Unseen Bandung: Kampong Party at The Cikapundung River Bank

This is a scene that many visitors to Bandung would not probably see:

Just across the river where I took the fishing photo (see previous post), I saw a small party going on. The party, with dangdut music and dancing, was apparently part of a political campaign held by a candidate of the municipal legislature who sought votes from the slum river bank community in the recently held general elections.

As you can see from the picture, sanitation at densely-populated kampongs along the Cikapundung river is a big environmental issue in Bandung. Open sewer and garbage flow into the river which in turn flows into one of the dirtiest river in the world: The Ciliwung.

Valley of Limestone Factory

This is what we saw at about half-way through our climb. Below in the valley are areas of the Rajamandala mountain range that have been mined for their limestone with a limestone processing factory in the middle. Ugliness is creeping in and destroying Bandung's ancient geological heritage.

Pemandangann yang kami lihat di puncak pertama Gunung Masigit, kira-kira di tengah jalan antara Gua Pawon dan Taman Bebatuan (Stone Gardens). Banyak gunung kapur di daerah ini yang telah hancur ditambang. Beberapa puluh tahun ke depan, mungkin kita tak akan dapat lagi menyaksikan kemegahan karst Rajamandala seperti yang masih bisa kita saksikan sekarang.

Air Pollution Meter on Jalan Setiabudi

This is an air pollution (pollutant) meter on Dr. Setiabudi street in the north of Bandung. Well, not the whole structure is, only the bottom part. The big LCD screen on top of it is a billboard. As you can see, the instrument is out of order and does not read and display what it's supposed to read and display.

The municipal government has installed a number of pollution (pollutant) meters in several locations in the city recently to let the public know the pollutant levels in the areas where they are installed. Unfortunately many of them, like this one, seem to be out of order.

Alat pengukur polusi udara di jalan Dr Setiabudi di utara Bandung. Alat ini dipasang di beberapa tempat di kota Bandung untuk memberitahukan kepada masyarakat tingkat polusi udara yang ada di tempat itu. Sayangnya, kebanyakan alat itu tampaknya rusak dan tidak berfungsi.

No Day Without Tree Planting

This billboard with a picture of the President handing over a tree to the Mayor can be seen in several places in the city. The writing on it says "No Day Without Tree Planting".

The billboard is part of the nation's wider campaign for Planting 1 Billion Trees Movement (called OBIT -- One Billion Indonesian Trees) which began in 2006.

The movement, which becomes part of Indonesia's commitment to curbing global warming, is commemorated every year on November 28. This year, the President launched the tree-planting-month-of-December campaign to speed up the achievement of 1 billion tree target and to encourage every citizen to take part in the movement.

This year's commemoration theme is "Hutan Kota Mendorong Terwujudnya Indonesia Hijau" or Urban Forest for Green Indonesia.

West Padalarang Karst

A limestone mountain (hill?) or what remains of it of the west Padalarang karst at Citatah. The winding curve you see in the picture is the road used by local miners and mining company to extract or mine limestone.

The west Padalarang karst is located about 22 kilometers to the west of Bandung. The karst has been heavily mined for its limestone and other mineral deposits. It has been the concern of many environmentalists and geologists because of the prehistoric significance this place has in the formation of the Bandung plateau. They are afraid that much of geological and bio-diversity evidence will be lost because of the mining activities.

I am going to tell more about this place at later posts.

Shanty Dwellings

A plot of shanty dwellings in Geger Kalong Girang area in the north of Bandung. The residents here are mostly migrants who have come to the city to work or find a living in the formal informal sectors of the economy. This kind of scene is not something that visitors or tourism-oriented websites would want you to see.

Mobile Recycler

A private trash collector? A mobile recycler? A scavenger?

I suppose you call him all that. This man collects garbage - well, the useful part of it - and sell it to a collector for recycling or reprocessing. Photo taken at Andir market area.

"Kukuyaan" at Cikapundung

If you are not Sundanese, chances are you won't have any idea what 'kukuyaan' means.

'Kukuyaan' is derived from a Sundanese word 'kuya' which means 'turtle'. Hence, 'kukuyaan' means playing turtle. Of course it's not a real turtle that's being played. It's just the name that the Sundanese gives to playing inner tube in the water.



The mass and national record-breaking 'kukuyaan' in these pictures was held last Sunday (19/6/2011) at Cikapundung river as part of the campaign to clean up the river.



Photos were taken by Sudarmanto Edris, a local photographer, and were used with his permission. Thanks Pak Sudarmanto.

Plastic Bag Dieting

Pasar Seni ITB 2010 (The 2010 ITB Art Market) event was also used by the students to campaign against the excessive use of plastic bags.

This plastic-bag man who carried a banner saying "Start Plastic-Bag Dieting Now!" and his partner Captain Bagoes - a green super hero who fights against excessive use of plastic bags - were a favorite among the visitors. Many of them wanted to have their photo taken with them because they looked unique and attractive in their costumes. I hope their attractive appearance and the photo ops would help spread the message of how pressing the issue of plastic bag pollution is to the city.

According to the banner carried by the plastic-bag man, about 600 - 700 cubic meters of plastic bag garbage is used and dumped in this city per day. That amount is equal to the weight of 100 elephants. If the average weight of an elephant is four tons, then the number is about 400 tons. That is a seriously threatening weight of pollution to the city considering that plastic is a non-biodegradable material. It takes hundreds and some even say thousands of years for plastic to be degraded by nature. So, the message is very urgently proper and pressing: limit the use of plastic bags NOW!

Cikapundung River Bank

With a population density of nearly 15,000 people per square kilometer, Bandung is one of the most crowded cities in Indonesia. Nowhere is it more evident than along the Cikapundung, the river that runs across the city from the north - where its spring is - to the south where it meets the Citarum, one of the major rivers on the island of Java and one that this Daily Mail article says could be one of the most polluted river in the world.

The above photo is the crowded kampongs along the Cikapundung at Cihampelas area. As you can see, the river has turned brown, a sign that it is heavily muddy and polluted.

Our grandparents said that just about 50 years ago, this river used to be (was still) clear where people could bathe, play, and fish. Now, there is nothing there but polluted water and rubbish. Population explosion and incompetent and corruptive goverments have contributed much to this environmental disaster.

The distruction of the Cikapundung river valley is one of the major contributors of the floods that the lower southern part of Bandung has to endure annually.

Magnificent Trees #2 (A Skywatch Post)

I often feel awed by big trees. Standing at their base and looking up, we can't help but realize how small we are compared to them. Not only are they big in size, they also play a big role in nurturing lives and keep our planet livable.

Unfortunately, many of us don't care much about them. Because of our greed, many of them are already gone. Many more are on their way to extinction. We have fewer and fewer giants that can protect us from extinction.

Many big trees and forested land around Bandung are fast depleting. The need for land for farming, housing, and industries in this one of the fastest growing (about 3.5 percent per year including 2.5 percent immigrants) and the densest urban areas in the Indonesia (155 people per hectare) has become a serius environmental threat to the Bandung basin and its surrounding mountains where the city is located.

The trees in this picture are those that are protected in the Taman Hutan Raya (Great Forest Park) Ir. H. Djuanda in the north of Dago area, Bandung. This 590 hectare nature reserve has some interesting flora and founa and two waterfalls, namely Curug Dago (Dago Waterfall) and Curug Ciomas (Ciomas Waterfall). I'm going to show them at some later posts.

For now, happy skywatch Friday, everyone. Please do visit other skywatchers' post here.

Indonesian Endangered Animal: The Sumatran Tiger

This is a picture of harimau Sumatra or the Sumatran tiger (panthera tigris sumatrae) that I took at Bandung Zoo sometime ago. The Sumatran tiger is one of only six surviving subspecies of tiger. The other subspecies are - in discending order of their number in the wild: The Bengal tiger (panthera tigris tigris), the Indochinese tiger (panthera tigris corbetti), the Malayan tiger (panthera tigris jacksoni), the Siberian tiger (panthera tigris altaica), and the south China tiger (panthera tigris amoyensis).

As the name indicates, the Sumatran tiger is native to, and is only found on, the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It is considered as a critically endangered subspecies of tiger with an estimation of only about 250 individuals currently still surviving in the wild, according to an Indonesian NGO The Coalition for the Monitoring of Protected Wild Animals. This remaining population is scattered in 18 separate enclaves, most of which are found at Leuser and Kerinci Seblat National Parks.

The Sumatran tiger is the only surviving subspecies of tigers out of three that Indonesia has or used to have. The other two that are now extinct are the Balinese tiger (panthera tigris balica) and the Javan tiger (panthera tigris sondaica). The Balinese tiger went extinct in 1937. The last of it - a female - was reported to have been killed at Sumbar Kima in the West of Bali on September 27, 1937. The Javan tiger was thought to have become extinct not too long ago in 1980, although there were reports of its sightings as recently as last year. The sightings, however, could not be verified.

Habitat destruction caused by logging and the conversion of pristine forests into palm oil plantations, industrial forests, and farms is the main threat to the existing population of the Sumatran tiger. But hunting and illegal trade of its skin and other organs are of no less serious threat to its extinction. In the two year period between 1998 and 2000, for example, 66 tigers (or about 20 percent of its population) were recorded to have been killed (the number could have been higher as it is quite probable that there were undiscovered killings). This should come as no surprise as a piece of Sumatran tiger skin can fetch about US$ 3,300 at the international market. Some black market rare animal skin brokers are even reportedly willing to give a handsome amount of downpayment as an incentive for people to hunt the tigers.

The Sumatran tiger is the smallest surviving subspecies of tigers. The adult males weigh about 100 - 140 kilograms (220 - 308 lbs), whereas the female weight about 75 - 110 kilograms (154 - 242 lbs).

Indonesian Endangered Animal: "Kalong" - The Flying Fox Bat

These are "kalong" (Javanese brown giant fruit bat), another collection of animals at Bandung Zoo.

"Kalong" (Pteropus Vamvyrus) is classified into the suborder of megabats (megachiroptera) or the giant bats. Because of what they eat and their behavior, megachiroptera is also called fruit bats or flying foxes. An adult "kalong" can reach about 60 centimeters in length (about 23.5 inches) and weigh about 1.5 kilograms (about 3.3 lbs) with wing span of about 1.5 meters (5 feet).

"Kalong" are fruit eaters (frugivores) and like most fruit bats they have big eyes and excellent sense of smell, which help them navigate in the dark - the time when they go out to eat - and find their food. For your information, most fruit-eating bats don't generally use echolocation.

"Kalong" is one of Indonesia's endangered animals and is protected by the law.

KAWAH PUTIH (The White Crater): The Legend

Text and picture by Eki Qushay Akhwan

Before being discovered in 1837, the people who lived around Mt. Patuha believed that the mountain top was a sacred place, haunted by the holy spirits of their the their ancestors. They would never venture anywhere near the mountain top's forests. A trespass like that would mean bad luck or even death. They also believed that on certain nights these spirits would have a meeting discussing the security and welfare of their people and the conservation of the forests and the natural recources that supported their livelihood.

The legend had had the beauty of Kawah Putih hidden and the pristine forests surrounding it preseved for centuries until its discovery in 1837.

A note about the color of the water:
Kawah Putih is a crater lake that covers an active (fumarolic) volcano which has been dormant since 1600. As such they water is typically acidic, saturated with volcanic gases, and cloudy with a strong greenish color. (Wikipedia: Crater Lake).




Bandung Daily Photo

THE SCAVENGER

Text and picture ©Eki Qushay Akhwan

No. This man's not a terrorist or a criminal (despite the black mask). On the contrary, he could well be an urban hero. In the plastic bag he's lugging around are the refuse of our urban consumerist lifestyle: plastic bottles, cans, and other throwaways - things we don't want anymore, things that become the sore of our sights and smell.

He's a scavenger. He walks the streets, picks up the trash that can be recycled (from the trash bins and streets), and renders a service most of us barely recognize: helping the city to clean its streets and do the costly work of dumping and recycling its garbage. In other words, he helps us - citizens and taxpayers - clean our city and save our tax money. He - and many others like him - is another invisible hero of our society.

True. They don't do it out of philanthropist spirit. They make a living from it. It's all the more reason to consider what they do as an honorable job and them honorable members of the society. Now, what other jobs are there that earn a living while at the same time render a great service to the society? To me, these scavengers should be put at par with teachers, doctors, policemen/women and other professions whose services help make the world a better place.