Life on $1 a day

By Sam Bolitho
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Published in Catalyst (RMIT student magazine) April 2008

The Indonesian government has this year declared tourism a national priority in a desperate attempt to regain the vital slice of the market it lost after the Bali bombings.

A recent Bureau of Statistics report that shows a 45 per cent increase of Australian tourists visiting Indonesia, with 283,000 people defying government terrorist warnings. For most, the Indonesian experience will involve sitting beachside, Bintang in hand, with few concerns for what extends past the resort gates. There is another side to Indonesia, a part the Jakarta administration neglects to mention in its Visit Indonesia 2008 campaign. It is a part that will never see the tourist dollar. It is Mak Daimah’s life.

Her home is smaller than most jail cells. The tiny dwelling – with its scrap metal ceiling, concrete floor and wooden support beams – sits beneath one of Indonesia’s busiest train lines. It is just one of a thousand homes in a shanty town that stretches for kilometres.

Mak Daimah is a garbage collector and one of Indonesia’s 40 million people living in poverty, surviving on less than US$1 a day. Daimah arrived in Jakarta aged 16 with no parents, no money and no home. She had been promised a domestic job in the capital city. But with no jobs available and no education, prospects were bleak. That was 34 years ago. Daimah has been picking up jakarta’s trash ever since.

“When I left Pemalang (a rural town in Central java), we did not have any land to farm. At least here I can collect something and make money,” she said through a translator. Analysts predict Indonesia’s economy will grow by 6.4 per cent this year, the sharpest increase in over a decade. But for Indonesia’s urban poor, the statistics mean little. “Life was difficult even before the (1997) Asian financial crisis, and it is difficult now,” Daimah said. “We get no help.”

Each morning Daimah wakes up at 4am, takes her mesh sack and searches the nearby streets and markets for glass bottles. Daimah’s children pull heavy wooden carts to pick up the more lucrative garbage. But Daimah cannot. Her body is too frail. Standing at just four-foot-five, her body is hunched and appears physically exhausted from an arduous life of manual labour.
She returns home five hours later, she is lucky if she’s made Rp 10,000 (A$1.20). With that she must pay for food, bottled water and an illegal electricity connection. “Getting sick is the big problem, if I cannot work, I cannot eat,” Daimah said bluntly. And the threat is real. Measles, tuberculosis, cholera, tetanus, polio, influenza, dengue fever, and infant malnutrition are prevalent in slum areas like her own in Senang, Central Jakarta.

Daimah can only afford to eat once a day. Like most in the slums, she eats rice with tempe, a fermented soybean cake. Tempe is her sole source of protein. At the start of the year the soybean price jumped from US$300 to US$600 per tonne. The effect on Daimah was simple: half as much food.

HIV too, is a growing danger for those living in the slums. The World Health Organisation says Indonesia has one of the fastest-growing HIV populations in Asia. Daimah’s son Kirmin died recently after contracting the virus. He had been a heroin user since primary school and died five years later, aged 20. “Every time I see a boy playing in the street, I remember,” says Daimah holding back tears. “For the last three years of his life he did not take drugs. He got a job selling newspapers and bottled water, but it was too late.” Almost 95 per cent on Indonesia’s injecting drug users live in slum areas, according to Jakarta HIV clinic, Kios.

Kreshna, a Kios councillor,said drugs often provide an escape from the economic hardship endured by those living in jakarta’s slums. “HIV rates are very high (in slum areas) because they are usually sharing needles between three to five people. And when they need hospital treatment, its too expensive,” he said. The government provides free HIV medication but hospital care is often out of reach for people like Kirman who are unable to pay the nightly rate which is usually around A$100.

A government issued ‘poverty card’ would have entitled Kirman to free hospital care, but its “very difficult”, Kreshna says. “If you go to the government office to apply for a card, it can take one to three months to get a card. And to get the card, you must pay first.” Daimah said the Senang residents helped her cope with the loss of her eldest son. “We’re a community,” Daimah says. “Other towns are dangerous and run by gangs, but not here. We look after each other. We are poor but we are religious people and try to live peaceful lives.”

The shanty community is currently building a make-shift mosque. Their local place of worship was recently demolished by the government-owned train operator PT KA to make way for the expanding train line. Residents fear their homes will be next. “Within two years, the train company will evict us,” Daimah says.

The Jakarta administration has said publicly it will demolish more than 15,000 shanties around railways and Pluit dam in North Jakarta. Forced evictions are regularly reported in local press. By PT KA’s own estimates, 4,000 people live near railroad tracks in Jakarta. The real figure is thout to be much higher. “The government will turn it (the slum) into a road or park,” Daimah predicts.

The same government has put aside US$15 million to advertise a tourist promotion that includes the slogan, “100 years of national awakening.” Daimah can only hope the Jakarta administration will one day wake up to the plight of millions living in poverty.

Sam Bolitho undertook a six week internship at ANTARA, Indonesia’s international wire service. He was part of the Journalism professional Practicum, a program run by the Australian Consortium for ‘In-Country’ Indonesian Studies (ACICIS).

Read other articles by Sam Bolitho

• two articles from his time at the Antara News Agency;
• one article on Donny Gunadi, and;
• one article on James T. Riady.