Its this time of year I love the most. Its always hot in Indonesia, but where I live the months of December through until the end of February are the monsoon months. The rain is tropically heavy, although not strictly the monsoon you see in movies (or in reality on the subcontinent). It rains here for about 2 hours everyday. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes the afternoon. Sometimes you strike it lucky and it rains both in the morning and the afternoon.

Anyway yesterday, on the spur of the moment I decided to jump on the motorbike and head up into the hills and kampungs just behind our roastery. With the rains is comes the anticipation of ripening coffee. The flowers have long gone and big, green coffee cherries laden the trees and slowly ripen during the rains. Most of the coffee near me is robusta, we dont use any of this, but the thrill of heading up into the villages and seeing them intertwined with coffee trees reminds me of all the things I love about Indonesia. The way coffee is part of these villagers life, along with rice and a range of fruit crops.

The ride up the valley and into the hills on the bike is invigorating. Puddles of dirty rain water lie in deep potholes across the access roads. Kids playing in clean white school uniforms yell the obligatory “Hello Meester” as I drive by. Hi-fives along the way, a quick breakfast of pisang goreng (fried banana) and a slow wind up the valleys and into the damp, cool hills.

Its great to be up here and even nicer to be in the villages where they know me by name. I park the bike and hike up the winding track that takes me into the robusta villages of this area. Below me rice padi are being planted. Most of the young men are down on the terraces, knee deep in mud. The clouds are low and dipping into the river valleys. Moist and cool.

Everything is so green. Actually it never ceases to amaze me that there are so many shades of a colour that at home was just one green- dairy cow/rugby green. Here there are 1000 shades of green just in a rice field alone. Greens, blues, reds. They are all colors you see saturated around you in the agricultural landscape of this country.

After about 45 minutes of walking, I am covered in red mud and clay. The red tiled roofs of the village I am most familiar with in this area are poking out of the forest ahead. Soon I am being greeted like a long lost friend. Its perhaps 4 months since I was last here and I am filled in on all the news and gossip. Who has died, babies being born, who has run off with who... all the good natured banter you find in villages, towns and cities anywhere on the globe. One young man wants to know what has happened to “Cewek Francais itu”, the glamourous French-Canadian Journalist I brought up to the village the year before.

I settle in to one of the warung for a a coffee. This is freshly roasted robusta from last crop season. I am not a huge fan of robusta, but when villages roast fresh its not a bad drink. Even though its cool the coffee warms me just nicely. I smell of sweet cloves and tobacco, everyone around me has been smoking kretek cigarette (the clove and tobacco variety that are popular all over the country). Saying my goodbyes I trek up onto the ridge that offers spectacular views of the rice fields and bubbling river far below. I have farmer friends I call in on. We talk about coffee. We talk about the weather. Most interestingly we talk about the new President of the USA. The new hope that Americans have with the change that is Obama is also being felt in this tiny rural piece of Java.

The cloud suddenly drops like a stone. The moisture that has been blown off the Java Sea rushes across the shallow plain that separates the volcanoes from the ocean and slowly tries to climb over the peaks and find its way to the Indian Ocean not far away. Today it fails and decides to let everything go on us. The rain is torrential. Soon the stony tracks that lead to the village are torrents of muddy water, spilling down the slopes either side into the rivers and streams.

The house I am in has a broad, deep veranda. We (myself and 9 members of the family) sit out on bamboo chairs and stools and watch the rain falling heavy and pregnant on the coffee trees outside. Far below I can see the farmers continue planting rice, oblivious to the deluge around them. A couple of water buffalo pulling a broad plough through the muddy fields look up in unison at the rain, annoyed and puzzled by its sudden arrival. More coffee is served, sweetened with Javanese cane sugar to help ward off the flu that the rain could bring.

It rains for about an hour. The intensity varies and the sun even tries to break through at one point. I can complain. There is work to be done later, but up here with no cellular signal, I am forced to relax and to enjoy what can only be described as a form of paradise. As suddenly as the rain arrived, it has gone and a deep blue sky opens up wide and high behind the peaks. I say thanks and begin the trudge back down to the road where I have left my motorbike. The air is thicker now, more humid and the sweetness of the steam evaporating off the soil brings out the cicadas and crickets.

These people lead a simple but pleasant life. High above the plains and far from the smog and intensity of Jakarta, the roots of village life and indeed Indonesian coffee run strong and deep.

© Alun Evans, January 2009