Madura

It might be hard to see in the thumbnail picture on the left, but the fields of Madura this time of year are filled with corn, taking advantage of the season's generous rains. Come March-April the rains will stop and the people will turn to irrigating the dusty ground by hand. Tobacco can actually be ruined if it rains during the drying stage, so the drier months are ideal for focusing energy on the cash crop. With the hand irrigation, though, it is tough work. I've known people to walk several kilometers for water, where they scoop it up in buckets hung from their shoulders, and then haul it back to dribble on their crops.

Madura looks very beautiful this time of year. Well, it always looks beautiful, but it is excessively green from Dec-March. During the dry season, there are parts of Madura which are so red, so burnt red against a stark and cloudless blue sky, that I have thought, "This must be what Mars is like." Rather inhospitible in its own way; yet I can't say it wasn't beautiful. It was hauntingly beautiful, and it brought me back again and again.

You might notice in the scene with the men plowing up their field a mosque hovering in the background. If the incredible beauty of Madura is its first lasting impression, then undoubtably the second is that of Islam, for its spirit permeates everything. You can't escape the mood.

One reason for this is the five-times-daily call to prayer, bellowed from the towers of each mosque and musholla ( a smaller prayer structure) as if each mosque were trying to outsing its neighbors. The "music" of Islam fills the air, sets the mood, and marks the time.

The people <> The landscape <> An Islamic boarding school

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