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1950s: Yahyu, a young Javanese dancer, runs away from a forced marriage and becomes unwittingly involved in the violent struggle for 1950’s Sumatra’s independence from Jakarta.
Jaipong Dancer
What you need to know before your trail
Yahyu is a young Javanese dancer, who runs away from her marriage and stumbles in a fate of degradation and heartbreak. She had led a fairly sheltered life and was the best dancer in her school until she was seduced and ricked by a foreign man, leaving her pregnant. To save face she is forced into a marriage but then she escapes..
But what of her husband and child?
And what of the land she now finds herself in – one wracked by sexual slavery and the horror of the rebels deep in the Barisan Mountains.
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ResetTravel Guide
Jaipong is a colourful and traditional dance of the Sundanese people of and according to the author note it was based on a dance called Ketuk Tilu although Jaipong is used in the novel for ease of reference
And this at the start is the world of Yahyu’s life. She lives a sheltered and happy life as a dancer and enjoys the fame and elevated status it brings her.
From her small village in the swamps of South Sumatra she has risen to the heights of her ambition
Her village is a happy safe place until she succumbs to the passion of a foreigner and is forced into an arrange marriage and so she must flee, to see if she can find shelter with her uncle in the gold fields of the Barisan mountains
The land she travels is her danger –
“Yahyu hitched a ride on a cargo boat meandering its way slowly up one of the tributaries of the Musi River carrying rice and dried fish for salt to the log fellers who worked in the swamp forests of the Komrin Ulu.”
These forest scenes are scary for Yahyu for when she is alone she is at risk from what she cannot see. But she is also free in many ways away from the confines of the world she has left behind. Tormented by guilt, shame and a desire to survive for the sake of her child, she perseveres but becomes embroiled in.
The boys appeared as Vague shadows dancing in front of her like malevolent phantoms. God please help me she cried towards the emptiness of the swamp
The rebels and the government struggles pull Yayhu to make some unbearable and very difficult, nigh on impossible choices
This is the time of Indonesia’s early years of independence after the Second World War – social unrest, political corruption, and upheaval in every sense pervaded the country so to fall into the rebel land at this point makes for a tough journey for a young girl. One she may not survive.
The forests are unforgiving the rebels less so and the damp foliage and cover of darkness her only hope. but that’s not accounting for the smuggles, reckless debauchery and those fighting on all sides
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