Ternate 22-08-2012 Net aangekomen
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Cees
22 Augustus 2012 | Indonesië, Bengkulu
I really wanted to go to Ternate and now I am there. Actually I'm here of course. Mm, the English language can sometimes be a bit confusing for non native speakers. It is not (yet) the island I expected. What I've seen so far is an urbanized area. But I have yet to discover Ternate to the full. See if I can find an old makam belanda dulu (Dutch graveyard from old times). Later I'll tell some more about my findings. Oh yeh, the time difference with Jakarta is not 1 hour as I wrote before but 2 hours; so it is here 7 hours later than in Holland.
Later this day I went to Benteng (=fort) Oranye. It once must have been an impressive fort but now near to decay. The large cannons are stil ther though. Empoyees of the VOC (read: soldiers) often were burried in or near a fort, but I could not find any graves. I asked a very old woman that lived near the fort If she knew anything about graves (yes indeed, I took her hand in both of mine and made a deep bow). She didn't. I asked around about a makam belanda dulu (an old Dutch graveyard). I was glad to hear that. I went there by ojek and what I saw did not make me glad. Partly people had built a kampong on it that partly was made of material of the graves and for the rest it was used as the garbage dump of the kampong. Nevertheless I started my search. I won't go into details for you might loose your appetite for some days (maybe I can sell this secret to Weight Watchers) but is was not the highlight of my stay here. I mangaged to read a lot of graves but no ancestors. Some graves I skipped for sanitary reasons. I now assume that the people have built the kampong on the oldest part and that the graves of my ancestors now serve as foundations of the kampong. Later this day some pictures.
August 23rd I will make a roundtrip around the island by ojek. (I write the date because of the time difference). Maybe there is still time for the keraton and/or the archives of Ternate. If not, there is always a tomorrow.
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