The guesthouse looks pretty much the same as it did when I left it with the exception that it’s rooms are now occupied by members of Dewi’s extended family.
Her Uncle Harry and Aunt Lis live a couple of streets away. Both have taken Dewi under their wings since her family moved back to Jakarta and have been instrumental in helping us set up the guesthouse.
Harry is an all round lovely human being who always puts his family first. He was a flight mechanic with Garuda Airlines for many years and can turn his hand to pretty much any practical application.
Mbak Lis, as she is known, (“Mbak” being a Javanese term for older sister) is a diminutive yet energetic woman with a boisterous, fun-loving personality and a big heart.
She is a great cook and can clean a guesthouse bedroom like no other.
Their three bedroom house sleeps themselves, their two adult sons, Ian and Fajar, Lis’s sister Rini and her 9 year old daughter, Hani as well as Harry’s older sister Kak Ida. (“Kak” being the Indonesian term for older brother or sister) who has recently arrived from Jakarta.
But now, with the guesthouse in lockdown, Ian and Fajar have been living at the guesthouse with Dewi and the kids for added security and Rini, who has taken over cooking duties, has also taken a room which she is sharing with daughter Hani.
All of this is fine by me. It is part of the Indonesian tradition to support and include family and gives Dewi and I an experienced team of loyal family members, ready to spring into action as soon as the guesthouse is ready to reopen.
We pay them a small wage and, as well as free accommodation, their food, laundry and internet expenses are all covered.
Ian and Fajar in particular are terrific young men and a great influence on the kids, especially Kevin, who is incredibly smart and shows little interest in making friends his own age. But he gravitates towards these two and they treat him as their equal.
Kezia, on the other hand has a close-knit circle of friends. She is tall for her age and also super smart. She started reading at the age of three and tops the class in all her exams.
With half the family now firmly settled in at the guesthouse, I only feel sorry for Harry and Lis who will have to be ready to squeeze them all back into their tiny little house as soon as guesthouse bookings resume.
For now though they can relax as there is still no word from the government on a date for reopening and work on Dewi’s and my house still has a way to go.
But I can see that it is coming along well.
The two storey structure is in place and floor boards are going down on the upstairs level. Next the walls will go in on the two upstairs bedrooms and shared ensuite bathroom and there will be a large balcony which will catch the late afternoon and evening breeze.
When the builders first marked out the site there was a spare metre of land on the eastern boundary that I hadn’t reckoned on. I didn’t think too much about it at the time – that side of the house would be open-walled at ground level so it would make a handy pathway or a pretty side garden.
But now I can see the master bedroom on the ground floor is smaller than I originally planned. Still, there is room enough for a queen size bed and a couple of bedside tables. There are French windows that open onto a front verandah as well as dedicated space for a walk-in wardrobe and ensuite bathroom.
The living room will open directly onto the swimming pool and I’m leaning more and more towards a full-length indoor/outdoor garden off to the eastern side.
The weather here rarely drops below 24’C (75’F) so it’s an ideal climate for open living spaces and overall I’m really pleased with the design and with how it is starting to look.
Our plan is to live in the house until the kids are grown but there is always an option to rent nearby and use the rooms as extra guest accommodation. Kevin and Kezia are almost 15, so for now they will take the upstairs bedrooms and can use the sizable balcony area as their own personal space whenever they have friends over.
With most of the western world now firmly in the grip of a once in a lifetime pandemic, I turn my attention to events as they are unfolding in Asia and more specifically, Indonesia.
The day my two week self-quarantine period ends is coincidentally the same day that the city of Wuhan, China comes out of it’s time in lockdown. Wuhan was the source of the coronavirus outbreak and it is now the first part of China to come out on the other side.
Other Asian nations look to be handling the pandemic much better than most developed countries, probably because they have had a couple of trial runs in the past, notably with the SARS outbreak in 2002 and the Avian bird flu epidemic in 2015.
Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar all share borders with China and have all swung into action with disaster management plans and populations that are quick to respond to their authorities guidelines.
Malaysia and Singapore have also responded swiftly and are keeping case numbers in check.
Even India, with its congested and densely populated cities, seems to be effectively managing the outbreak and mitigating community transmission.
Interestingly, the two countries that are struggling to rein in case numbers, Japan and South Korea, are also the two most developed countries in the region.
Indonesia is also struggling.
Case numbers are rising steadily across all the islands that make up the archipelago but none more so than in the capital city, Jakarta. However, with testing kits in limited supply and contact tracing next to non-existent, the case numbers that are being reported are likely to be many times understated. Yet even these low numbers put Indonesia alongside the Phillipines as South East Asia’s worst performing and worst affected nations.
Still, eateries, schools and shopping malls right across the country have been closed, mask wearing is mandatory and the government’s messaging appears to be on point.
For how long it will stay on point or for how long it can keep it’s geograpically disparate population receptive to lockdown conditions is anyone’s guess.
The sheer scale of the challenge is most pronounced in Jakarta. How do you manage a sustained lockdown or enforce social distancing rules in a city whose greater metropolitan area is home to 28 million people?
I would suggest it’s going to take something more than a miracle.
Even if half the population stays home it still leaves a congested public transport system and workplace environment to navigate.
The island of Lombok thankfully, has a population of only around four million, which is roughly 80% of the population of Singapore. But with a land area nearly seven times as large and with no public transport or high-rise public housing, social distancing is a relative breeze.
And, as I have already learnt first hand, the system of neighbourhood councils or kelurahan have been swift to put systems in place to limit the spread of infection.
Some interesting figures are now also coming to light regarding the length of time the virus can survive on hard surfaces.
As well as the ability to stay suspended in the air for up to three hours, the virus can continue to stay alive for up to 24 hours on cardboard and for up to three days on plastics and stainless steel.
It also survives longer in cold climates than in the tropics which some see as the reason why case numbers in equatorial Asian countries are substantially lower than is presently the case in Europe, the UK and the US. Sadly though, it doesn’t account for the rapid rise in case numbers in countries such as Mexico and Brazil.
Some bright sparks in Indonesia are now trying to argue that smoking is a great way to avoid catching covid because the virus can’t attach itself to the lungs if the lungs are already lined with a nice coating of tar.
I’ll be waiting to see the data on that one!
But it’s yet another thing the authorities here are up against – the average person’s susceptibility to suggestion and misinformation. That and their inherent fatalism – the idea that if your time’s up there is nothing that can be done to save you and if it’s not your time to depart the earthly realm there is nothing on this earth that can take you.
Back at the guesthouse, there is nothing fatalist about Dewi and her aunts approach to cleanlines and hygeine. The virus will take us all if they don’t take proper precautions now and they are prepared to move heaven and earth to limit the spread of infection.
The already clean house now gets wiped down from top to bottom every day. The front gates are sprayed with disinfectant several times a day, as are all the points of entrance to the guesthouse.
A dedicated area has been set up to disinfect all packaged items that come into the guesthouse from the outside world.
When anybody returns from the outside world, handwashing followed by a quick shower and change of clothes is the standard procedure.
I must say I’m mightily impressed by the effort they are making and I’m confident that I stand a better chance of staying covid free here than I might anywhere else on the planet.
In the days and weeks that follow, I settle comfortably back into Indonesian life with Dewi and her kids and our extended family all now in residence at the guesthouse.
For the first couple of months I don’t leave the property but spend my days on our back terrace where we have set up a tv and a pair of bluetooth speakers.
From a safe distance I can watch the tukang (workers) make slow but steady progress on the house.
In the 32’C (90’F) heat all they wear are shorts, no shirts, no shoes.
The workplace safety inspectors in my country would have a fit but this is a country where regulations and regulators are few.
There is also no such thing as unions with far too many people wanting to work for an organised labour movement to ever be able to manipulate supply and negotiate pay and conditions.
The going rate for tukang is around 100,000 rupiah ($AUD10 or $US7.50) per day and they are happy to receive it. They know plenty of people who would love to have their jobs, who are forced to survive on much less.
A skilled tradesman can expect to take home around 250,000 rupiah a day. A female pembantu or house assistant has to make do on roughly a tenth of that.
I am watching on less as a supervisor than as a way to pass the time. But the shirtless boys are all well aware that the bulé (foreigner) is watching and they had better make a good impression.
I make a point of thanking them all at the end of each day. Most smile and nod respectfully as they leave but it is hard to ignore the few who are either too shy or too proud to acknowledge my presence and the obvious differences between my white, western upbringing and theirs.
And yet if they understood the cost of living, the cost of food and housing, the cost of daily neccessities in my white, western world. If they understood the power agendas and boy clubs of our ruling elites, the landlords and real estate agents who conspire to push up land values and ultimately, rents and the complex web of rules and regulations that tie ordinary people into ever-tightening knots of compliance and call waiting. If they understood that it is now near impossible for honest, hard working people in the most first world countries to make an honest living, to get ahead, would they choose that kind of life over theirs?
I suspect many would say let me try.
As for me, I’m already too old to swap my seat on the terrace for their shirtless, shoeless existence but I envy its simplicity. Just as some seem to envy my relative wealth.
And yet here I am, someone who has recently stepped away from a lifetime of working in an advanced first world country with little to show for it but a business that, while busy, has operating costs that regularly exceed its income and that today is closed due to a virus that no one saw coming.
The guesthouse too, is supposed to be a small business venture that hopefully can provide a small income for my wife and our extended family and one that will allow me to share knowledge and swap stories with like minded people, travellers in a less travelled part of the world.
I survive now thanks mainly to savings I was able to make during better times.
This is all now that separates me from the life of the shirtless, shoeless tukang.
This night we order roasted duck, a deliciously affordable speciality of Lombok, rarely heard of in other parts of Indonesia but common on this tiny island.
The shirtless tukang don’t know how lucky they are.
Harry and Lis come over to sing karaoke on the back terrace with lyrics from Youtube on the TV and with music from our bluetooth speakers.
In the midst of a global pandemic and with two businesses stuck under lockdown, life can still really be quite simple.
If indeed, you have money enough to pay for it.