For the love of loudspeakers

It's pre dawn and I am about to lose my cool.

I've been tossing and turning all night but the thing I've been really wrestling with this trip, a little frantically over the last 24 hours, is the call to prayer. Not the call itself but the volume.

And because I like to think of myself as someone who is open-minded, culturally sensitive and eternally curious about the spiritual side of things maybe I'm resisting the idea of how intolerant I'm being. 

My husband tells me not to worry, ignore the noise. I'm a light sleeper while he has a high tolerance for noise of all kinds. This is partly due to reduced hearing but also because he has tinnitus, a condition of constant ringing in his head. 

I wish I could be so zen. When the evening call sounded out on our first night in Jogja, travel weary and slightly delirious with a head cold, my first thought was that I wasn't going to be able to sleep here. At all. Ever.

Indonesia is over 85% Muslim, and is packed with 800,000 mosques that call out at prayer times five times a day and night. That call lasting a mere five minutes, has been ringing out for centuries. It's an ever present reminder of faith and a ritual to praise god throughout the Moslem world. 

Even distorted by modern amplification, it still has its own particular beauty. And as someone who struggles to maintain a regular morning meditation practice, I have the utmost respect for the diligence and discipline it would take to observe shalat (prayer) for a week, let alone a lifetime.

Call to prayer--or azan--can be heard everywhere, and that's as it should be. I just can't help wonder when it got to be so loud. 

On this topic a local Indonesian friend is pretty candid: "I know and am very sure it has become competition between traditions, between villages and in fact between mosques. Each of the mosque now showing off their ability to gain more followers. More follower means you can earn more money and furbish your mosque, you can have greater influence, and as a result you can join an election and become a mayor."

In our village there are two mosques close by - but at the appointed hour you can hear up to five or six from across the district blasting out at one time. During any of the five prayer times entire neighbourhoods in Jogjakarta and the surrounding villages are filled with dueling voices. Even the roosters are drowned out - and the overlapping reach between mosques surely means that no one azan is ever fully heard. 

Add to this scratchy sound systems and distortion from ancient loudspeakers, and it can be quite disorienting. 

The use of loudspeakers in Indonesia is not limited to calls to prayer, but also Quranic recitations and other religious gatherings. Five minute calls can last for almost an hour. 

It's amazing to me that on the majority of nights, I --and many others --sleep through the whole thing. These sorts of adjustments are all part of the interesting mix of living somewhere new. 

A quick bit of research and it's clear I'm not the first to wonder about this delicate issue. There are prominent Indonesians waging into the discussion. 

Vice President Boediono, triggered a national debate in 2012  by publicly calling on the Indonesian Mosque Council to issue a regulation on the noise levels for loudspeakers used by muezzins to belt out calls to prayer.

“We are all aware that the azan is a holy call for Muslims to perform their prayers, but I, and probably others, feel that the sounds of azan that are heard faintly from a distance resonate more in our hearts that those that are too loud and too close to our ears."

As the opening to the council’s annual conference it not surprisingly sparked a  ton of both positive and negative responses on social media.

According to an article from that time from the website South East Asia Real Time: "The cacophony blasting through loudspeakers from hundreds of mosques at the same time is a somewhat sensitive issue in Indonesia. Most people consider it part of life in a Muslim-majority country, but some complain about the persistent aural assault. While many Indonesians say in private that they would prefer more quiet, they are content to keep their discontent to themselves to avoid offending devout Muslims."

Modern technology has brought many blessings. But I can't help but wonder if it's yet another one of those issues where the change is gradual and people perhaps fail to notice it happening around them. Hundreds of years ago azan would have echoed out from a landcape that was noticeably quieter than that of today. 

For me it's not the disrupted sleep so much as the pervasiveness of the sound - the feeling that you cannot quite be alone with your thoughts or completely in nature. 

Having done most of my growing up in the leafy suburbia of small Australian cities, I realise silence is something I take for granted, as an almost pristine natural state. Even this is not entirely accurate because even an undisturbed environment contains the sounds of animals and the elements. But these are natural sounds that are sonorous and pleasing to the ear and the soul. 

Jogja as with cities the world over, is growing at a massive rate. Even kilometers out of the city, the roar of motorbikes, cars and trucks announce the daily commute at peak times throughout the day.  Honks, shouts, bells and engines jostle for our attention from all directions and our ability to tune them in and out is as much a reflection of our inner state than anything else.

As I contemplate all this from my little piece of paradise on the world's most populated island I realise that man-made sound is all around us. 

It strikes me too that silence is a quality that is gradually retreating with the inexorable expansion of human population and the march of industry over ever diminishing wilderness areas. 

This is something that is happening worldwide and with the growing reach of modern amplification systems this simply means more competing sounds demanding our attention. 

Is the decreasing opportunity for sustained silence inevitable or do we have some control over the intensity of sounds reaching us? 

As I wrestle with cultural distinctions around what constitutes a comfortable noise level I wonder whether do we as human beings realise the consequences of lost silence?

                           ************************************************

Saturday morning arrives fully bathed in sunshine. At 8am on the dot a syncopated beat pounds out, transferring to my dreams. Its clearly not the azan, which isn't due till midday. Rhythmic, catchy, all enveloping it was the kind of thing I might have danced to in  a nightclub--but here is so completely out of context I can't do anything but jam the pillow over my head hoping it'll go away.

It doesn't. I shower and dress and set out across the lawns - the caricature of an agitated Westerner fully intending to march up and demand an explanation. From someone, anyone.

Luckily I meet one the unflappable local ladies on the path who smiles her serene smile as I blurt out:  'Ada disco hari ini? (There's a disco today?)

No, she explains patiently, it's the local cultural centre, holding an aerobics class for their staff.

Defeated, I turned back to the bungalow. This was clearly a debate for another day.

Postscript: It does seem there is change on the horizon.

Last week another former Vice President weighed in with some action on this issue.

According to the local news Jusuf Kalla, in his capacity as chairman of the Indonesian Mosque Council (DMI), has started a nationwide campaign on the issue of loudspeakers. Some 50 cars, manned by more than 150 technicians, have been dispatched to help mosque caretakers improve the sound quality of their amplification systems.

Kalla was reported to have said that other than reducing noise, the technical assistance would also help to ensure those attending mosque could hear Muslim preachers’ complete message.

It may take some time before this is any notable change to volume levels but at least the conversation has commenced. Issues are never one-dimensional especially where tradition, culture and religion coincide. Thinking about this issue has given me a deeper understanding of my new home. 

And I for one, no longer take silence for granted. 

I treasure it now that I have less. And that's a good thing.

  

One suitcase, no plan

For close to a decade now Hal and I have kept rebounding to Indonesia. It’s become part of our shared story, I can’t explain exactly why.  Something about the landscapes, food, and people --the friendly and relaxed attitude to life—has gotten under our skin. An itch that needs to be scratched.

Rather than shift restlessly between locations like harried tourists on an annual culture binge, each journey we have chosen to become immersed in a project. Slipping into a new way of living seems to offer up more important secrets than skipping around like an owl-eyed TripAdvisor reviewer.

In 2009 we spent nine months volunteering on conservation and cultural projects in Ubud, Bali. Yes that ever changing traveller’s nirvana, made ever more famous as the destination of “Eat, Pray, Love” where Liz Gilbert (played by Julia Roberts) finally gets laid. She could have found all three realities in that one hillside village.

Think cramped offices in unbelievable gardens, tropical nights robed in equatorial darkness. A crumbling pantheon of silent Hindu temple gods,  interrupted by the rendered slickness of six star villas slowly sucking the deep rivers dry. The blend of modern and ancient that makes up life in much of Asia today. 

This time, a quiet, steady voice within says ‘wait’. Chastens me to slow down to the speed of Indonesia (a measured dilatoriness) and to not put my hand up for a project, nor map out a list of achievements to tick off. I do the opposite of what I usually would do. I alight off the Garuda Airbus with a packed suitcase and an empty agenda. 

Travel affords the possibility of a great many things. For me it has always offered insights into the intimate workings of life, as much as the chance for adventure and sightseeing. With Hal’s humanitarian project providing more than enough reason for going, this trip is a perfect opportunity to put my theories of mindfulness into practice. 

So I come to Java with a plan to eschew all plans. To do nothing pre-arranged, and simply wake up each day and see what the morning brings.

Surprisingly this is more difficult than I’d imagined.

For starters, there’s a not entirely inaccurate belief that others will perceive I’m plain idle. Add to that my deep seated need to feel productive – something that is both personal and cultural.

First discovery: To be completely free of responsibilities is both weird, and guilt-laden.

Of course it feels wonderful to escape the normal routine of life at home—and enter the exotic otherness, the topsy-turvy multi-sensory bombardment that is living in an utterly foreign culture.

I make the deliberate decision to stay out here by the rice fields. The work of the traditional farmers is laborious and as lean as the old villagers we see riding around on their Dutch-era bikes. Yet there is comforting chatter in their early morning routines.

I begin to observe the farmers gather outside our window each morning joking amicably as their bare feet follow the furrows of their sawah.  I wonder what us Westerners have lost generations ago when we became urbanized and orphaned from nature and the land that sustains us.

Away from hyperventilated rush and adrenaline pulse of the city, in this small village called Tembi, is the perfect opportunity to allow life to unfold in its own unbridled pace. As I mediate from the deck of our bungalow, time is nothing more or less than swaying rows of emerald rice stretching out invitingly —my morning panorama.

I should be as happy as a plump cherub in heaven.  But my ingrained habits ambush me and I can’t resist signing up for a couple of tasks that fate inevitably asks. And then a few more. Intensive language lessons, learning batik, writing a travel guide to Jogja for the bungalows, volunteering my time as editor and writer.

Somehow getting up early for class feels more onerous when the rest of my time is so free. Planting my butt in front of my under-sized tablet computer irks me. I begin to regret offering to edit grant applications and help a local student with their environmental thesis. I want to help but I'm resisting being jammed up against my keyboard once more. Strapped to that contorted qwerty universe, I'm as yoked as a bullock in a pen.

Here is my dilemna: while having nothing to do feels like an oddly unfurnished room, doing anything goal oriented also begins to feel stifling and infuriating. I drive Hal and myself nuts for a few days.

Thankfully nature thwacks you on the head a little more often here. Minor earthquakes, torrential downpours, chorusing frogs and a phenomenal volcanic ash fall. In our little corner of Java, it’s hard to get caught up in introspection for too long.

Interrupted by a breeze, my head bobs up to glimpse the sudden appearance of grains of rice dusting the fields, signaling a new phase -- one that is gently delivering me back to myself.

With a few intriguing bumps along the way.