30 April 2009

The Alchemy of Fear

Did you ever stay in a new place and have a deep fear of your life? Is fear a healthy food for your soul? I have quite a few in the last few months, one in Amsterdam, one in the night train from Lyon to Rome, and a recent one is right now in Sampit. Mostly those fears are the result of one irrational summation of a series of rational analyses. I arrived in Sampit, South Kalimantan yesterday. Everyone in Indonesia still remember the frenzy ethnic killings here in 2001 between the local Dayaks and the Madurese. The images of chopped heads can easily be found in the internet. I recommended you not to search it because I, stupidly, did. That’s one of the reasons that triggered my fear. I was feeling uneasy through out the night and couldn’t sleep until around 2 or 3 am because of those images. That’s the alchemy of fear: I created all kind of nightmarish and paranoia thoughts that were getting worse and worse into the night. That night was the night that I prayed really, extra, double, more, serious, and multiple times before sleep. So I woke up this morning feeling better (of course after making sure that my head is still intact). I was able to go around the city in daylight. It is actually a really nice small town with grid streets and rather clean. I got to talk more with the people as well and understand better the demography of the populations. We went to the river harbor, the fish market, shops, and commercial streets. However in the car we passed by one hotel that they used to put (pile up) severed heads of people in 2001. Ugh. Ugh. And I started to fear again. There were not many things going on at night. We ate a Chinese restaurant by our self in a room about 30m by 60m. That itself was quite surreal. We went back to our hotel and straight to our rooms. I laid down in the bed and felt asleep. That was still before 9pm I think. Then, then I heard a knock on my door. I opened it and there were a few policemen outside the room and asking for my identification. I was in fear of course but didn’t think about it. My only identification was passport, so I gave them that and asked what’s going on. After that I went out to the lobby and sat there to make sure everything was okay and I was more shocked when I saw more policemen mixing with a few intel civilians walking around and a big police trucks outside. That’s really scary. Maybe that what some Indonesian migrants in the East Coast felt when there were raids by FBI or Homeland Security. Both are not good, not nice. That is fear working. After talking with some people there, they said it is one of those irregular razias or police searches for prostitution activities in hotel. I know you will say “what” but that’s the way it is apparently here. But I guess maybe that’s just a pre-emptive police operation to clean out provocateurs. Don’t know, who knows. I will be leaving tomorrow to Palangkaraya, the capital of this province. Will let you know what’s up there. Cheers, there.

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