Eva sat on her veranda, holding a plastic bag full of coins and giving them to passing children the night before Idul Fitri.
“Come here kid! Take the money,” she cried out to one of the youngsters in her village of Tegalwangi in Talang regency.
As her neighbors chanted “Allahu akbar” (God is great), Eva prepared Rp 50,000 (US$5.40) in 500 rupiah coins and gave Rp 1,000 to each child.
Lutfi, her 5-year-old son, also walked around the neighborhood to collect coins, even though his mother disapproves of children asking, let alone begging, for money.
Eva said she was carrying on a local custom to distribute money to the young, and told Lutfi to behave himself.
“But he argued that he did it just to have fun with his friends,” said Eva, whose husband runs a food stall and grocery shop in Tegal bus terminal.
In Tegalwangi village, giving coins to children is considered zakat (alms) and it is one of three well-preserved traditions here.
The others are ambengan and anonim. Ambengan is exchanging and sharing food blessed at the mushola (worship place) or mosque before the start of Ramadhan and after the Idul Fitri prayer. Anonim is the tradition of exchanging and sharing food right from the kitchen.
Soon after the Idul Fitri prayers, the men brought trays full of rice, tofu, tempeh and vegetables to the mosque. After they asked for God’s blessings, they gave them to their needy neighbors.
“We also prepare food for ambengan to respect our ancestors who introduced the ritual,” said Eva’s sister, Islamiarti.
Then follows the anonim ritual. Carrying trays full of rice, sticky rice or chicken cooked in coconut milk, young people knock on doors and offer the food.
This tradition allows people to give or exchange food to anyone in their neighborhood.
“But each family usually prepares food for 10 families,” said Islamiarti.
She said while giving coins to children and the ambengan ritual were “compulsory”, there is no obligation to perform the anonim ritual.
“These sharing traditions have been maintained for decades,” she said. (15)
Source: The Jakarta Post
October 24th, 2007
Villagers evacuated from around the Indonesian volcano Mount Kelud have been told it could still erupt as frustration over their forced removal grows.
Activity in the volcano slowed on Monday, making it even harder to convince residents to remain in the makeshift refugee shelters.
The alert level at Mount Kelud, one of Indonesia’s deadliest volcanoes, was put at the highest level a week ago and has remained there since.
There have been a series of powerful underground tremors and sharply rising temperatures in the lake of the crater.
However, some of the tens of thousands of villagers who have been forced off the volcano’s slopes say they are losing money while they are kept off their land.
Tremors rocked Mount Kelud, a 1,731-metre peak about 90kms from Indonesia’s second city of Surabaya, for nearly an hour on Friday, Surano, the top volcanologist at the monitoring station, Kristanto, said.
But there has been no major activity since Sunday making it all the more difficult to convince evacuees to remain in makeshift refugee shelters near its base.
High alert
“We are still in a situation of high alert,” he said, noting that Mount Kelud has a history of only large eruptions, never small.
“Once it goes off, it will be big. This is why we keep reminding people they have to stay clear of the crater.”
Authorities have ordered 116,000 people living along the volcano’s fertile slopes to leave their homes, but more than 12,000 refused, saying they needed to tend to their crops and animals and protect against possible looting.
Meanwhile, many of those forced to evacuate were losing patience and money.
Suyatno, who earns $1 a day picking cloves and coffee beans for a private plantation company, said he was eager to return to his village of Candi Sewu, 5kms from Mount Kelud’s peak.
The last eruption of Mount Kelud in 1990 killed more than 30 people and injured hundreds. In 1919, a powerful explosion that could be heard hundreds of kilometres away destroyed dozens of villages and killed at least 5,160 people
Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where continental plates collide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity. The archipelago nation is home to 129 active volcanoes, including 21 on Java alone.
Source: http://mwcnews.net/
October 24th, 2007