Tong Tong Fair

We've already had a very busy morning  before we arrive at the Tong Tong Fair in The Hague. First, we went to the supermarket and then we made a stop at the hospital. Luckily, there was no serious reason for the latter - we merely had to show Rihanna Gaga's passport, because my girlfriend didn't have it with her when she went there two weeks ago. Back then, there actually was a quite serious reason: during a nasty fall from the bed a few weeks ago, Rihanna Gaga had hurt her shoulder quite badly. As it turned out from the x-ray photos they made at the hospital, her collarbone was actually broken back then, but had healed very well. The doctor explained that with a fracture like that, there was very little you could do. "Take it easy for a while" was probably the only advice available, but try telling that to a three year old. Her tolerance for pain must be incredibly high, because she hardly whimpered all that time.

Now, we are at the Tong Tong Fair, a little bit away from The Hague Central Station. It's an annual festival with food, theatre, music, marketplace, lectures and workshops with the former Dutch Indies as its central theme. The last time I was here, it was still called the Pasar Malam and that must have been... oh well, more than thirty years ago, because my grandfather was still alive. Obviously, I don't remember much from that visit, although I have quite vivid memories of my grandmother introducing me to the sugary delight called Cendol.

Unlike in other Dutch families with their roots in what is today called Indonesia, the Indo-European culture of which what was back then called the Pasar Malam is an integral part was not very alive in my youth. This is probably due to my rather unique family background - I say rather unique, because I have never met anyone with the same background in the Netherlands. While most people from the former Dutch Indies were part of its colonial administration, or belonged to an Indo-European class that was mostly fiercely loyal to the Dutch coloniser, my grandfather was an Indonesian nationalist who actively worked towards ending the Dutch colonial rule of Indonesia (and I suppose it is a bitter historic irony that our family then ended up in the Netherlands) . So I imagine he and his family shared little of the nostalgia for Tempo Doeloe ('times gone by') among the Indo-Europeans who 'returned' to the Netherlands because there was no place for them - or they saw no place for themselves - in an independent Indonesia.

When I grew up, Indonesia was the great unknown. I knew my family had a past there, but there were no pictures, and only fragmentary stories. It's not that it was not talked about - it certainly was, but among adults who knew what they were talking about, and since I did not, it was like eavesdropping on conversations about a world that was completely alien to what I knew and experienced myself. Add to this the fact that the only visual representations of Indonesia around were folkloristic pictures of, say, wooden houses in tropical forests, alongside lakes or the ocean, over which the sun was always just setting or had already set, in vivid yellow, golden, orange, purple and black. Oh, and then there was wayang kulit and batik clothes, the aesthetics of which had an irresistable appeal to me. And the food, of course.  Together, these were the building blocks of a wholly imaginary country that I build in my head during visits to my grandparents, a country that never left me but that was such an incredibly private affair that it almost came as a shock that when I actually went to Indonesia, I found real traces of it in the existing country. Or maybe it was different: the smells and sounds and images and tastes I encountered in Indonesia helped me to blow life into that imaginary country of another Indonesia, a fairy tale country created by a child who knew there was such a thing as Indonesia, but for whom it wasn't even a memory - as it was for his grandparents - but a mood, a state of mind forever just beyond his grasp. Obviously, I don't confuse the two (the real and actual Indonesia and the imaginary private Indonesia of my childhood), but in my own personal history they are intimately intertwined.

Which is maybe why I never felt much like going to the Tong Tong Fair, not even after I moved to Scheveningen, ten minutes cycling away from its annual location. The Indonesia (or Dutch Indies) that people come to experience here is far removed from the one(s) I feel close to. But that doesn't mean I am averse to it either. So since it's here and since Rihanna Gaga loves new experiences (she really does, she has an incredible thirst for exciting new things and for her age she is very much into trying what she doesn't know) and we have a whole Monday to fill, here we are now. It's still rather quiet. Rihanna Gaga keeps talking about 'seeing the dolls', because there is a Wayang Golek performance this afternoon and I told her about that, and she is rather impatient about that. But that only starts at 13:00 and it's only 11:30. So we will eat first.We have to cross the Fair's main market place to get to the food court and the moment I enter the covered market, I'm transported back to Indonesia - the real Indonesia this time, because the dominating smell is durian. To my surprise, I realise I like the smell, because it reminds me of places I've enjoyed, but that doesn't really mean I like the smell. I like the memories. The smell itself is still pretty much as I first experienced it: "wow, this smells like rotten melons!" Rihanna Gaga, who has no memories of exotic places to be called forth by the smell, is less forgiving: "Such a stench!" she shouts and right away, she doesn't like the Tong Tong fair so much anymore. Never mind that there's lots of beautiful things at the market, wooden toys, clothes, paintings. "Let's get away from the stench!" she says and looks for an exit.

We have lunch at Warung Gina, one of many foodstalls that make up the Tong Tong Fair's foodcourt. There is no durian smell here and Rihanna Gaga is content. Warung Gina offers a lunch of vegetables, rice, meat and sauce, together with tea and 'spekkoek' - an typical Dutch Indies cake I really, really like - and tea. We sit down and wait for the food. When it comes, the sauce that covers the meat and vegetables is far too spicy for Rihanna Gaga to enjoy. Luckily, there is the rice and fried onions and I order a Soto Ayam (chicken soup) of which she eats with gusto. When I ask her what she wants to drink, she picks a cendol from a picture of the available drinks. Obviously, because it is green and green is her favourite colour. I take a pink kelapa muda (coconut drink) myself. When it is brought, Rihanna Gaga soon discovers she prefers the coconut drink over her cendol, so we swap. Then, we return to the market and I buy her some trinkets - a Japanese lucky doll, a little suitcase with beautiful Asian patterns and a bracelet - and by now, she is willing to neglect the stench and embrace the Tong Tong. About time, because she was also really looking forward to the music, but decided to ignore it since it was too close to the source of the durian smell.

We need to wait another half an hour before the wayang golek performance is due and we go back to the main hall, where there is a facade of a colonial villa of the Dutch Indies period. Complete with verandah looking out over flowers and a front garden, it is meant as a background for people to take their picture, but to Rihanna Gaga, it's a playground. She keeps walking up and down the series of stone slabs that leat up to the simulacrum of a front door and every once in a while, I have to tell her to step aside so people can take a picture of friends and family in front of the facade.



Finally, it is time to go to the wayang golek performance. I'm actually quite nervous, because Rihanna Gaga has looked forward to it so much, that it can only be a disappointment (I'm always amazed by the amount of talking in both wayang golek and wayang kulit performances - endless conversations during which the dolls are standing still and only a moving hand indicates which doll is talking). But there is no need for that. Rihanna Gaga sits patiently throughout the introduction of the performance, during which the audience can try out the dolls and the story is explained. And when the performance starts, she is mesmerised from the first moment onwards. Apart from a short toilet break, she sits through the entire half an hour performance, gazing with open mouth, or asking questions, dancing along to the music or laughing at the clowns that are part of every wayang golek performance - and when it's finished, she is quite disappointed. I tell her that I have a wayang golek doll in the attic that she can have and this cheers her up again.

We walk around the Tong Tong Fair one last time and  have another drink (cendol for me, kelapa muda for her).  It's 14:30 and by now, Rihanna Gaga is exhausted, partly because yesterday was a very tiring day as well (we went to the countryside to visit an organic farm), and partly because it is a very hot day and inside the series of tents in which the Tong Tong Fair is housed this means that temperatures are approaching tropical highs. Let's just say it is a nice preparation for an actual visit to Indonesia (which I hope we can have soon). In any case, Rihanna Gaga's mood is very good. She loves the Tong Tong, she says, and especially the dolls. But now it's time to go, we agree - and off we go, to spend the rest of the afternoon in Madurodam.