Odds ‘n’ Sods: Memories of Rudy in Indonesia

The year was 1975, and I was involved with initial exploration of the Ertsberg East skarn system (GBT, IOZ and DOZ copper deposits) for Freeport Exploration on the island of New Guinea. This was a helicopter-supported drill project, 2 km away from the yet-to-be-discovered Grasberg copper-gold deposit. I had a crew of about 20 locals, mostly building camps, drill sites and trails at elevations of around 4,000 metres. These construction efforts were on top of our geological duties.

After I had been on the project for a year, and had finally mastered enough Indonesian to get by quite well, my boss Frank Nelson came to me one day and said: “We are getting a new man. I don’t know anything about him, but we have to find something for him to do.”

So, Rudy showed up — a young, upper-class, English-speaking Indonesian, about 20 years old, as I recall.

Frank and I sized him up as completely useless to the project, nothing but a burden. Worse than that, when we put him to work with the locals, I worried about his well-being, since they absolutely hated all Indonesians (not considering themselves to be Indonesians, even though technically they were), and these were guys who often brought their bows and arrows to work.

Rudy was not much with a pick and shovel — or a machete — and the rejection of Rudy was nearly instantaneous. He wasn’t going to last a month.

However, Rudy was not your average young Indonesian. Eventually, I began to see potential in him, and I asked him what his story was.

Rudy said his father was a fairly high-level Indonesian Army commander who had fought a civil war in Borneo that had lasted 10 years. Rudy had a good, moderately upper-class upbringing in Jakarta. At this time there was a political clash with people of Japanese descent in the city.

One day a friend invited Rudy, who was not of Japanese-descent, to a secret political meeting. Out of pure curiosity Rudy went. The police raided the meeting and Rudy was arrested and sent to prison.

Eventually, Rudy’s father secured his release on the conditions that Rudy be exiled to western New Guinea — “Irian Jaya,” it was called at that time — and that he be employed as a labourer, so we got Rudy.

With time, we found that Rudy had talents. He was bright and enthusiastic. He did not mind the cold, almost perpetual rain and fog at our elevation, and he could put in a full day’s work.

Rudy’s real genius was social, however. At first the locals didn’t know what to make of him. He would joke and play with them like a kid. They tried to terrorize him with giant earthworms they would find during digging and would throw them on him, but somehow the fact that Rudy was afraid of earthworms sort of endeared him to them, as did all of his other perceived flaws and quirks.

In the end, Frank and I had the same opinion of Rudy that I think the locals had: you just couldn’t fit Rudy into any category, but above all else, he was just too damn likeable. Rudy was not only accepted by all, but by the time I left in 1976, we had made him our de facto crew foreman — the only Indonesian our locals would take orders from.

Rudy got some of that from his dad, no doubt.

— William A. Fuchs is a retired geologist living in Reno, Nevada.