We had a nice pleasant day today travelling from Surabaya to two nearby towns called Malang and Buta. [Update: the second town is "Batu". Thanks, Yuna, for the correction!]. As has been the case when meeting much of my family so far, this was a visit to another successful business owner. This time, an aunt who has been running a successful flower plantation business for the last twenty years.
Nestled in the hills outside of Surabaya, about 800 meters above sea level, is a town called Malang and another 500 meters up is a town called Buta where the flower plantation was located. The elevation gain has made the temperature in Malang very comfortable, just like a warm summer day in Vancouver. Malang used to only be about an hour’s drive from Surabaya, but about 5 years ago a company was drilling into the earth to tap into a source of natural gas, skipped a small but vital safety precaution, and made a mistake that led to a gusher of mud breaking loose. It hasn’t stopped since. The mud flow is so bad, that geologists are predicting that Java island will be split into two within the next 10-20 years.
Because of the mud flow, traffic has been re-routed so that the previously 1 hour drive now takes anywhere from 2-4 hours depending on traffic. Our drive today was about 2 hours on the way there, and 3 on the way back – ample time to sit and think.
Before I left for this journey I wrote about wanting to make the first step towards change. What this trip is teaching me so far is that change doesn’t come overnight, and it doesn’t happen automatically. It takes a persistent effort and dedicated focus. I see it in the way my relatives have found success, and I also see it in the way that revelations take time to build and realize.
I’m still in somewhat of a surreal state right now, I think that loss of sense of time is a big contributing factor. But as we enter the last leg of the trip, it is building a sense of anticipation. It’s almost as if I put my life on hold to come on this trip, and am now starting to prepare myself to continue with wherever I was headed two weeks ago.
With one and a half weeks left on this trip, I’m starting to regain some perspective of the bigger picture. I don’t have all the answers, but I have a newfound appreciation for the dynamics that surround me and my family, and it has given me confidence as well as almost a sense of duty to live up to the potential that is there.
The name of the town is Batu (means Stone) not Buta (means blind).