Another day on the road

Coming down the hill from Bajawa to Borong, a vehicle slowed to a stop while I'd been gathering myself on the side of the road for a few minutes.

From the vehicle, three fellas approached asking if they could take some photos with me. I agreed (this being nothing new to me) where we then took a dozen photos between us.

It was in the midst of our conversation that I'd learnt the larger motivation for their approach. One of them mentioned it was his dream to take a photo with a European! This struck me as quite a shock.. I'd never expected the satisfaction of taking a selfie would run so deep to those that I'd agreed to take selfies with.

A conclusion I'd come to earlier in the trip was that for the interest of Indonesians to have photographs with a 'bule' (often me!) is simply for their own entertainment. Us Europeans (considering I am Pakeha at home) tend to represent wealth much larger than their own.

For a relative perspective, the local minimum wage in Indonesia will differ between regions, but is often a monthly salary somewhere above a few million rupees, which would convert to a few hundred dollars from home. Our symbolic nature of wealth I supposed would associate with status which they are then able to post and send across their social media accounts or send to their friends and family. I couldn't believe how wrong I had got this!

We'd continue to exchange a few more words. In return, they taught me a few more words of Bahasa which I'd been meaning to learn. From this, I was inspired to keep going with my trip. It's funny the things which one might encounter on the road.Read more