Tales of Indonesian Pilgrimages

RADEN Adipati Aria Wiranatakusuma had to hold back feelings of revulsion to survive in that dirty shelter. An Arab child with an ear infection helped him prepare some food. With filthy hands, the child picked through some chicken, and he cleaned the plates with a cloth kept wrapped around his waist. That was just one part of Wiranatakusuma's experience at the haj pilgrimage quarantine facility on Kamaran Island, now part of Yemen.

"We have reached a country which does not yet understand the meaning and benefit of cleanliness against filth. I have to force myself to eat just a little," Wiranatakusuma, a former regent of Bandung, wrote in this diary. His words were later published as a series of articles in a Dutch-language newspaper in Bandung, Algemen Indisch Dagblad de Preangerbode, in 1925.

September 16, 2014