Bamboo

As you can probably imagine, bamboo is an extremely important plant in Indonesia. It is farmed locally, grows very fast, especially compared with other naturally occurring building materials. Its fibrous outer casing and hollow centre gives it great strength, it is cheap and so makes an excellent structural building material. My blip of the three girls peering through the window 25-8-2011 shows bamboo in the construction of the window frame.

A lot of houses in the villages (Kampung) are constructed of bamboo and are very strong and stable. You do not get the impression that you are actually living in a very large wicker basket, it feels no different to living in a brick structure. Bamboo also replaces steel scaffolding, even for substantial structures and hi-rise building. Bamboo is also used for making furniture, beds, seats, tables etc. Kitchen utensils, satay sticks, the list goes on. I have barely scratched the surface of bamboo applications.

For the above blip, I returned to my neighbors allotment, were he has lashed together bamboo poles with black plastic bags from his eating establishment, for his climbing crops. You can see in the photograph, the diameter of the bamboo is a little more substantial than the poles that you find in your local garden centre. I have seen poles as large as 6? diameter and 30? long. If some strange disease ever destroyed the bamboo crop, I do believe that this country would fall apart, literally, such is the importance of this natural crop.

Dave