A few hours immersed in greenery: Pangalengan

 

Pangalengan. 25 July 2016

It is always a great pleasure to go and find folders of distant in time photographs and go back to look at them.

Looking through my photos from 2016, the third time I went to Indonesia, in Bandung, I remembered this long morning, whose images lay forgotten in silence.

I am pleased to show them to you again, after having re-edited, because they give a good idea of how in a few hours, in these places, you pass from one mood to another, all within a few kilometers.

It's absolutely a little story, but even the little stories that seem weightless tell us about places and people.

The morning started early, in the direction of the famous tea plantations of Pangalengan, when from the street I noticed a large gathering of white uniforms inside a school. So I went in and asked the teachers. The school was SD Negeri Pameungpeuk 1, in the Kabupaten Bandung area, and since it was Monday the Upacara Pengibaran Bendera Merah Putih, or the raising of the Indonesian flag, was taking place. Crowded, noisy, and playful with all these little schoolchildren in white uniforms under the stern gaze of the teachers in batik uniforms.

 

School SD Negeri Pameungpeuk 1

Then from the school to the tea plantation where almost exclusively  women from neighboring villages work.

Pangalengan is a district (Kecamatan) in the Bandung Regency. It is located 48 kilometers (30 mi) south of the major West Java city of Bandung.

Main industries of the Pangalengan district includes dairy farming and tourism, the latter arising from the popularity of the many traditional villages and natural attractions such as lakes, ponds, hot springs, and waterfalls in the district. The area is an important center of activity for the tea industry in Indonesia.

I, therefore, immersed myself in the tall fragrant leaves to follow these women as strong as bulls, capable of carrying enormous sacks full of leaves always with a hieratic smile, as if they did not experience any fatigue. And, after having collected sacks and bags, the owner of the plantation comes to check the quality.

Pangalengan Tea Plantation

I, therefore, wanted to go from the plantation to visit the nearby villages, the kampungs. I was blown away because the kampungs in Indonesia are always crowded and festive like in the morning school, but in these beautiful traditional villages, with wooden raised houses and streams, immersed in the rice fields, there was not a soul alive, like villages ghosts in which there were almost only men holding small children. 

For the first time I saw the opposite of the usual life of kampungs and slums, that are houses and streets populated almost exclusively by women with children, while in this case, the men were at home with their children while the women were at work on the plantations.

From the festive hubbub of the school in the early morning to the surreal silence of the village a few hours later. With the eyes caressed by the magical green of the plantations and rice fields.

One of the things that struck me from the first trip in 2010: a green that is never forgotten.

Italian version