Corruption, here in Indonesia, is usually way different that what we imagine in the West.
A lot of westerners think it’s just about “you want A so you pay B.”
I heard friends telling me “well it’s easy, you can pay to solve everything.”
It’s way more subtle, and not so easy to navigate, especially with an Occidental mindset.
You first need to arrive to the point where the person accepts to make a deal with you.
It’s not for granted.
The person would usually say she wants to “help you” with whatever you want to do.
You know it might cost you something, but you don’t know yet what.
Then you need to negotiate the terms, conditions and payment.
Sometimes, it’s also just in the form of a “donation”.
Sometimes, the fee is distributed between different people whose help is needed to get things done quicker.
When you’re a foreigner, you rarely know what the money is for, and the more you ask, the less you know.
So you get angry, and you feel like the whole world is against you.
But it’s nothing personal.
There is a lot of “power games” involved in those transactions, especially when they happen with officials from the government.
Because they know you need them.
Sometimes, you might not even manage to get a deal, and they’ll play with you, telling you that you can’t do this or that, for this and that reason.
It’s a game.
They want you to know they are in charge, and they like their ego to be flattered, and their power to be recognized.
Most of them are weak men hiding behind an overwhelming ego, craving attention and acknowledgement.
I used to hate them.
Now I pity them.
I just start to understand how those things work, and I’ve been through a lot of confusion trying to navigate those blurry waters.
In the end of the day, you know they don’t follow the law, and you have no way to force them to (most of the time).
So you play by the rules others are also playing by.
You stop taking it personally.
You realize locals who have always been living in the region face the same stuff as you do.
And you focus on what’s the straightest way to get where you want to get, regardless the few side roads you are pushed to take.
Indonesia, without government-level corruption, would do so much better, and its people would have so much more chances to thrive.
I hope Presiden Joko Widodo is going to keep cleaning the rotten apples, one at a time.
Things are moving forward, and seem to be better now than it was a decade ago.
It has been a tough part of the journey for me, because it challenges my values, my ethic and my vision of what’s good and bad.
