The fat, neon-colored beetle of a bus bumped along the narrow highway as I struggled to keep from falling into my neighbor’s lap. The Indonesian guidebook warned there wasn’t a straight stretch of road on the island of Flores, crumpled as it was by its many volcanoes, and I was ready to believe it.

 

I had spent Christmas in the tiny mountain town of Moni, like most of Flores an intensely Catholic community, where I attended high mass sung in the rhythmic, sweetly harmonic musical idiom of the eastern reaches of Indonesia. Now I was off to the Bajawa plateau, a journey of about six hours, to visit its weavers, women noted for their black cotton cloth patterned with light blue prancing horses.

 

By the time the bus headed for Bajawa arrived in front of my guesthouse on the main road in Moni, it was three hours late and already held its official complement of thirty passengers plus their baskets of white and tan eggs, live piglets wrapped in paper bags, and travel paraphernalia of water bottles and greasy packets of fried rice. About forty-five people were making this trip—men clung to the sides and back of the bus and a few rode the mound of suitcases and cardboard boxes lashed to the top.

 

I thought the driver’s bandy-legged helper would turn me away, but he waved me aboard and threw my carry-on bag up to be caught and roped down by a helpful passenger. From out of nowhere came a rough-hewn wooden stool, like a shoebox on stilts, that was shoved into the crowded aisle—this was to be my seat. I settled myself on this balance beam, stuffed my backpack and the string-wrapped pile of handwoven sarongs under my legs, and took hold of the seatbacks on either side of me. That was when I began to appreciate the many turns on the road to Bajawa. My hips, thighs, and calves braced in one direction, my shoulders and arms braced in the other.

 

The inside of the bus was a steam bath even though all the windows were open. An effluvium of cigarettes, onions, and garlic rose to mingle with hair oil and sweat and the sweet, earthy odors of animals and flowers. As we descended the mountain toward Ende, a coastal market town, the temperature increased with every curve of road. I could hear some of the passengers talking in staccato murmurs. Others chatted energetically, not in Indonesian, which I understand a little, but in a local language. Eventually, they lapsed into silence, perhaps to sleep, something I couldn’t afford since I had to brace myself in a different direction every few minutes.

 

I was the only foreigner on board, conspicuous for my height, gray hair, and fair skin of my English ancestry. Two preteen girls occupied the seats to my left. They looked like twins, with smooth brown skin and long black braids. Each wore a blue-checked cotton dress and carried a black-and-white speckled hen under her arm. At once curious about me and shy, they flashed big smiles showing lots of straight white teeth. I grinned back and nodded my approval of their handsome, well-behaved chickens.

 

The toddler held by his father in the seat on my right was docile and quiet, like most Indonesian children. Occasionally, his dad bounced him or pointed out one of the island’s small horses tethered in the long grass by the road. I thought of the weavers I would soon meet and of their looms on which images of high-stepping horses would slowly take form.

 

The driver’s helper popped a music cassette into the intercom system and turned it up to rock-concert level. Mile after mile the little bus bounced along surrounded by an almost tangible cloud of sound pulsing in the style of American country western. I was thankful heavy metal hadn’t traveled this far.

 

Every few miles the driver, a burly fellow who wore a New York Mets baseball cap turned backward over his glistening curly black hair and smoked cigarettes constantly, stopped to take on another passenger, let off someone, or pass the time with an old friend or a relative. On an empty stretch of road he came to a halt and began shouting out the window. Then he turned around and yelled at us inside the bus. From my perch only a few inches above the floor, I couldn’t see what was going on, but I heard a rustling spread among the passengers as they sat up from their naps and began to rearrange their possessions.

 

Suddenly, the men who had been clinging to the outside and sitting on top climbed down and were shoved through the back door by the driver’s helper. This was accompanied by shouted instructions from people who had seats. We all squeezed closer as the domino effect traveled up to the front. From snatches of conversation around me, I learned that it is illegal to ride on top or outside a bus and that a police station was just around the next bend.

 

With everyone crushed together in a conspiratorial mood, we started up again. Our bulging, iridescent beetle scurried primly past the police post. When its flagpole disappeared from view, the men crawled back to their outside positions without the driver ever slowing down.

 

The countryside leveled off and opened out on to the Sawu Sea. The narrow highway wound tightly around small sandy beaches and clusters of bamboo-sided houses hugging the water’s edge. At a wide spot we stopped and several passengers jumped out. I followed, for by now I needed a bathroom break. On one side of the highway the land rose sharply, an impenetrable mass of bamboo and vines; the other side, covered with knee-high grasses and shrubs, plunged to the sea. The men took up positions, turning their backs to the road. I saw no place where I could find privacy. Then I noticed no women had left the bus. Now I really had to go.

 

In about half an hour we cruised into Ende, a much smaller town than I had envisioned from the big letters given to this port on the map. I liked its modest white and green mosques against the sparkling blue sea and the market strung out under leafy trees.

 

When we came to a halt in a gaggle of long-distance buses in the center of the market, I asked the driver how long we would be there. Without waiting for an answer, I ran into the nearest building, which turned out to be a bank, with its whole front open to the busy street, and asked a man behind the counter if there was a kamar kecil (small room, one of the many Indonesian euphemisms for toilet). He didn’t seem surprised at my request and silently signaled to a tall young man who led me through a warren of empty offices to the dirt yard in back and pointed to a half-open door.

 

It was the usual, although much cleaner and brighter than I expected—a hole in the wet, red-tiled floor and a porcelain collar with ridged footprints to stand on. Next to this stood a three-foot-high square tank covered with white tiles. A long-handled pink plastic dipper floated in the water that lapped near the top. A few dippers of water poured into the hole efficiently flushed the toilet.

 

Now I felt much more relaxed and used the rest of our stop to enjoy the crowd of shoppers and idlers. Some wore the international uniform of tee shirt and jeans; others were wrapped in the island’s traditional brown, black, and cream-colored resist-dyed sarongs, no two alike. Two Moslem women strolled together, a counterpoint to the swirl of color in their black long-sleeved tunics and faded blue jeans, heads hidden under white scarves that flowed over their shoulders.

 

A billow of cherry red bougainvillea climbed over the tin roof of the fruit stall across the street. In its dim interior I could make out knobby yellow jackfruit, hairy red rambutan, and baskets mounded high with tiny brown-skinned onions and red and green chili peppers. I walked over to buy a bunch of my favorite little susu bananas. The ancient woman who weighed them had a red mouth and black teeth from years of chewing betel nut.

 

Buses trundled through, honking and noisily shifting gears. Their oily fumes competed with the fragrant rice being served on banana leaf plates at the food vendor’s cart behind me. A boy dodged in and out the shoppers, clutching a string threaded with silver fish. I admired the way a woman in a sarong and white blouse walked at a stately pace with a huge bag of rice balanced on her head, both hands clutching heavy plastic bags.

 

Crouched in the slender shadow of my bus, I tried to ease the heat that bore down and squeezed water out of my body to trickle down the back of my legs. I saw myself standing in my kitchen at home in a California town, a modest stucco house with two flush toilets. I could see my cool, white refrigerator and the two-by-three-inch magnet attached to the door on the right-hand side. In a small yellow rectangle in the middle of the magnet was written in old-fashioned script: The end is nothing. The road is all. — Willa Cather.

The driver finished his cigarette and his Coke and started the engine. I pulled myself aboard and adjusted my wooden stool. I had forgotten the weavers of Bajawa and their serene patterns of blue horses. The plucky bus, my fellow passengers, and the ribbon of black asphalt stretching before us were now my universe.

(This essay appeared in The Redwood Coast Review, Fall 2006)