"Business" as usual?

Following my experience in Pacitan and a few more weeks of office time in Bogor I feel the need to share some of my reflections on business in Indonesia. Or lack thereof.

All meetings (especially in more rural places like we experienced) start with tea. Always. Everyone gives you tea. And in a series of meetings one morning, I had three cups of tea and a cup of coffee pre 11am. This is more than my weekly intake of caffeine.

Tea is usually accompanied by snacks. Everything from delicious coconut crackers to fried cassava to peanuts to outrageous servings of white rice. It is totally rude if you don’t consume all of the goodies put in front of you. I had more than one uncomfortable encounter where food I did not want to finish was basically forced on me. Considering I’m treated like a celebrity everywhere I go, I’m encouraged to eat seconds and thirds and “not to be shy.” God forbid I try to explain that I’m going to turn into a freaking rice paddy or that spice and uncooked food could literally put me on my death bed.

All meetings start with tea and end with a picture. Not sure if that’s about the country’s facebook obsessions (EVERYONE at wifi zones is obsessed, expect to start seeing lots of random things tagged of me) – or if its just fascination with the American researcher. Who knows. My face is all over Pacitan. An assortment of these pictures is below.





Setting up a meetings is a far cry from what I grew accustomed to: stalking media planners via email and phone and sending obnoxious but necessary outlook reminders. Very, very different here. It’s completely acceptable to request a meeting less than a day in advance. This can be done via text message. No problem. This makes some things easier (less planning) but others infinitely challenging especially for me (lack of set scheduling).

Although sometimes it is easy to muck up to an office and chat with people, other times it was my observation that you’d be blown off just so that the office would appear busy. This happened at our first trip to the Regency Agriculture department, when they were too busy to see us, yet eight people were standing around doing absolutely nothing.

Computers are NOT the norm. We have them all over CCROM’s office – which also has a reasonably large fridge and AC, but these are all rare items for offices here. This is not incredibly surprising but leads to other major, major differences. Lack of computers is the only reasonable explanation I have come up with for the abundance of photocopy shops everywhere, whether in Bogor, a city with a population close to 1 mil or a rural farming town. Copy machines are abundant. Refrigeration is not.

This next fact needs to be shared with the world. When we finally got in to see the Department of Agriculture, I don’t spot a single computer. In our meeting, I asked about the recording of their rainfall data, a CRUCIAL dataset for our further analysis here. They tell me it dates back to 1964. I’m thinking I’ve hit the jackpot, we’ve got almost fifty years of data! A lovely woman goes to fetch this information and comes back with the below book.



The rainfall apparently has been recorded on the dead sea scrolls.

This less formal structure and lack of computerized work forced me to dig deep into my sales skills and work like a ruthless detective. This seemed to me the only way I could achieve one quarter of what I’d hoped for. I turned our house into somewhat of a war zone, tried to initiate evening meetings and created an org chart for all of the actors in the farmers lives here. I think this strategy proved somewhat successful.


Command Center


My handy and highly technical work of art org chart

Ending on the two most egregious and rude practices, in my opinion! People openly smoke – legit chain smoke – in meetings. Whether you're meeting inside or outside. Really??? And answering cell phones in the middle of the meeting is totally acceptable also.

This is not business as usual but trying to make the most of the new work environment - so far so good!