Papa Imin Babakan the old fisherman on the Indian Ocean

Dear Peter (written in English for my friend Gerry Lee),

I met with him yesterday night in his own humble house in the kampung, in the jungle, on the edge of the river, close to the mouth on the Indian Ocean where a new harbour is now being built. Imin, the old and most respected fisherman of Babakan. He is a calm, smiling, happy man. He is slightly fragile and not tall. He has a fine Sundanese face, perplexion and appearance. He is a man with much dignity, to be seen clearly in his eyes and smile.

On the walls of his bamboe house only two pictures, of his two sons in academic clothes with the flat square hat, with a tassle something, almost in front of the face. The kind of hat worn but once in a life time when the most important academic degree is conferred to the student and he or she becomes an academic. Indonesia loves these academic hats, more than the Dutch, which have become less nostalgic about the whole thing. His sons are academics, although he lives this humble life with little income in the kampung in the jungle.

I suddenly regretted it very, very much that I can hardly speak and understand his language, Sundanese foremost but also modern Indonesian. Here was a man, a fisherman like me, with whom I could not talk. I listened carefully, I asked many questions via Gerry. He spoke calmly, softly but forcefully. He smiled about our fishermen's escapades and little lies and the cheating. He had heard it before. Kamu harus jujur came over his lips many a time. One has to be honest in life.

Young fishermen were sitting in the room with him, some on the couch, some on the floor. They listened intently. They did not speak unless something was specifically asked. They behaved as they should, as is the custom in the kampung. His happy contented wife sat on the floor after she served the typical Indonesian coffee which is not fluid only, but full of small grainy substance. And in a huge plastic box, the shrimp breaded cookies in addition, on a plate some bananas. Ripe and delicious ones.

We asked about long lining now. No season now. Therefore he suggested to use layur nets now for the fish close by and for which little gasoline is needed and which most of the time brought a little profit, enough to survive the off season for long lining. Or prawn nets, or even lobster nets. But in a few months use the nylon nets for the tenggiri and fish alternatively with the long line. Tro trawling did not bring enough for the gasoline spent. And on and on he gave his advise and I was in total awe and admiration.

Suddenly I understood, I believed. Here was a man speaking from a live long experience. A man who survived the Indian Ocean - the devil's winds - for a life time. A man full of wisdom about the sea, the weather, the fish in it. A man who lived in total dignity close to the everyday struggle for life. A man who with his caring wife had been able to pay for the academic education of his two sons. A man who was loved by the young fisherman eager to go to the sea now.

Sons of neighbours and friends listening in to this discussion between him, me - the Orang Belanda - an old bearded biologist and Director of the prestigious Sanbe Farma (well known in the countryside of Indonesia) and the American sailorman living responsibly and decently in Indonesia and with a knowledge of the sea, far surpassing mine as well. Gerry asked the right questions, Imin gave the right answers. So much was clear to me.

Here was a man which reminded me of my hunting "teacher" on the Vinkeveense Plassen in Nederland, the hunter fisherman Henk Redegeld - living alone with his wife without children on his "woonark" in the small river bordering on the lakes - who had taught me how to hunt for waterfowl.

Who taught me about nature, about the fish and the birds for two years, before I even took a gun myself and killed my first duck under his watching eyes. The last man living from what nature has to offer only, under the "smoke" of Amsterdam. His pension was his first money for which he did not have to catch an eel or shoot a duck.

And for which I have written two years ago a story, and in memoriam still waiting to be published (because Zweitse Lulof of the Dutch Hunter is still stalling all the time) and by myself considered the best hunting story I ever wrote and which I will put at the end of my story of today for the reader of this diary (Sorry Gerry, in my own language).

Imin also reminded me of Hemingway's old man living on the Gulfstream half a word away and long ago. The man of his fantasy(?) who was the character of this best of stories ever written by a human soul on this Earth. It won him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. His friend A.E. Hotchner wrote: "it was the basic life battle that had always intrigued Ernest: a brave, simple man struggling unsuccessfully against an unconquerable element".

The Nobel Committee wrote: "But on the other hand he also possesses a heroic pathos which forms the basic element of his awareness of life, a manly love of danger and adventure, with natural admiration of every individual who fights the good fight in a world of reality overshadowed by violence and death".

How can I ask Imin about his life and his greatest adventures, without learning Bahasa Indonesia or even Sundanese? Why for God's sake do I not know the language by now? I want to know. I want to get to know him. I need his wisdom to combine it with my wisdom gained over so many years.

Like Papa Hemingway I am a fisherman and hunter myself. I observed and observe life and death in other creatures, in animals frequently and from a close, a very close vantage point. It is emotional. It is controversial. It lingers in my mind. I write stories and poems about it. It excites me. It drives my inspiration, my creativity. It has become a need. I cannot live without it, despite being a scientist, may be in spite or because of being a scientist. I don't know. It is in me, as it was in my father.

It was in the old man on the sea when he caught that marlin, the largest he had ever seen, the largest he had ever heard of, and when subsequently after a heroic fight of several days and nights - casually catching flying fish and cutting them with his knife to eat them raw to remain his strength - and than by losing the fish to the sharks, the smaller ones at first,which make the big fish loose blood and eventually luring the big ones, who in the end totally destroyed his fish, so he came into the harbour with a skeleton only. He himself - the old man - was half dead.

The fight, the battle between man and his counterpart in the sea - the shark in all its varieties - the ruler of the oceans, the top of the pyramid, the cartilageous fish, endlessly older from the evolutionary point of view than man himself. Hundreds of millions of years older, an unconquerable force for the old man and his fishing line.

But now a force which sadly has all but been destroyed in the Oceans by modern man, with his much vaster prowess, his machines, his boats, his lethal weapons of mass destruction, the endless kilometer long nets killing everything which moves in the three dimensional seas, the sharks, the dolphin. And - by the way - not to forget the whalers with their harpoons killing the huge mammals of the sea, to an extent upsetting the balance in the oceans. How a nd where will all this end ? Will mankind come to its senses ? What will the old man have to say about all this, I wonder ?

I must talk with the old man of Babakan again. I must understand his way of life. I must know. I must gain his wisdom, perhaps endlessly deeper than my own. I must find my dignity next to him. I must sit with him even if we cannot talk yet. I want to be with him.

Yours Sincerely,

My dear friend Peter in Germany, hoping to see you on March 7th so we can talk, talk and talk about all this and go back together to our beloved kampung Pangandaran on the Indian Ocean, with a small fisherman's kampung nearby, called Babakan, where yesterday I met with Papa Imin, the old fisherman on the Indian Ocean.

Papa Jo