Week 21: Safe & Secure in Surakarta

We will send just a short post today to let you all know that we are safe and secure here in our beautiful Surakarta. We have been instructed to remain in our apartment for a couple of days until things calm down a bit so I am writing while quarantined.  The bombings you have heard about in Indonesia happened about 130 miles from us in a very large city called Surabaya.  Surabaya is the second largest city in Indonesia behind Jakarta with a population of nearly four million people.  Surabaya is the capital city of the province of East Java.  

Solo, where we live, is about half way between Jakarta and Surabaya.  The previous mayor of Solo is now the President of the Country and while he was a leader here in Solo (the nickname for Surakarta) he really worked hard to preserve the identify of Solo as the cultural capital of Java.  Java is the largest and most populous island of Indonesia.  Javanese, as people from Java are called, have a very unique and rich culture of art, dance, lore and language.  Solo was the home of the King of central Java for hundreds of years so much of the culture originated here and many special schools exist to teach young people art and music of the traditional Javanese.  They often refer to traditional Javanese food, traditional Javanese songs, traditional Javanese musical instruments, traditional Javanese clothing, traditional Javanese puppets or traditional Javanese stories.  Much of the Javanese history is recorded in traditional Javanese art represented by interesting characters with long pointed noses and odd shaped bodies looking similar to what we in America might call “caricatures”.  Bright oranges, yellows, reds and lime greens are typically used.  

A young man that is studying with us comes from a long line of artists and he has a degree from an Art Institute here in Solo.  His pieces are usually large murals worth a great deal of money (by Indonesian standards).  I will include a small sample below.  This picture tells a story that unfortunately I cannot remember so you could probably just make one up and tell it to your children, which is probably what I would do if I were home.

His family were also designers of “batik” which is a word used to describe the patterns on fabric.  Most regions and cities in Java have their own unique patterns and colors; each style has a name and their are hundreds of them.  A collector, who has a museum just a few blocks from where we live can reportedly recognize and name all of them.  Over the years, Solo has become the center for the textile industry in Indonesia and while now manufacturing textiles of all kinds for sale all over the world, the design and production of batik fabric is centered in and around Surakarta. Three distinct quality levels have evolved for batik fabric.  

The most expensive batik is all hand made by artists who make their design on the fabric  then use melted wax contained in a small vessel that has a spout and is carefully and painstakingly applied to the fabric.  Each piece of fabric is made individually sometimes taking as much as 4-6 weeks to make a single piece.  When the wax is fully applied, the fabric is dipped into the colored dye and then the wax is melted off leaving the artists pattern on the fabric.  Solo batik has three colors, tan, white and black and all Solo batik is made of some combination of these colors with the pattern going from top right to bottom left.  

Each successive color requires a reapplication of wax and additional dips into the dye.  Traditionally, the King had a staff of professional designers and craftspeople that worked full-time making fabric for the King, his family and special members of the court.  The industry spread beyond the walls of the palace into the more common folk by developing brass stamps that enabled craftsmen to reproduce patterns over and over and make them more affordable for the common people. Now days patterns are simply printed on fabric in a wide variety of colors and modern designs but Solo is working hard to preserve the traditions of batik and trying to teach children the meaning of the traditional stories behind them.

Even modern dress styles retain a hint of the batik to them.  They had a small fashion show in the lobby of our apartments/hotel complex recently.

Sister Miller and I are very fortunate to live here in Solo.   I do believe that the efforts to preserve Javanese Culture here in Solo have contributed somewhat to way of life more resistant to what we are seeing in larger cities like Jakarta and Surabaya.  The political and spiritual leaders throughout Indonesia are aggressively working to push back efforts to bring undesirable elements from countries in the Middle East and we pray for the people we are learning to love so much that they are successful.

Sister Miller would never do this but here is what I lounge in now while in our apartment. :)  It is called a “Sarung”.

Elder and Sister Miller