If you’re fed up with books about
lucky westerners going through a patch of angst, then read The Rainbow
Troops by Andrea Hirata, which was
originally published in Indonesian.
It is now available in English translated by Angie Kilbane; I read the
Australian edition from Random House.
The Rainbow Troops are a group of
dirt-poor students from the ramshackle Muhammadiyah Elementary School on the
Indonesian Island of Belitong. Have you heard of Muhammadiyah? I hadn’t, until I read The Rainbow
Troops, but I now know it’s a charity that
helps Muslims via education – the novel employs all sorts of Malay and Muslim
words and concepts previously unknown to me.
The Rainbow Troops get their name
from sitting in a tree in their schoolyard looking for rainbows. In Indonesian they are called Laskar
Pelangi. Either the author, or the
translator, explains that pelangi
means rainbow, and laskar means warriors, but I suppose the novel couldn’t be called, in English, The
Rainbow Warriors, because of associations
with Greenpeace?
Mind you, The Rainbow Troops fight
hard for their environment, and this novel might prod you to do a light spot of
internet research on tin mining in Indonesia. Tin mining is the backbone of the
Belitong economy, and one of myriad threats to the existence of The
Muhammadiyah School comes from a rapacious mining company which wants to knock
it down to dredge the land it stands on. The Rainbow Troops see off this
threat, as they see off many others.
This is not, however, a feel good
novel with happy endings all round. The narrator, Ikal, is a clever boy, but
not the cleverest in his class; he perpetually comes second to Lintang, a
genius who is so desperate for an education that he daily crosses crocodile
infested swamps to get to school.
Lintang’s fate will make your blood boil, as will this whole novel, it
is a book furious at the injustice of the world, but it wears its anger
lightly, and it charms, rather than lectures – it deceives you into thinking.
There is only one girl in Ikal’s
year, a gender imbalance he appears not to notice, although I’m sure all
western readers will ponder it.
The novel does, however, have a courageous, inspiring female character,
Bu Mus, one of the two extraordinary teachers who provide The Rainbow Troops
with hope for the future. Bu Mus is only fifteen when she starts teaching, she is
not qualified in any way that would be recognised in the West, she receives no
pay for her work – and she is a heroine adamant the children in her care will
be freed by education from the illiteracy and drudgery which blight their
parents’ lives.
I urge you to read The Rainbow
Troops. Unless you share Ikal’s background, it will force you to
think about lives very different from your own, and unless you are impoverished
by Asian standards, it will force you to consider how privileged you are. But this is not a self-consciously
worthy or earnest book, it is instead gentle: warm, tender, and
heartbreaking.
