Volcano news with banana crepes on the side

November 4, 2010

            Merapi is on a deadly run this week, three more eruptions in the last two days, the latest, two this morning starting at around seven, the worst yet, killing at least 6 more people and forcing the evacuation zone, which authorities had said was perfectly safe at 10 kilometers, to get extended to 15 kilometers, moving three of the shelters in place for villagers from the mountain as well.  The number of displaced people has gone up to 75,000 (which tells you something about population density in Java: 75,000 people living in a 9 mile radius around the most active volcano in Indonesia).  There’s been ash billowing up to 20 kilometers in the sky, pyroclastic flows called in Javanese wedhus gembel, which translates as “shaggy sheep,” descriptive if perhaps a little too gentle under the circumstances.  Laura and Seamus passed through Magelang on their way to the south coast of Java today with a school trip, and she reported a great deal of ash there, much closer to Merapi than we are and without the shield of Mount Merbabu to block it. Even here, though, a thin coating of ash is appearing outside, and there’s a faint mineral smell in the air.

            As of today, there are 19 volcanoes in Indonesia on high alert status, out of the 125+ active volcanoes in the country. There’s some talk here about Merapi triggering this uptick in activity, because it’s all happening very quickly, but I have no idea if that is accurate. But when you read in the newspaper that Krakatoa is on high alert status, of course it gets your attention.

            In the meantime the pictures from the Mentawai Islands off the coast of Sumatra just get worse and worse. Storms and complete destructive chaos make getting in and out almost impossible. Desperate to do something, the government sent scores of volunteers to the island who apparently were completely unqualified to be of any assistance, and ran in fear at the rather large waves still pummeling the island. Now they are having to evacuate the volunteers because they are in the way. One Indonesian aid worker said it would be nice to have people with the requisite “knowledge and courage” to help out. Doctors can’t get the work done there because they can’t get the right supplies in, since the seas have been too high.

            It’s strange to be right on the edge of it, safe but still very present, and at the moment helpless as well, lacking the requisite knowledge and courage to do much but comment on it with my neighbors, eloquent observations translated to something like “Merapi erupt again today. Big. Scary.”

            Perhaps one of the reasons missionaries seem to thrive around here is the apparent proximity to the apocalypse, which they seem to be very excited to witness. At the moment, it’s just over that ridge there, blasting out shaggy sheep at an alarming rate, and over there off the coast of Sumatra, our own local remake of 2012 or The Day After Tomorrow.  I’m closer than I usually am to the on-going global apocalypses, no desire to get much closer, really. This time when I look in the newspaper, the old women getting loaded up into the back of squat black Mitsubishi, removed from their soon to be incinerated mountain village, look like my neighbor across the street. I imagine for my friends and family something similar is happening too; they are reading the news differently when they see about disasters in Indonesia, because Indonesia is suddenly a real place, with real people, four of whom you know pretty well.

            Observation off topic: there’s a guy on the corner outside the University where I work with a little stand on wheels. He makes little banana crepes, all day long, in two tiny cast iron woks heated over burning coals. He puts in the batter, and then sliced bananas, some sugar, a little chocolate, and some sweetened condensed milk. He covers that, switches the wok to the other burning coals, brings the already prepared one forward, folds it over and serves it. He does this all day long, every day, and his stand is often so crowded with orders that there is no point waiting. He’s famous in Salatiga; people come from all over the city to pick up batches of 20 or 30, and it takes about 2-3 minutes to get two finished. They cost 750 rupiah apiece, about 8 cents. They are extraordinarily delicious, the best dessert item I have had in Indonesia. It’s an amazing thing, to stand there, watching him prepare orders for the small crowd of people leaning against their motorbikes, his every move deft and easy, the intimate craft of a man who does this one thing with such aplomb and dexterity, preparing one after another. I have at least two every time there is no crowd and I am near him, regardless of what time of day it is and whether I am actually hungry, because I feel the need to stock up my internal reserve of Indonesian banana crepes, for that time when I am no longer able to eat them by walking 3 minutes from my office.  Sometimes I even fork out the forty cents and have five.