug mainly by the government-- which connect the villages.

Landing docks in Kampung Nelyan-- the Fisherman's Village. Most of the reasearch I did in Kuala Tungkal was done here. When the fishermen arrive back from the sea, they drop off their catch at one of these docks-- a penampungan-- where a middle man collects fish, sting rays, shrimp, and other catch and sells it on to purchasers in Jambi, Jakarta, Singapore and Malaysia. In the heat of the day, they are also covered with people drying the small catch-- the little shrimp and fish-- which the fishermen's wives generally prepare and sell themselves.

Fishing boats. The small boats are generally used in the village or on the river. The larger boats behind them are used out in the ocean. There are far larger boats, which are not pictured, which can go out to the ocean for many days at a time. It depends on the season, but when I was there, most fishermen would go out at 3 am and return at around 9 in the morning. The rest of their day would be spent taking naps or hanging out while their wives dry, salt, and other wise prepare what they have caught.

The rivers in the fishing village. At high tide, the fishing boats can reach the back reaches of the village through these "rivers"-- simply lanes free of houses. At low tide, the boats which are still inland are stranded in the grey brown muck with the mudskippers and crabs.

Drying shrimp. In the backyard of every house in the fishing village there are wide open decks used for drying fish and shrimp. The shrimp in this picture are dyed pink to make special pink terasi (see next picture).

Making terasi. Two of the focus villages I was working with produced this shrimp paste, which is used in sambal, or chili sauce. The shrimps are dried (as in the picture above), then ground up with garlic, salt, and other seasonings. Then the paste is molded using cut pieces of PVC pipe. The pieces of terasi are then dried, packaged, and sent all over the region.

Udang Katak, the huge shrimp-- up to a foot long-- which made up my thanksgiving dinner. They are shipped alive all over Asia, costing upwards of $2-3 dollars each (a day's wage) in Tungkal. Lucky for me, I knew a man who worked at penampungan where they are collected from the fishermen, and got a big bag for free.

City of Swiftlets (Part II)

[this continues where the last post left off...]

...My work also involves going to farming villages, about 45 minutes inland from town. The land is flat and coastal, filled with young oil palm plantations. Oil palms, or sawit, with be the downfall of this place in about twenty years. The plantations are starting up all over the place; everyone wants to start a plantation. Sawit mature very quickly; the fruit is ready to be harvested within 3 years. The problem with sawit is that it stops fruiting after about 10 years. It also depletes the soil of all its nutrients, which means that land that was once used for sawit plantations cannot be used for many years after, until it fallows long enough to be fertile again. As most of the plantations in Jambi are relatively new, this is only beginning to be experienced now. The small farmers beginning their plantations haven’t seen the problems. To make matters worse, sawit plantations support absolutely no biodiversity. The only things that are found in these remarkably unpleasant looking plantations are snakes and pigs.

In stark contrast, there is the plantation crop that thrives in exactly the same conditions as the oil palm: rubber. Rubber forests take a long time to mature; it can take up to 15 years before they are ready to harvest. If they simply let to grow, however, with some other kinds of trees as well, they form a rubber forest that is remarkably similar in shape to natural topical forests. This means, of course, that they support all sorts of biodiversity. Instead of getting pigs and snakes, you get apes, and birds, and tigers, and what ever else you would get in the rainforest. Rubber can also be harvested for far longer, up to 30 years. And it leaves the ground more fertile. But, since it takes a long time to mature, no one is interested in growing it.

So, in 20 years, there are going to be huge swaths of useless land, where the sawit is too old to produce fruit and the ground is not fertile enough to grow anything else.

And, so, yes, I work amongst sawit plantations. Rant over. But remember- if you are ever planning a plantation in Sumatra, consider trying rubber. Some of the people that I work with have sawit plantations, but most are small farmers who grow rice and coffee, and use their front yards’ for vegetables. As in the fishing village, I am working with all female collective action groups. I am looking at characteristics of traditional groups in the area, and comparing them with groups that are currently successful. I am also working with people in the government, to learn what characteristics of groups they are looking for when they give out funding and support. Unlike my concept of collective action when I got into this, rural collective action here is generally government supported, with only a few examples of collective action going against what the government wants. It is not that collective action that works against the prevailing power structure does not exist, but it is generally found in the cities. Wish I knew why.

And so I work with two women’s farmers groups, both supported by the government to grow vegetables, of which there seems to be a serious lack. Unfortunately, it is the rainy season, which means that most of the land that was being used for crops is now under water, and the work has stopped until the dry season. But I am still learning about the ways that they organize their groups, their work, their profits, etc, and comparing this to both what they did traditionally, and what the government wants them to do. To find the answers to these and other thrilling questions, dear reader, you must await the publication of my results.

But I only am spending a few days with the farming groups. Most of my time is still spent in Kuala Tungkal. I am living with a woman from the Agency for Women’s Empowerment, her daughter, her mother, her father, her brother, her brother’s wife, their two kids. It is a crazy place, always full people and energy. I was originally hoping to have a place to myself, where I could have some time for me, but this is what worked out, and I am glad it did. The babies are very cute, and the oldest one, Ayu, just started to walk. The little baby, almost 7 months, is almost crawling. The six-year-old, and her five-year-old cousin who is always over, are impossible, but also impossibly sweet when they want to be. I have my own room, so I am able to get some personal time to type and think when I need it, and am in that way preserving my sanity. It is interesting how cultural the need for personal space and personal time are. It is just not something that is part of the culture here; most people are perfectly happy spending all their time with other people. But I am American, and I need my space. So there.

And that’s that for the moment.