Sunday 28 June 2009

Course in Shelter Design and Development 2006

Member of SDD 2006 organised by Housing Development and Management, Lund University under the sponsorship of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
19 April to 12 May 2006 in Lund, Sweden
and
6 to 17 Nopember 2006 in Johannesburg, South Africa

Friday 26 June 2009

Menyusuri jejak masa lalu (makam tua peneleh)

Source article and photos: Aji Prarismawan on facebook, June 24, 2009, 9am
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Peneleh merupakan salah satu kawasan asli Kota Surabaya. Nama Peneleh lahir di zaman Kerajaan Singosari. Asal kata "peneleh" berasal dari lokasi ini yang dahulunya merupakan tempat bersemayamnya pangeran pilihan (pinilih), putra Wisnu Wardhana yang memiliki pangkat setara dengan bupati. Pangeran tersebut kemudian diangkat menjadi pemimpin di daerah yang berada antara Sungai Pegirian dan Kalimas ini. Kawasan Peneleh sendiri merupakan salah satu bagian sejarah Kota Surabaya karena di dalamnya memiliki beberapa peninggalan bersejarah diantaranya masjid kuno Peneleh, rumah HOS Cokroaminoto (tempat proklamator Ir. Soekarno tinggal pada saat beliau bersekolah), perkampungan tua, Pasar Peneleh (salah satu tempat di Jawa dimana saat itu buah anggur dapat dibeli) serta Makam Peneleh yang merupakan salah satu makam tertua di Jawa Timur.

Makam Peneleh, merupakan sebuah komplek pemakaman yang dibangun tahun 1814 dan menempati areal seluas 4,5 hektare. Meskipun kondisinya saat ini sangat kumuh dan memprihatinkan, namun masih menyisakan sisa-sisa eksotisme masa lalu. Banyak hal yang bisa digali di dalamnya. Detail ornamen berlanggam gothic dan doric, patung-patung berkarakter Romawi (meskipun sebagian besar sudah tidak dalam kondisi utuh) hanyalah sebagian kecil dari keindahan masa lalu yang masih bisa ditelusuri. Kisah hidup mereka yang meninggal bisa ditemukan di prasasti batu marmer ataupun besi cor. Makam salah seorang presiden perusahaan VOC yang memiliki papan dari pinus India merupakan salah satu di antaranya.

Beberapa jejak sejarah penting yang masih bisa ditelusuri antara lain, kuburan Gubernur Jenderal Pieter Merkus, satu-satunya pejabat tertinggi di Hindia Belanda yang dimakamkan di Peneleh. Gubernur Jenderal ini meninggalkan teka-teki di akhir hidupnya. Dia merupakan satu-satunya pejabat tertinggi negeri ini (saat itu) yang meninggal pada saat menjabat. Pilihannya untuk pindah ke Surabaya pada saat sakit masih menjadi tanda tanya. Pejabat ke 47 ini lahir di Naarden, 18 Maret 1787 dan meninggal pada 2 Agustus 1844 pada umur 57 tahun.

Prasasti di atas makam Merkus yang berusia hampir 170 tahun masih jelas terbaca. Prasasti tersebut berbahasa Belanda
yang jika diartikan berbunyi : Paduka yang mulia Pieter Merkus, komandan pasukan tempur Hindia, veteran perang
Prancis, Gubernur Jenderal Hindia Belanda, memimpin tanah dan laut harapan Tuhan dan lain-lain. Beliau wafat di
Simpang Huis (Istana Simpang atau Grahadi) 2 Agustus 1844.

Menurut salah satu ahli waris pemuka Belanda yang dimakamkan di Peneleh itu, Rob van de Ven Renardel, keputusan Merkus di akhir hayatnya menimbulkan teka-teki di Sejarah Belanda. Merkus, kata Rob, yang saat itu tinggal di Batavia
memutuskan tinggal di Istana Bogor ketika sakit. “Namun ketika kesehatannya makin buruk dia memilih tinggal di Istana
Simpang di Surabaya,” kata Rob dalam Majalah Monsun, edisi 10 April 1999. Perjalanan di Batavia-Surabaya yang melelahkan hampir sepekan itu justru membuat sakitnya bertambah parah. Ada dugaan Merkus ingin beristirahat sehingga memilih kota panas. Namun ada pandangan lain yang menyakini bahwa Merkus disingkirkan dari kekuasaan dan diasingkan oleh Belanda karena dianggap tidak loyal.

Selain Merkus masih banyak tokoh-tokoh penting lain yang dimakamkan di sini seperti Pendeta pioner Ordo Yesuit di Surabaya, Martinus van den Elsen, yang berada di seberang pintu masuk. Makam puluhan biarawati Jalan Ursulin (Jl Darmo). Komandan perang Indochina, Neubronner van der Tuuk. Bahkan ada pula kuburan Rambaldo, orang pertama yang menjadi penerbang di Hindia. Makam arsitek Jembatan Porong, Ibrahim Simon Heels Berg hingga makam Wakil Kepala Mahkamah Agung, PJN de Perez.

Namun kondisi komplek pemakaman yang tidak terawat menimbulkan keprihatinan tersendiri. Sisa-sisa makam dan prasasti yang berserakan, lingkungan kumuh merupakan sedikit gambaran kondisi makam saat ini. Memang, kompleks ini merupakan makam orang-orang Belanda, namun apa yang ada di dalamnya merupakan sebuah bukti yang bisa menjadi benang merah sejarah keberadaan Kota Surabaya. Sebuah pekerjaan rumah bersama yang harus segera dicari solusinya oleh semua komponen masyarakat Surabaya.

Madura Trip

This was a second Madura trip of mine on June 2009. And till end on June, I went Madura three time. And I need once again to come for great experience at eastern of Madura Island. The colleagues and me will go around archipelago by boat or a traditional ship.

Source: facebook note of my friend, Arlene A. Gonzales.
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When my friend earlier mentioned that she was willing for me to tag along on her trip to Madura, I was excited but a bit shy and unwilling to impose. To add to that some of my other friends were discouraging me or asking “why go to Madura?”. Finally, one day before the Suramadu bridge (from Surabaya to Madura) was to be inaugurated by the president, my friend fetched me early at the hotel. Her other colleague was meeting us at the hotel too. The day before, I bought a coolpak, bottled water, juices, biscuits and apples, plus some roti ayam (buns filled with chicken)from Holland Bakery as “baon” for the four of us (including the driver).As they were in a hurry to make it to a meeting, we didn’t have time to stop for breakfast. The air was still cool as we made it to the pier via the toll road, then onto the ferry or RORO for us. We got off the car to go up to the higher levels, while the driver “parked” the car at the lowest level.






There were a lot of interesting sights and sounds on the ferry, with motorcycle riders keeping watch on their bikes and their loads, sellers shouting “Kopi!Kopi!” with different brands of 3-in-1 coffee slung on their baskets together with thin disposable plastic cups. An array of snacks were being peddled, “lontong”, rectangular pieces of sticky rice with a chicken filling sandwiched in between and the whole thing wrapped in banana leaf and steamed, also a conical shaped rice cake akin to our “suman” whose name I forgot. We took a few pictures and enjoyed the view of the sea while watching the different kinds of people on board. Barely 30 minutes after we were already in Madura. We hurried down to the lowest floor where the car was parked and cruised on.
After finishing some business, we continued to go around the island primarily in Bangkalan, its capital. It was like going around the Philippine countryside with the ricefields, cornfields, fishponds. There were a lot of tamarind trees too. The only difference was that instead of thatched roofs or tin roofs the houses, no matter how small, had clay roof tiles on them. I was told that was because galvanized roofing was hard to come by while the clay roof tiles were a cottage industry. My friends took pictures along the way, as much as they possibly could, because it started to rain very hard. Interestingly, rain is “hujan”(with a silent “h”), which sounds like our own “ulan”.
I also noticed that there was a lot of construction of new houses going on. I was curious how come there were a lot of houses clustered together which had a courtyard in the middle. And there were a lot of mosques, big and smaller ones. I was told that parents have usually build a main house and when the children marry, they build more houses near the parents’ house with this kind of layout. Also, if there are several related families in a compound, they usually have or build a small mosque within the compound.
Thankfully the rain let up a little bit. Since we really didn’t have a proper sit-down breakfast, I think we got hungry by 11:30a.m. and we tried to find a place to eat. Since there were hardly any to choose from, my friends settled on a small restaurant which advertised their “gule kambing” on a tarpaulin. It was a no-frills place, but we were thankful for an opportunity to go to a restroom as well. Not being familiar with the food, I let my friends order and they ordered “gule daging sapi” and “sate daging sapi” (beef soup and beef barbecue on sticks),rice and “es the” or iced tea. The sate was a bit tough but well seasoned. The gule had a yellowish, flavorful broth , served with some “sambal” and a few slices of lime and generous chunks of beef meat.
After the meal we tried to find some batteries for the camera and my friends also asked around for the address of the batik makers. Tanjungbumi in Bangkalan is the center of batik making in this area. We were wondering where all the batik makers were as we wanted to watch the batik-making process. My friends told me that usually they would all be out and going about their activities. In one backyard, we saw a “red lady”, meaning her whole body down to her feet looked red, because she was at that time doing the coloring for the red dye in the fabrics. In another backyard we peeped in and saw a woman working with a fabric traced with a design and the hot wax in a small copper pot with an elongated spout for tracing the design in hot wax. We knocked on the door of a house further on in the compound, and it looked as if there was nobody or the people were having a siesta. After a while the door opened and we were ushered into the sala with glass cabinets full of batik. The lady of the house and her assistants proudly showed off their best batik “tulis” meaning handmade or hand printed using the traditional process. They were mostly in shades of brown with flora & fauna motifs though there were some in blue, green, red, orange. There were so many nice designs and I would have wanted to buy almost everything if money was no object. In the end, I settled for a few small table covers in maroon and dark blue, a blue, red and white sarong for myself, a blue monochromatic fabric which I was hoping to use for a formal skirt, and a bright orange cloth I wanted to have sewn into a table runner. In the flurry of choosing some fabrics, we didn’t notice that “Ibu”, our host, had thoughtfully placed three cups of “kopi susu” or coffee with milk on the center table so we drank them thankfully and paid for our batik bounty. We took a souvenir picture then said goodbye, hoping we could come back again at another time.



We continued on the journey back, but not without my friends taking their quota of pictures. We passed thru the seaside with a view of boats and the Suramadu bridge. We got down near the place where the Madura portion of the bridge started. There was a festiveness in the air, with people of all ages strolling around and looking down below at the street where a big white tent was being prepared presumably for the following day’s inauguration by the president. I could not understand their language but their faces and gestures shone with pride and excitement about this new development in their town and in their lives. They were probably proud that their president was coming and they have hope for a better life and a better future for their children.



The “lima kaki”(five legs) or sellers of food in carts were having a heyday, and my friend asked if I wanted to try the “bakso” or meatballs which here were pierced on sticks and you are given a choice of the “kecap manis”(thick sweet soy sauce) or the chili sauce. One of my friends took a stick and I tried one, too. Quiet a bargain for IDR 1,000 (about P4.00) for the 2 sticks.
We were quiet tired by the time we made it back to the pier to take the ferry. We went up to the top level and it was very cold I had to take out my shawl. We posed for a few pictures in the blustery wind, while listening to the afternoon prayers playing on the loudspeaker of another ferry. We decided to go down to the lower levels to get warm. My other friend kept on taking pictures on the way of the Suramadu and a statue of a hero. There were more vendors with their baskets selling “onde-onde” (like our buchi) and a host of other goodies, plus the kopi boys.





There was a long wait for the cars and other vehicles to get out of the ferry, and to add to that we hit rush hour traffic going back to Surabaya. It was already somewhat dark when I got back to the hotel, tired but thankful for another day of bonding with new friends and knowing more about their country, their people and their culture.