Ganda. Short for “Propaganda,” a word his mother found in a magazine the week he was born. Propaganda never had a problem with his name until his 20s, when he got a job on a Holland America cruise ship. The word “Propaganda” on his nametag befuddled English-speaking passengers and made his bosses nervous. Now he goes by Ganda.
Ganda has been to 38 countries, all of them in the service of Holland America. Many Indonesians work on his ship, he says, but only one is a fellow Batak. The Batak are a legendary Sumatran culture. Marco Polo called them “wild idolaters,” noting their fierceness; modern tourists travel to Lake Toba to see them perform traditional tor-tor dances in colorful fabric called “ulos.” On this day Ganda prefers jeans and a t-shirt. When he misses his ethnic homeland his friend will bring a guitar to his cabin and they’ll drink beer and sing Batak folk and pop songs together.
Ganda has been a father for one month. His wife, not trusting him to pick a name for their son, gave him three choices, and he went with “Nathaniel.” Ganda shows me an adorable iPhone video of Nathaniel yawning and sneezing in his crib. Ganda’s wife is from Java, and she lives with Nathaniel in Jakarta, where she works as a waitress at a resort. Ganda tells me his son probably won’t learn to speak Batak, since nobody (not even his wife) speaks it in Jakarta.
I’m at a beginning of a multi-month international journey, and Ganda is at the end of one. He points out rubber plantations and coffee plants and durian trees along the roadside; he talks about how he hasn’t seen his parents in a year, how he’s looking forward to fishing in the lake and drinking tuak (palm-sap wine) with his childhood friends. He says he probably won’t ever come back to Batak country to live full-time, since the best opportunities to make a living lie elsewhere.
The share-taxi ride to Parapat was supposed to take four hours, but landslides on the main highway stretch the journey to six. The driver takes Ganda right up to the door of his childhood home. Ganda looks thrilled to be there. “I love the world,” he tells me as I help him unload his bags. “But home is the best place.”
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. For more full-formed writing, check out my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, or the Essays or Stories archives on this site. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
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