Indonesia like home from home

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DOCUMENTARY photographer Mikhail Adam Motala set off to do a project on the cultural links between Indonesia and Cape Town, but soon realised he would be remiss in not including Amsterdam. Motala recently returned from the South-East Asian nation, brimming with knowledge and ideas. His plan is to turn his research into an exhibition, drawing on his wealth of photographs, which he will juxtapose with Cape Malay and Dutch culture. “The main goal of this project is to break down barriers, bridging gaps between people, be it most obvious across the ocean, socially, psychologically as well, and get people thinking, even though we may look completely different on the outset (being from different continents), we may have so much more in common than we think if we just dig a little deeper below the surface,” he said. Motala is half-Indian, half-Cape Malay.

He says he was drawn to find out more about the rich heritage shared by the Cape Malays and Indonesia.

However, it soon became apparent that it needed to be the tale of three cities – Cape Town, Jakarta and Amsterdam.

It was familiar words like piesang (banana), handdoek (towel) and asbak (ashtray), the food, culture and facial features that made him feel right at home when he landed in Indonesia.

South Africans go to the bioscope, just like the Indonesians, and are also known to call the polisi. And in the Cape, Maaf means sorry.

Chutney is called blatjang in the Cape, though in Indonesia it is more like a fish sauce as opposed to a sweet-sour fruit chutney.

But there are differences. While boeber, made with milk, sago, vermicelli, almonds, sultanas, sugar, rose water and spices is a hot drink in Cape Town, in Indonesia it is more like porridge. But they have smoortjies, daltjies, denningvleis and sosaties.

He says the Dutch influence can be found in both Jakarta and Cape Town.

Motala celebrated Eid in Indonesia and says the prayers, the celebration and meal were exactly like he would have enjoyed at home.

He smiled when people mistook him for a local and spoke to him in Indonesian.

The Dutch colonised Indonesia and then the Cape, with Jan van Riebeeck arriving in the Cape in 1652 to establish a trading post.

They needed cheap labour and Indonesian political exiles were brought to the Cape as slaves. Many were crafts people skilled in woodwork, construction and tailoring.

Most of them were Muslim, notably Sheikh Yusuf al-taj alkhalwatial-Maqasari, widely acknowledged to have brought Islam to South Africa. The sheikh, a Makassarese noble, was born in Gowa and was the nephew of King Bissue of Gowa.

He arrived in the Cape in 1694 and was sent to the Zandvliet farm, where Islam subsequently flourished, and it was later renamed Macassar.

When he died in 1699, he was buried on a hill, a kramat (shrine) was constructed in his memory. In 1705 his remains were taken to Makassar, Ujung Pandang and interred in a tomb in Katangka Village, close to Gowa.

Motala visited the shrine and was overwhelmed to meet one of Sheikh Yusuf’s descendants – Mujiburahman bin abd Jalil.

Motala said one of the most moving experiences was going to the Sunda Kelapa harbour, from where people were sent to become slaves.

Many Cape Malay people say they are from Java (Jakarta), which was where the old slave trading post is.

Thousands of people were brought to Cape Town, wrenched from their families and communities.

Motala says because Indonesians don't have surnames it will be difficult to reunite families, but he says it would be amazing if that could happen.

He has also drawn similarities between the architecture. In old Dutch Town, the oldest building in Jakarta is the city hall, similar to the one here.

The Castle of Good Hope is modelled on Fort Rotterdam, built by the Dutch. The fort was built on the location of an earlier Makassarese fort, Ujung Pandang. Fort Rotterdam and the Castle of Good Hope both have five bastions.

Motala’s work is far from done, he says. He will spend the next few months doing more research on the links between the three cities, and it will end up as an exhibition. His ultimate goal is to film a documentary.

View his work on www.mikmotala.com

INSTAGRAM @mik_motala

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