Being Free

Having had the pleasure of spending 4 weeks in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where we had to stay in a camp that is quite heavily guarded, and not being able to move around without the presence of armed policemen (or Mopol, as they call it there), I had some time to ponder on what it means (for me) to be free. Admittedly before this experience, I’ve neither had the chance nor the urge to ponder on this issue. After all, I’ve lived in places where we’re supposedly free, free to move around, free to voice (some) opinions, or simply, free to do whatever flights of fancy that we want – provided we have the means to do it.

OK, let’s get back to the issue at hand. During my time in PH, we (as in expats) were not allowed to go to town freely due to the security situations. After the militants started kidnapping foreign expatriates, the multinational companies operating there had to provide security for those people like us (also known as ‘the white men’ by the locals). As of late, apparently the motives have shifted from nationalistic / separatist motives to something that is purely financial. Apparently kidnapping and the ransom that comes along is quite an enticing occupation with hefty payback for the local criminals. So, we’ve come to the stage where as foreign expatriates working in PH, we are confined within the boundaries of the camp and the office.

During our stint, we’d leave the camp early in the morning, get on the bus (along with 2 cars with armed men in front and behind the bus) and go to the office. In my case, from our office, we’d leave for the client’s office, along with 2 other armed men. Those are the places we’d spend during the time that we’re in PH.

Let’s start with the camp. It’s quite a nice camp, run by a logistics company called Intels. I believe it is Italian owned, but I may be mistaken. It’s like a small subdivision in the US; it has a restaurant, a couple of swimming pools, tennis court, basketball court, a gym and a 4-hole golf course. We jokingly referred to it as the ‘luxurious detention center’. After all, even if we’re free to move around the camp, we’re confined to its boundaries. Weekends are actually the worst of times. There’s just so much one can do in the confines of a camp, even with sporadic internet and cable tv access and all those amenities. The office is quite similar to the camp where they are pretty much walled compounds with barbed wire and armed guards.

The bus – surely there will be questions why I mentioned the bus. We spend quite a lot of time in the bus. Actually the idea to this note popped up in my head when I was in the bus! The bus took the expats (the white men!) to and from the camp every day, and normally we’d spend about 30 minutes in the morning, and if we’re lucky, we’d spend 1 hour in the bus on the way back to camp. (I was told that the record was 9 hours to get back to camp. My record for the return journey to the camp was 2 hours and 40 minutes). The bus is another form of confinement to me. It’s even worse that we’re confined in a small space with a number of people who mostly are eager to get to the destination (be it office or camp) and eager to escape from that confined space. It’s not just the space that is quite suffocating at times; we’d see all the life, the hustle and bustle outside the bus and all we could do is to observe. No matter how close we are, we are totally detached from it, just another curious onlooker who’s not actually there.

Let’s start getting to the point of being free. I’d say that being free in a literal sense will mean being free of confinement. Even if we’re free to move about the camp, we are still confined by the walls around it. On the bus, we’re within the confines of the frame of the bus. Whenever we’re in PH, we were always confined within a finite area, but worse still are the fact that we have the sense of the infinite world around us, but never allowed to cross that boundary between the two worlds.

It was quite hard to believe that when I reached Houston, one of the first things I wanted to do – apart from getting reunited with my ‘sigaraning nyawa’, of course - was to drive. Not to reach any particular place, but it was one manifest of the sense of un-confinement. It was a small freedom to be able to reach any place I wanted without the need to be shadowed by shadowy armed men, and the fear of unknown danger lurking somewhere.

So, dear reader, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times (Sorry, can’t help myself from quoting Dickens here!), you will ask me at this point on what I wanted to say. I don’t want to sound pretentious in asking y’all to spare a minute to think about the unfairly jailed political prisoners like Mrs. Suu Kyi. What I’m trying to say here is whenever you’re out and about, doing errands, going to the office, or just being outside – do stop for a second and try to appreciate the fact that you’re not confined and free to move about wherever your heart desires.

As for myself, I am free for now – counting down with dread the days until the next trip to PH!

Notes:
- For non Indonesians, ‘sigaraning nyawa’ in Javanese is a literal translation of ‘half of your life’, a.k.a the significant other.
- To see what expat life is like in Nigeria, see : http://www.oyibosonline.com. Oyibo is the Igbo language term for ‘White person’. Hmm .. I can see the Indonesians smiling, it sure reminded me of another Indonesian word for expats!