By Roy Mark

I developed a fondness for Indonesia and the Indonesian people after moving from my native Texas to Jakarta in 1988.  My stay in Indonesia turned out to be thirteen years in which I made many lifelong friends.  Leaving Indonesia in 2001, I vowed to return for visits occasionally, a vow twice kept. 

On my latest trip to Indonesia, I decided to make a car trip with three Indonesian friends.  We would drive from Jakarta, Indonesia’s capitol city in West Java, to the paradise island of Bali off Java’s eastern shore.  I have made that trip many times before, so I knew it would be a long and hard two-day trip.     

We prepared by loading the car with snacks and a cooler for drinks.  Obtaining ice for the cooler can be a problem in Indonesia since ice is not readily available.  Most Westerners assume that ice would be sold at most convenience stores, but not so in Indonesia.  After living many years in Jakarta, I knew of only two places where I could buy ice.  We loaded the cooler the night before and headed for Bali early the next morning.   

We drove about twenty hours the first day and made it as far as the East Java city of Probolinggo.  It was a long, hard day, but the time passed quickly as I marveled at new construction, improved roads and old sights.   
 

Of the many old sights, one —a sight that continues to distress me— was seeing the many homeless people wandering along Indonesia’s highways.  The term “homeless” is appropriate but does not fully describe the twenty or so homeless persons that I saw on just the first day.  The Indonesians describe them in their language as “orang gila”, meaning crazy people.  In most cases the description fits, in that they are suffering from mental illnesses of some type.  There are hospitals in Indonesia for the mentally ill, but none are available free to the poor.  If a family member of a poor Indonesian family becomes mentally ill, there are no medical services available and many times the sick just wander off and begin a life on the highways.  They subsist by the kindness of strangers giving them a few Rupiah or a little food.  They sometimes scavenge alongside the roads and dumps for aluminum cans, plastic bottles or anything else that might be sold for a few Rupiah.    

An orang gila is usually very dirty, poorly clothed, with hair quite dirty, tangled and matted.  Their skin is usually darker than the average Indonesian, the result of endless days in the sun and a coating of black diesel soot from the many busses and trucks that share their world.  Their clothing ranges from varied stages of tattered to not a stitch of clothes whatsoever.  The Indonesian police will generally ignore the homeless orang gila, even the completely naked ones, since there are no facilities that they can be taken that will accept them.   

Everyone in the car was charged with watching for any of the signs of ice.  After just ten minutes or so, someone called out, “es batu” and the driver immediately pulled over to the side of the highway.  Coming up behind us was a boy on a bicycle with two large blocks of ice strapped onto the back.  The boy was about fifteen years old.  He was wearing old, but clean clothes; a small hole was visible in the shoulder of his T-shirt.   His trousers were four or five inches too short, not the stylish “short pants” worn by the youth today, but the result of a growth spurt common to teenaged boys.  He wore a cap on his head and rubber “flip-flops” on his  feet.   His bicycle  was very old  and of

the style popular in Holland.  It had no fenders or other non-essential accessories and looked as if it was a remnant of Indonesia’s colonial days of the Dutch East Indies.  The two blocks of ice were wrapped in gunnysacks as insulation from the tropical sun and strapped to the back of his bike with two rubber straps fashioned out of old inner tubes. 
 

The boy agreed to sell us enough ice to fill our cooler, and asked for a mere 2,000 Rupiah, which was about 20 U.S. cents.  He asked if we wanted the ice cut into smaller pieces, which we did.  The ice-boy then pulled out —from who knows where— a tool for cutting the ice.  The tool was quite ingenious, crafted from an old bicycle chain wheel and one crank with the peddle removed.  Using the crank as a handle, the ice-boy wielded his makeshift tool with precision.  With the teeth of the chain wheel, he cut the large block of ice into almost perfect rectangular blocks of about 2” x 2” x 3”.  As he was doing his work, he said that he was delivering ice to regular customers and earning extra money to help his family.  Selling a little extra ice that day was making him happy indeed.  
 

I was completely engrossed with the ice-boy’s story and in watching him cut the ice with such precision, when suddenly I realized, standing next to us was an orang gila.  The man was fully clothed but was in tatters.  His clothes were dirty, his hair tangled and matted, and imbedded in his beard and mustache was the remnants of several meals.  His skin was quite dark, browned by the sun and layers of grime and diesel soot.  My first thought was that he was going to ask for one of the sodas visible in the open cooler, but he simply asked me where I was from.  When I told him that I was from America, he switched to English and said, without a trace of an accent, “I’m from Texas, I’m the number two cowboy”.  My jaw visibly dropped and I was grappling for a response, when the man extended his grimy hand to shake mine.  I shook his hand and was about to offer him a soda when he said, in perfect Texan, “Adios Amigos”, and with a wave of his arm, turned and continued his journey to the east.   

As the ice-boy concluded his work, we all discussed the “Texan” and wondered aloud if the man was actually from Texas.  Being the resident expert on Texas that morning, I commented that his English was flawless, without a trace of an accent.  Later I realized that if I, a Texan didn’t detect an accent; he likely did speak with an accent, a Texas accent.  We asked the ice-boy if the man was crazy, and he said that yes, he roams that road almost every day and was definitely crazy.  I paid the ice-boy 4,000 Rupiah, gave him a cool soda and wished him good luck.   

After loading our now replenished ice cooler into the car, we continued our journey east toward Bali.  In just a minute, we overtook the Texan and as we passed him, I rolled down my window and turned to wave a friendly good-by.  The Texan did not see me; he was deep in conversation, grimacing and gesturing at an imaginary friend somewhere in the sky. 

The Texan and the ice-boy continued in my thoughts for the duration of that trip, and continue to invade my thoughts from time to time still.  Could the Texan have been an American visiting Indonesia when he began having mental problems?  Now, without a passport or other identification, and without his mental faculties, it would be near impossible to verify his identity.  

To the ice-boy, I had the opportunity to say good-bye and good luck.  To the Texan I now simply say, “adios amigos”. 
 

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