Living With Volcanoes
The Gods Must Be Restless
Living in the shadow of Indonesia’s volcanoes
By Andrew Marshall
Photograph by John Stanmeyer
Living in the shadow of Indonesia’s volcanoes
By Andrew Marshall
Photograph by John Stanmeyer
Villages
speckle the slopes of Mount Merapi, where fertile land lures farmers
into a volcanic hazard zone. Although volcanic soils cover just one
percent of the Earth’s land surface, they support roughly 10 percent of
its population.
All hell is about to break loose, but Udi, a 60-year-old farmer from
the village of Kinarejo on the Indonesian island of Java, will not
budge. Not even though a mere three miles (five kilometers) separates
the smoldering peak of Mount Merapi from Kinarejo. Not even though
columns of noxious gas and the nervous tracings of seismographs signal
an imminent explosion. Not even though the government has ordered a
full-scale evacuation. “I feel safe here,” he says. “If the Gatekeeper
won’t move, then neither will I.”
Bearing
offerings for Mount Merapi, the faithful follow the Gatekeeper, Mbah
Marijan, (second from right) to the top. His mission: To placate the
spirit believed to dwell in the mountain. “Merapi,” he says, “is the
heart of the universe.”
Merapi is a natural-born killer. Rising almost 10,000 feet (3,000
meters) over forests and fields, it ranks among the world’s most active
and dangerous volcanoes. Its very name means “fire mountain.” An
eruption in 1930 killed more than 1,300; even in less deadly times,
plumes drift menacingly from the peak. Some of the surrounding area,
warns a local hazards map, is “frequently affected by pyroclastic flows,
lava flows, rockfalls, toxic gases and glowing ejected rock fragments.”
As the volcano’s rumbling crescendoed in May 2006, thousands fled the
fertile slopes and settled reluctantly into makeshift camps at lower,
safer altitudes. Even the resident monkeys descended in droves.
Ashfalls
can suffocate plants and poison livestock. But in the long term the ash
is a boon to crops such as cauliflower, enriching the soil with
minerals.
Not Udi and his fellow villagers, who take their cues from an
octogenarian with dazzling dentures and a taste for menthol cigarettes:
Mbah Marijan, the Gatekeeper of Merapi. Marijan has one of the more
bizarre jobs in Indonesia, or anywhere else, for that matter. The fate
of villagers like Udi and of the 500,000 residents of Yogyakarta, a city
20 miles (32 kilometers) to the south, rests on Marijan’s thin
shoulders. It is his responsibility to perform the rituals designed to
appease an ogre believed to inhabit Merapi’s summit. This time, the
rituals seem to have fallen short. The warnings grow more urgent.
Volcanologists, military commanders, even Indonesia’s vice president beg
him to evacuate. He flatly refuses. “It’s your duty to come talk to
me,” he tells the police. “It is my duty to stay.”
Marijan’s behavior might seem suicidal anywhere else, but not in
Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,500 islands that straddles the western
reaches of the hyperactive Ring of Fire. It’s a zone of geophysical
violence, a juncture of colliding tectonic plates that loops more than
25,000 miles (40,200 kilometers) around the Pacific. Geography has dealt
Indonesia a wild card: Nowhere else do so many live so close to so many
active volcanoes—129 by one count. On Java alone, 120 million people
live in the shadow of more than 30 volcanoes, a proximity that has
proved fatal to more than 140,000 in the past 500 years.
Death by volcano takes many forms: searing lava, suffocating mud, or
the tsunamis that often follow an eruption. In 1883, Mount Krakatau
(often misspelled as Krakatoa), located off Java’s coast, triggered a
tsunami that claimed more than 36,000 lives. The name became a metaphor
for a catastrophic natural disaster.
For Marijan, though, an eruption is not so much a threat as a growth
spurt. “The kingdom of Merapi is expanding,” he says, with a nod at its
smoldering peak. In Indonesia, volcanoes are not just a fact of life,
they are life itself. Volcanic ash enriches the soil; farmers on Java
can harvest three crops of rice in a season. Farmers on neighboring
Borneo, with only one volcano, can’t.
On a less earthly plane, volcanoes stand at the heart of a
complicated set of mystical beliefs that grip millions of Indonesians
and influence events in unexpected ways. Their peaks attract holy men
and pilgrims. Their eruptions augur political change and social
upheaval. You might say that in Indonesia, volcanoes are a cultural
cauldron in which mysticism, modern life, Islam, and other religions
mix—or don’t. Indonesia, an assemblage of races, religions, and tongues,
is riveted together by volcanoes. Reverence for them is virtually a
national trait.
If the Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation, the
government agency that keeps eight seismograph stations humming on
Merapi, represents modern science, Marijan, the Gatekeeper of Merapi, is
Indonesia at its most mystical. When a Dutch hiker went missing on the
volcano in 1996, Marijan reportedly made the thick mist vanish and found
the injured hiker in a ravine.
Supplicants
bear a litter laden with corn, cabbage, fake money, and a
volcano-shaped offering. They will toss everything into a river to
appease Mount Merapi, rumbling nearby.
It is often hard to distinguish the kind of volcanic spasm that
builds toward a convulsion from the seismic restlessness that settles
back into quiescence. But monitoring technology has grown more
sophisticated. Overnight, government volcanologists have raised the
alert to its highest level. The lava dome might collapse at any moment.
Hasn’t Marijan heard? The entreaties leave Marijan unimpressed. The
alerts are merely guesses by men at far remove from the spirit of the
volcano. The lava dome collapse? “That’s what the experts say,” he says,
smiling. “But an idiot like me can’t see any change from yesterday.”
Inside
the crater of Mount Bromo on the island of Java, men hoist baskets to
intercept coins, vegetables, and live chickens—token sacrifices meant to
appease the resident spirit during the Kasada festival. Prayers for
prosperity accompany such offerings.
INDONESIA’S MOTTO, “Bhinneka tunggal ika—Unity in diversity,” speaks
to some 300 ethnic groups and more than 700 languages and dialects. The
government officially recognizes six religions: Islam, Catholicism,
Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism, but mysticism
riddles all faiths and bares their animistic roots. Sumatra, the vast
island northwest of Java, is home to the Batak people, converted to
Christianity by European missionaries in the 19th century. Yet many
still believe the first human descended from heaven on a bamboo pole to
Mount Pusuk Buhit, an active volcano on the shores of Lake Toba. The
Tengger, Hindus who live around Mount Bromo in East Java, periodically
climb through choking sulfurous clouds to throw money, vegetables,
chickens, and an occasional goat into the crater. On Flores, the Nage,
Catholics like most on that island, are buried with their heads toward
Mount Ebulobo, whose cone fills their southern horizon.
Deep
in a trance, Baryo, a Hindu holy man, blesses offerings bound for Mount
Bromo. Mired in poverty, many Indonesians petition the land’s volcanic
powers for a better life.
Likewise, on largely Hindu Bali, volcanoes are sacred, none more so
than 10,000-foot (3,000 meters) Mount Agung, its highest peak. It is
said a true Balinese knows its location, even when blindfolded, and many
sleep with their heads pointing toward it. In 1963 a catastrophic
eruption of Mount Agung killed a thousand people. Others starved to
death after ash smothered their crops. “The very ground beneath us
trembled with the perpetual shocks of the explosions,” wrote an
eyewitness. Yet what once was spoken of as divine wrath is now seen as a
gift. The rock and sand thrown up by the eruption built hotels,
restaurants, and villas for hordes of foreign tourists, who started
arriving in the 1970s. Despite attacks by Islamic terrorists in 2002 and
2005, which killed more than 220 people, tourism remains Bali’s biggest
industry. And by the grace of Agung and its neighbor, Mount Batur,
houses that once nestled in fields of chilies and onions now overlook
quarries filled with workers shoveling volcanic sand into trucks.'
Inside
a caldera near Mount Batur on Bali, residents care for a muslin-wrapped
statue of stone and clay that they believe grows taller each year. Only
the statue survived a fallen banyan tree that destroyed Pura Pancering
Jagat (“temple of the navel of the world”).
Not everyone has been lifted by the rising tide of tourism. Seven
hundred people in the village of Trunyan squeeze into a mountain
stronghold near Mount Batur. Their ramshackle houses cling to a sliver
of land along a lake in a vast caldera. The villagers fish in dugout
canoes and grow crops on the steep shoulders of the caldera. The
village’s creation myth explains its isolation, telling how a wandering
Javanese nobleman fell in love with a goddess who lived in a giant
banyan tree. She agreed to marry him, but only if he covered his tracks
so nobody else could follow him from Java.
While tourism has brought breakneck development to the rest of Bali,
Trunyan’s cherished isolation now spells economic marginalization.
Elders watch helplessly as a younger generation traces the same path to
Bali’s towns and cities as Batur’s rock and sand. “There are no jobs
here, no opportunities,” admits Made Tusan, a teacher at Trunyan’s only
school.
As if economic malaise weren’t enough, a recent catastrophe added to
the litany of woes. A giant banyan tree that had shaded the village for
centuries crashed to the ground during a storm, flattening the village
temple, though miraculously sparing the holy statue of Dewa Ratu Gede
Pancering Jagat, the local deity.
A village elder, I Ketut Jaksa, blames the disaster on Balinese
politicians and businessmen. He “won’t name names,” he says guardedly,
but he insists they angered the volcano deity by praying to advance
their careers while ignoring Trunyan’s growing disrepair. Others blame
the new road, which recently connected the village to the rest of Bali,
destroying its isolation and leaving it open to spiritual contamination.
IN INDONESIA, it’s a given that human folly can trigger natural
disasters. Eruptions, earthquakes, even a toppling banyan tree, have
long been regarded as cosmic votes of no-confidence in a ruler—a fact of
which the country’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is painfully
aware.
Two months after the president’s inauguration in October 2004, an
earthquake and tsunami struck Aceh Province on Sumatra, claiming 170,000
lives. A quake hit Sumatra three months later, killing perhaps 1,000.
Then Mount Talang erupted, forcing thousands of villagers to flee their
homes. A chain text message flashed across cell phones, imploring
Yudhoyono to perform a ritual to stop the calamities. “Mr. President,”
it read, “please sacrifice 1,000 goats.” Yudhoyono—a former general with
a doctorate in agricultural economics—publicly refused. “Even if I
sacrificed a thousand goats,” he announced, “disasters in Indonesia will
not end.”
They didn’t. There were more eruptions—a statistical certainty in the
volcano-studded country. One catastrophe followed another: a quake, a
tsunami, floods, forest fires, landslides, dengue fever, avian
influenza, and a mud eruption. Trains derailed, ferries sank, and after
three major plane crashes—one at Yogyakarta airport—an editorial in the
Jakarta Post advised air travelers to pray.
The streak of tragedy haunting the president could be explained, it
was said, by his inauspicious birth date and by the name of his vice
president, Jusuf Kalla, which bore an unhappy resemblance to that of a
man-eating monster called Batara Kala. Amid renewed calls to perform a
ritual to dispel the run of bad luck, President Yudhoyono and his
cabinet joined a mass prayer at Jakarta’s grand mosque. “Nothing
unusual,” insisted his spokesman, but the high-profile gathering was
clearly meant to allay national fears.
Other politicians appeal directly to the spirits. Before running for
vice president, one candidate sneaked off to worship at a volcano near
Lake Toba, where there is reportedly a helipad for visiting VIPs. The
spirits must not have been listening: He was defeated. Another time,
members of the Indonesian National Unity and Fusion Party gathered high
on Merapi’s slopes for a ritual-laced political rally, even though the
volcano was on the brink of erupting. Led by Arief Koesno, a portly
ex-actor who believes he is the reincarnation of Indonesia’s first
president, Sukarno, the ceremony started with the slaughter of nine
goats and ended with party members dancing wildly in a circle.
“After this ceremony,” Koesno declared, “I am certain Merapi will not
erupt.” Three days later, it did. In the smoking caldera of Indonesian
politics, belief in the supernatural persists among even the most
modern, high-ranking leaders. “Indonesian politicians are hypocrites,”
says Permadi, a professional soothsayer and member of parliament. “They
say they believe in Islam, in the Holy Koran. They also claim to be
rational, because many are educated in America. But in their hearts,
they still believe in mysticism.”
Even President Yudhoyono, claims Permadi, has conducted a ritual atop
Mount Lawu, a revered Javanese volcano. The persistence of mysticism
also explains why, when campaigning for office, many politicians make it
a point to pay their respects to Mbah Marijan, the well-connected
Gatekeeper of Merapi.
AS THINGS HEAT UP around Merapi, dozens of reporters flock to cover
the standoff starring the immovable Marijan, Merapi’s first media-age
Gatekeeper. Soon, his face and the words “President of Merapi” adorn
T-shirts all over Yogyakarta. To raise funds for his impoverished
Kinarejo neighbors, he appears in a television advertisement for an
energy drink.
Marijan, who inherited his job as Merapi’s caretaker from his father,
is paid the equivalent of a dollar a month by the kraton, as the
sultan’s high-walled palace in Yogyakarta is known. In traditional
Javanese cosmology, the kraton sits on an invisible line between Mount
Merapi and the nearby Indian Ocean. The sultan, a palace publication
explains, is a “divinely chosen person” whose coronation is preceded by
“a supernatural message.” Along with the everyday business of governing
Yogyakarta, the sultan is also responsible for placating a powerful sea
goddess called Ratu Kidul, and Merapi’s guardian ogre, Sapu Jagat.
One morning, soldiers arrive. “I don’t want to leave,” Marijan tells
them with all the firmness his creaky voice can convey. “Maybe I’ll
leave tomorrow. Maybe the day after tomorrow. It’s up to me.” Then he
heads for the village mosque. Marijan’s duties may include mollifying a
volcano-dwelling ogre. But he is also a devout Muslim who prays five
times a day.
Two days later, the lava dome collapses. Traffic grinds to a halt in
downtown Yogyakarta as motorists gape at the scorching avalanche of
rocks rushing down Merapi’s western flank—away from Marijan’s village.
Thanks to the timely evacuation, nobody is hurt.
Antonius Ratdomopurbo, director of the Volcanological Research and
Technological Development Agency in Yogyakarta, is visibly relieved.
“Merapi isn’t a big volcano, but it’s heavily populated. Many people
were killed in 1930 simply because they were too close.” Marijan has
just been lucky, he says. A month later, the lava dome collapses again,
this time to the south, and two rescue workers perish under six feet
(two meters) of hot ash. Again, fortune—or is it the volcano
deity?—spares Marijan’s village. Does the Gatekeeper understand anything
about the science of volcanoes? “I don’t know,” replies Ratdomopurbo
with a tight smile. “You ask him.”
In his stubborn adherence to duty, Marijan has gone head-to-head not
only with the authorities but also with his own boss, Hamengku Buwono X,
the sultan, who backed the government’s call for an evacuation.
Hamengku Buwono X—the name means “sustainer of the universe”—heads a
dynasty that dates back to the 18th century. His official portrait shows
him in full Javanese court attire, a curved dagger tucked into his
magnificent batik sarong. His everyday wear is an impeccably tailored
dark suit—preferably Armani. In his office, during an interview, he
puffs on a fat Davidoff cigar. A large painting of a volcano hangs on
the wall behind him. “Not Merapi,” he says dismissively. “Fuji.”
Though tradition requires he employ Marijan, Hamengku Buwono X, a law
graduate, does not believe in volcano-dwelling spirits. He is a
progressive Muslim who has urged Yogyakartans to consider Merapi’s
eruptions from a scientific perspective. “A great nation cannot be built
on pessimistic myths,” he believes.
The relationship between the sultan and Marijan is uneasy, to say the
least. The two inhabit opposite poles: the modern sultan versus the
mystical Gatekeeper. Marijan tells reporters he will evacuate if ordered
by the sultan—but he doesn’t mean the current ruler. His sultan is the
much loved Hamengku Buwono IX, father of Hamengku Buwono X, who
appointed Marijan as Gatekeeper and who died almost 20 years ago. “I
follow the ninth sultan,” he says. “He was the man in the kraton last
time I visited.”
In Marijan’s opinion, the current sultan’s biggest mistake is
allowing businessmen to strip Merapi of millions of cubic feet of rock
and sand. “He is not the sultan,” says Marijan witheringly. “He’s just
the governor.”
Marijan is not alone in his disapproval. Some in Yogyakarta accuse
Hamengku Buwono X of turning this cultural capital into a city of
shopping malls and of spending too much time on the golf course. They
yearn for the comfort of ancient rites and criticize the sultan for
neglecting ceremonies his father routinely attended. In 2006, the sultan
was conspicuously absent from an annual ritual to bless offerings for
the ogre Sapu Jagat and the sea goddess Ratu Kidul. The offerings—which
include food, flowers, cloth, and clippings of the sultan’s hair and
fingernails—are meant to ensure the sacred alignment between the
volcano, his palace, and the Indian Ocean, and thus the safety of the
people.
Less than two weeks after Merapi’s first major eruption of 2006, a
powerful earthquake had struck south of Yogyakarta, killing more than
5,000 people. The palace and royal burial grounds were also badly
damaged—an ill omen for the sultan, already the target of public outrage
over the slow distribution of relief funds. Damage control was in
order. Even a modern sultan can’t escape the force of the old beliefs.
With or without him, the annual ritual offerings had to be made.
So the sultan’s staff laid out offerings in the quake-damaged
courtyard for a brief ceremony, then sent them to waiting cars, which
sped off in two separate directions. The first set of offerings was
brought to Marijan’s house. The next morning, the Gatekeeper hiked to a
pavilion a mile from the volcano’s peak where, amid trees snapped in
half by the latest pyroclastic flow and the crash of tumbling boulders,
he solemnly prayed over the sultan’s offerings.
Gathering kantil flowers that others cast prayerfully into the sea,
some of Java’s Muslims celebrate in a festival on Parangtritis beach,
where revelers and prostitutes reenact a myth in which a sultan and a
sea goddess trysted on a beach near Mount Merapi.
A second set of offerings was driven south to Parangkusumo, the
Indian Ocean beach where, legend says, the sultan’s 16th-century
ancestor Senopati met the sea goddess Ratu Kidul. Thousands of houses
lay in rubble amid the rice fields. At Parangkusumo, the sultan’s staff
buried his hair and fingernail clippings near the beach, in a walled-off
compound where two flower-strewn stones marked the site of the ancient
encounter. Other offerings were flung into the waves.
It is August. Three months have elapsed since the first major
eruption of the year. Though still active, Merapi has settled down.
Residents attribute the calm to Marijan’s prayers and presence on the
volcano. But calm in Indonesia is about as long lasting as a plume of
smoke.
THE ANTAGONIST in the equation is militant Islam. Radicalized by
events such as 9/11 and the United States invasion of Iraq, groups
preaching a more austere version of Islam have gained strength and
influence, fueled by the perception that Islam is the cure for
Indonesia’s ills, notably its poverty and corruption. Some local
governments have introduced measures based on sharia, Islamic law, that
call for the arrest of women not wearing head scarves or the public
whipping of adulterous couples.
Militant Islamists have targeted mysticism in the conviction that
such practices pollute the faith. Islamic relief workers who arrived in
Yogyakarta following Merapi’s first blowup in May 2006 vowed to disrupt
rituals held on the volcano, while in Jakarta members of an Islamic
youth group hacked branches from a sacred banyan tree to prove it had no
magical power.
“People used to believe that things like graves and big trees were
sacred,” says Muhammad Goodwill Zubir, a leader of Muhammadiyah, an
organization focused on peaceful ways to purge the Muslim faith of
pre-Islamic influences, including the “heretical” reverence for
volcanoes. “As Muhammadiyah spreads in those areas, such beliefs have
died out,” Zubir says. His movement boasts about 30 million members and
runs thousands of mosques, schools, and clinics to promote the
orthodoxy. But how to explain a painting of what looks like Merapi
hanging outside Zubir’s office in Jakarta? “It’s just art,” he shrugs.
Nothing more.
Still, there are men, like Satria Naradha, who believe that mysticism
will not merely survive, it will flourish. Naradha owns Bali’s top
newspaper and television station. Locals admire the fortysomething media
mogul for conducting the lavish rituals that President Yudhoyono so
pointedly dislikes.
“Volcanoes are the thrones of the gods,” he explains. “They are
nature’s greatest force, one which can sustain life or destroy it.”
Naradha is helping underwrite an ambitious program of building Hindu
temples across Indonesia, particularly on active volcanoes. In addition
to raising nearly one and a half million dollars to complete a temple on
Lombok’s Mount Rinjani, he has plans to build on Sumbawa’s Mount
Tambora, site of an 1815 eruption that was the biggest in recorded
history. Naturally, he hopes one day to erect a temple on Mount Merapi.
Building Hindu temples in predominantly Muslim areas might seem a
dangerous provocation in a country prone to religious and ethnic strife,
but Naradha is undeterred. Temples help strengthen Balinese culture by
harnessing the spiritual power of the volcanoes they’re built on, he
explains. Most of all, they help restore the harmony between humans and
nature. “This helps all Indonesians, not just the Balinese,” he says.
A happy thought, except that harmony seems hard to come by in a
nation splintered by multiple beliefs and languages, and the incessant
tug-of-war between the modern world and ancient traditions. Revivalist
Hinduism, militant Islam, ancient mysticism: Which will prevail? Perhaps
all. Perhaps none. Globalization is sweeping through Indonesia like a
monsoon. A young Internet-savvy generation worships not volcanoes, but
Asian boy bands and English soccer clubs.
But don’t count the volcanoes out yet. Recently, Golkar, Indonesia’s
largest political party, held its annual conference in Yogyakarta. Its
ambitious leader, Vice President Jusuf Kalla—he of the inauspicious
name—is expected to run for president in 2009.
In the teak-paneled ballroom of the Hyatt Regency, Kalla introduces
the guest of honor as a man who is “resolute and able to make decisions
in any situation or risk.”
It’s Mbah Marijan, of course. Who better to launch a campaign for the nation’s highest office than the President of Merapi?
Andrew Marshall is a British journalist and the author of books about Japan and Burma. He lives in Bangkok.
Photographer John Stanmeyer is based in Bali. He is co-founder of the photo agency VII.
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