Our excellent friends Jamroni and Hilmar gave us another morning of their valuable time to show us the Rotterdam Fort. The fort was originally built by the ancient rulers of the land, the Rajas of Gowa, and served them well to repel many attacks by neighboring kingdoms. It was not enough to resist the Dutch invasion, and after being destroyed by the invaders was rebuilt in the 1700's as Fort Rotterdam, and was extensively used as casserne, dungeon, and government offices until the Japanese in turn invaded Makassar and took over the fort. In the postwar years the fort fell into disrepair, but in the 1970's the local government decided to reconstruct it and make it into a museum. We had to visit the museum, of course, guided by a garrulous fellow who distracted me enough for me to loose the thread of local history.
One thing I remember, however, is that when the Dutch took it over they discovered a treasure trove of manuscripts, among which there is a collection of stories that detail the origins of the Bugis kingdom, moral precepts, and philosophical musings that runs nearly a thousand pages long called La Galigo, which joins the handful of great sagas of antiquity to form part of the cultural patrimony of humanity. Of course nobody has heard of this saga outside of Makassar, because it is written in an ancient alphabet in a language that nobody speaks anymore. The original manuscript is in a Dutch museum, and according to our gushing guide has already been translated in a dozen of languages.
We then went to the south of the city, to admire the government palace of the Gowa Kingdom, and to visit its museum. It turns out that Indonesia, being a coalition of islands ruled by different rajas and princes, still acknowledges a few of the original royal families, and despite the fact that they have no political say on the way their fiefdom participates in modern democracy, they still maintain a few of their rank privileges and are allowed to manage their private wealth to keep a certain pomp and circumstance. Gowa is one of these kingdoms, and is now in a bit of disarray because the king died three months ago and the prince is too young to ascend to the throne, so the royal council is working its way through the details of a Regency period. Sounds extremely archaic to me, but the people of the kingdom expect that this interregnum issue will soon be solved.
I like Makassar. You would think that a settlement in a remote island would be a simple collection of fishermen huts, and instead you find a vibrant city with all the advantages (and disadvantages) that come from 1.5 million people living close together. It is an old city that goes back thousands of years as the seat of power of the Gowa kingdom, which was world famous as the hub of the spice trade. Unfortunately you don't see much of that spice trading tradition, because if it had survived I think it would rival the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul.
Yet the city has managed to keep up with times, and has built many public spaces to attract tourism. The one that has been in progress for the last six years is a monumental complex built on landfill reclaimed from the ocean, under the monicker "Central Point of Indonesia". Someone has figured out that if you draw a line from the farthest northwest to the farthest southeast of Indonesia, and another from the farthest northeast to the farthest southwest, both lines would cross right here in Makassar, which automatically makes it the center of the country. This brand new quarter of the city has a spectacular mosque that looks like twenty orange and white mushrooms growing on top of each other, giant office complexes, bridges that resemble traditional Indonesian grain depots, shopping malls, and lots of green areas that are the delight of the joggers of the area. I walked there in the afternoon to enjoy the sights, but it was warm and on the way back cheated and took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel.
To wrap up the day we had a delightful dinner with Jamroni, his wife Eni, and their two teenage sons Billy and Kaffa. Eni is a travel consultant, and she assures me that Bangkok is not as scary as Jakarta and very colorful, so maybe I will plan to spend four days there toward the end of my trip. Billy is in high school and would like to become a graphic artist; he likes to draw. Kaffa is in junior high school and graduated top of his class this year; he is very good at math and computers, and I made my best to recruit him to become a geological engineer. All the family speaks very good English, which they tell me they learnt from YouTube. Billy would like to learn to speak Russian. It was and easy and very pleasant dinner.
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