Traffic Jam

This is Eden, the lush garden of drivers, cars and motorcycles. We drive along the north coast of Bali, from Lovina






where the little shops are and the noisy bars, the restaurants and the hotels, the traffic signs and the billboards, where the traffic seems to originate but doesn’t and absorbs all other traffic nearing from Singaraja, the capital of the north coast, driving further to the West side of Bali, the direction of the island of Java, but not that far, only to the place of Pemutaran as the final or almost final stop of our trip, the turning point if we have not enough time to pass on and to end up further on at the little village, a hamlet opposite Banyuwangi on Java, the little town where the ferry boat and many other ships depart or arrive from Java and wait for their turn to move on to the high sea. What’s up north of the shore but water and sea and deep ocean floor, that doesn’t slope where it levels and starts to climb to another shore I only know from the map of Indonesia on the wall of my elementary school and later from the dirty walls in tourists offices and hotels offering all kind of tours by bus or airplane, big and small ones, safe and dangerous ones, suddenly diving into the deepest ocean, to the deepest floor underwater between the Sunda islands of this large archipelago, taking its black box forever to darkness.

However, provisionally we stay on land, not on the beach but on the highway that is winding along the shore of the island, going round along the sawa’s and the desa’s, the towns and the tourists places, where traffic is outpouring bad vapors, smothering the people in the tropical heat and the missing breeze, the exhaust fumes of the cars and motorcycles. Although we know this long road is encircling the mountainous inner core of the island with the twin lakes and the volcanoes, following the outer fringe along the sea, never getting lost of its mania of nervously and aimless circling, its continuing turning around and remaining the same and alternating circle road. We rent a car and a driver, a perfect driver who guides, pushes and squeezes us through the traffic of the permanent, never ending, timeless stream of motorbikes, scooters, cars, buses, trucks, transporting men, women and children who

won’t ever more leave the road, the narrow, slightly curving main road along the shore, hiding under a dense and dark foliage full of young, bouncing squirrels and peanut eating monkeys, at a little distance from the calm and shining, beautiful sea behind the motionless small and larger palm trees, the neem trees, the mango trees and the paddy fields, behind the hotels and warungs along the sidewalk, broken up for repair of the sewers, decorated by high heaps of dark earth with a plant on top as sign not to cross over and alternatively interrupted by sloping openings, a kind of sluices where the currents of the tropical rain can find and

follow the road we drive on and gulp its water parallel to the sea till the water sinks into the sand and the mud between the stones of the road, in the ditches along the road, in the paddy fields and under the compounds of the houses, the main floor of the desa. This is a permanent traffic jam. This is the Eden of the drivers. This is what they like. This is the driver’s contribution to the combustion of the tropical heat, the explosion along the equator. They all have cars, they all are drivers, they all offer transport. It is their way not to be in the paddy field, not to hang out and not to join the ceremony. It is their custom to stay away from the women, the kitchen, the carrying of stones for building. They love driving in the traffic jams. It keeps them away from praying, cooking,

working in the rice field. The traffic jam is freedom from worry, duty and home. Blowing exhaust vapors into the air, honking, smoking in the car, waiting, endlessly sitting in the front seat; it’s the job of the driver. So we travel and

sit in the back seat of the car we rented. We watch out of the window, that we open to get a breeze. The driver has assured us, his car has air conditioning and he is right. Indeed, his car has aircon, however it’s broken down. Sorry,mister, it happened yesterday. Sorry. The aircon airs hot air. Sorry, mister. Sweating all over my body, I dream of the sea behind the paddy fields, of another Eden and finally swim out of the traffic jam back to the hotel.