#46 Indonesia – Corruption, can things be worse?

Since arriving in Indonesia, I enjoyed the beauty of nature and the people. It’s a great country with great potential but unfortunately it’s not utilized and the country still feels very backward. Taking the transportation is a struggle; find a nice clean restaurant is a struggle, finding a clean bathroom/toilet is nearly impossible. Although it’s a very great experience but I really feel for the daily life of the people here and I hope it will get better, but I doubt it will be anytime soon. I always heard about the corruption in Indonesia from the locals and from other tourists. I’ve read that Indonesia is considered one of the most corrupted countries and on my trip from Samarinda to Berau I saw that first hand.
The trip to Berau was very hard, I was in a small minivan with 5 others and the driver. The van was also crammed with some boxes to be delivered in Berau. It was also full of big plastic containers of gasoline; I learned later that the gasoline price in Berau is 3 times higher than other places because the government doesn’t provide enough gasoline, and in the process someone is benefiting of selling gasoline at high prices. These minivans that transport people to Berau, also take gasoline with them to sell it for a big profit in Berau. You can imagine the feeling of being inside the minivan with the smell of gasoline, the loud music from the music player, and 4 passengers who were smokers, and to add to the situation the road was in really bad shape. The road to Berau was gravel with many potholes, with some places that have been washed out by the rain, so the driver had to slow down and maneuver around all the obstacles on the road, you can call it more of an off-road rally. The trip was long, it was 19 hours, I read somewhere online, if you take the road in the winter it will take somewhere between 50 and 65 hours. It’s not a long distance but the road situation is very bad especially in the winter when the cars get stuck in the mud. I was lucky to find a guy in the van who spoke English and I was asking him questions how come the road is like this. Because the information I read online was from 2007, I thought may be the road is better after 4 years. He told me they are waiting on the budget to be approved; I said it’s been 4 years, how long does it take. He said there’s so much corruption and it’s at every level so the contractor will take money from the government and he won’t finish the work or will do part of the work till he gets more money.

I was sitting in the middle seat, so I told the driver that I need to sit next to him in the passenger seat and the guy who was sitting next to him who is supposed to be the assistant and of course his friend. I thought the assistant will help with the driving, but he was there for the company. So I told the driver that we need to switch places, everyone will switch for a couple of hours with the person sitting next to the driver because it’s the most comfortable seat. He declined, so I said that’s where the corruption starts and the guy who spoke English translated to them, I know they didn’t like what I said but they didn’t say anything. After few hours we stopped for a break in the middle of nowhere, I said I want to sit in the front or I want my money back. Really, I knew I can’t get my money back and I knew I can’t find any transportation in the middle of nowhere, even if he agreed to give me my money back. But I said I want to voice my concern and hope the others will notice that you need to speak up sometimes and hope for a change. Of course the driver and his assistant refused to let me sit in the front, but since we were traveling with 2 other cars, they switched 2 passengers so we had one less passenger and they switched the assistant next to the driver with a woman, in a way to show me, that the woman in conservative culture cannot sit with the guys. Although it’s not the change I wanted but I was happy something happened because at least one guy was more comfortable. I didn’t want to challenge more because I didn’t want to get into trouble. I asked the guy who spoke English why people don’t rise up in Indonesia. It seemed to me that people don’t like to challenge a situation and they’d rather live with the status-quo than to make their life better, and they seem to hate confrontation while willing to put up with misery, and he agreed it’s a cultural thing.

Throughout the night, but we passed by many large lands where the forest was destroyed in order to make place for the exploration of coal. It’s very sad to see kilometer after kilometer of the damage that was done in order to dig the coal mines. I was told the owner of these mines is the richest billionaire in Indonesia. I couldn’t take pictures because it was very dark and we were moving.
We continued our trip and I was able to sleep for a little. It was very early morning when I woke up and found the car was parked, the driver was sleeping and most of the passengers were sleeping. I want to continue my sleep because it was easier to get a nap when the car wasn’t jumping all over the place. I noticed the girl who was with us standing outside because she couldn’t sleep; it seemed the driver was leaning too much to her side of the seat. The girl seemed to be frustrated but she didn’t say anything to the driver, I understood that she told him there are too many mosquitoes, as I said they avoid confrontation to the extreme, so she complain about the mosquitoes and not the actual situation. This tells me why they’re willing to put up with a system so inefficient and so corrupt. During the whole trip I was thinking, how people can make things better, and as much as a foreign country or foreign individuals and businesses will try to help, people have to help themselves. After almost half an hour, the sun was rising and we continued our trip and finally arrived on our destination after excruciating 19 hours trip. I still appreciated the experience and learned many things, and one thing I can say the daily life of the average Indonesian is a constant struggle.