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Fabric of Community

Api's village near Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia 1990

By Barbara Jo Shipka

February 28^th, 2015

I went to visit a dear friend in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia and to meet Api, the love of her life then and now. We started our day in the late morning with a two hour drive west to Api’s village. ‘Api‘ means fire and that he was born on the night that their communal barn burned down.

While we were sharing a delicious lunch of roast chicken that arrived wrapped in newspaper, Api’s father was telling Api of what had recently been happening in the village. They hadn’t seen each other for a while.

“Recently,” Api said, “The village council of elders was seriously considering buying a tractor. My father is relating their deliberations to me.

One elder said, ‘A tractor would be much more efficient than continuing to use the water buffalo. And we would become a more modern village.’ ‘But,’ another elder countered, ‘We would then have to generate money to buy petroleum and fertilizer.’ ‘And,’ added another, ‘Some of the people of the village would not have work as as result.’

In the end," Api said, “They decided not to buy a tractor.” As I understood Api’s translation, their reasoning was that everyone was currently working and eating, living and loving. They had no designs for conquering the next village. Their conclusion was that, although modern, the tractor had more potential for damaging the fabric of their community than for progressing or developing it.

Some children played together that afternoon.

Other children worked with women, especially older women, in a ‘factory’ where they made crackers that were sold to other villages in the surrounding area. One man helped them with hauling the wood. They made the dough, rolled it into individual crackers, flattened them, and then fried them in a large cauldron that sat on a huge fire.

Other beautiful villagers. The old man in the hat accompanied us as we explored the village. The gray-haired man was one of the elders.

Most adults, men and women, worked in the rice fields during that afternoon. The fields are planted at different times so there is both planting and harvesting (with the ducks) all year round. In one of the images you can see the rebuilt barn that burned the night Api was born.

In the late afternoon, after we had finished our time in the village, we drove on to Borobudur. We got there just as the day was ending and the light was low. Borobudur is an amazing Buddhist stupa that is the largest stone structure in the southern hemisphere. Mt. Merapi, which translates as Mountain of Fire, is the active volcano in the background.

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