One of the first verbs a new student learns when studying Bahasa Indonesian is "pulang". Meaning "to go home", it's often deployed while shouting across open-plan offices at the end of the day, or defensively to friends demanding another drink in the bars of Jakarta's Japanese district.
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I most recently used it last week, telling the unusually grim-faced women on my street that I was heading back to Canberra after advice from the Australian Prime Minister. Hati-hati, we all said to each other. Another very important Indonesian word - "be careful".
Community is more important than ever, so when the federal government pleaded with Australians abroad to return home, for the time being, I happily complied. Close family and access to healthcare, if needed, very suddenly became a major priority.
From the strong words of Scott Morrison and our long obsession with strict enforcement of borders, I expected a time-consuming but ultimately reassuring return home. I was very wrong.
While Indonesia's government is wearing criticism for moving slowly in response to its outbreak, the broader community in Indonesia is not. For weeks entering office buildings and shopping centres has become a routine of begging body heat in the tropics to mellow, lest a forehead temperature check is failed and entry denied. Personal-use hand sanitiser has been impossible to find for months, but was readily available at every restaurant, shop or gym.
To me, this is the bare minimum. Yes, passengers arriving in Australia are now being escorted into quarantine. But when it comes to actually preventing infection, not even a courtesy spritz of hand sanitiser welcomed those of us getting off my busy flight from Jakarta to Sydney. The Indonesian capital threatens to become the great hotspot for the COVID-19 outbreak in south-east Asia, but that was not enough for our federal government to enforce stricter measures on those entering the country.
Officially, Indonesia had no recorded cases until early March. This was widely seen by the medical community and more generally as unlikely to reflect reality, given the bulk of cases outside of China were within the south-east Asia region and the frequent travel between China and Indonesia.
As the insistence that Indonesia was virus-free became more and more absurd, messaging from the central government faltered. Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto told the country that praying hard would keep Indonesia safe - no doubt a shock to neighbouring Malaysia, where the largest cluster has been linked to a major religious event. The minister's future in the cabinet is debatable, but the impact of his initial policy will be felt for a long time.
Provincial and district-level governments aren't taking chances any more and are increasingly rolling out their own responses. While the central government has swatted down demands for wide-scale lockdowns - citing reasonable concerns for the economic impact on those living below the poverty line - smaller communities are increasingly shutting themselves off.
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While our situations are vastly different, there's still quite a lot Canberrans can learn from the response of our northern neighbours. Even alongside a high reported trust in government and some of its institutions, Indonesia's civil society and community groups are remarkably robust.
Alumni groups, informal sector worker organisations and neighbourhood community groups are highly engaged and proactive at the best of times. At these worst of times, the immediate mobilisation of social organisations is the best bet in staving off some of the more dire social predictions. Medical experts warned Reuters this week that the country could see more than 140,000 deaths by the end of May. Not if the community can help it.
High-density living in Jakarta necessitates an all-hands-on-deck approach, with community leaders working together with the local government. This typically looks like community leaders calling on elderly or at-risk neighbours, the dissemination of information and myth-busting and even the shutting down of entryways and monitoring who can enter the neighbourhood.
We in Canberra should be very grateful our territory government is more than capable of handling the most pressing measures. If we also act together as a community, we can have faith that, should the health system not be overwhelmed by rising cases, any Canberran can access the healthcare they may need, regardless of where they live or how wealthy they are.
- Erin Cook is a journalist based in south-east Asia where she runs the darimulut.substack.com weekly newsletter and co-hosts the Indonesia Dan Lain-Lain podcast.