NIAS IS NOT JAKARTA

Endah Setyaningsih

Encountering Indonesia’s realities   

              

In her mid 20s Endah Setyaningsih took a leap into the unknown.

The University of Indonesia (UI) graduate had a good well-paid job, a permanent position with a private company using the knowledge she’d gained getting a degree in public health.

She had friends and family in Jakarta, the city where she’d lived for most of her comfortable life.  Why risk it all on overseas education, and then join a non-government organization (NGO) on a remote and undeveloped island where conditions were rough and living primitive?

“I wasn’t confident,” she said. “I was scared. “I thought about it for a long time.  I just knew that working for the community was something I had to do, but till then I’d never had the courage.

“My mother gave her blessing though she had many concerns, including that I was single. (Her father had passed away.) 

“I’d been unemployed for three months after first graduating, so I knew about being jobless.  I had no clear plan. My bosses, friends and family thought I was crazy.”

Though not now.  Following a Masters degree in Australia she spent almost four years monitoring health needs and evaluating remedial programs on Nias, the quake-smashed island 125 kilometers off North Sumatra’s west coast.

Last year Endah was invited by the business and government funded NGO Asia-NZ Foundation to join its Young Leaders’ Network, giving inspirational lectures and encouraging others to take up community service.

Now she’s a PhD scholarship student at the Victoria University of Wellington, working on ways to motivate midwives and improve the survival of mothers and babies.  Her fieldwork is likely to be in Sumbawa in East Nusa Tenggara.

When Endah graduates she plans to work with the United Nations or an NGO, developing policies to stop babies dying.

“Indonesia still has a bad record among ASEAN nations,” she said. “Progress is being made, though I don’t think we’ll meet the Millennium Development Goals of reducing child mortality by two thirds by 2015. There’s still so much to do.

(The young child mortality rate in Indonesia is around 29 deaths per 1000 births according to the World Health Organization.  In most developed countries it’s below five.)

“A doctor’s job is to work with the person to cure sickness.  A public health officer’s task is to get rid of the problems that create the disease.”

Although Endah constantly cites luck as being significant in her success and downplays her achievements, she conceded that hard work has been another essential factor along with family support.

As a teenager she wanted to be a lawyer and was attracted to UI mainly to be involved with the university’s traditional dance group. She studied public health only because she had vague and unformed ideas about community service. Slowly these began to take shape.

“I realized something was not right in society and I wanted to be part of the change,” she said. 

“My parents worked for the government and my family is liberal. We were encouraged to do what we wanted and told that religion was a personal choice.  So I’m a Muslim but I have a Protestant sister and a Catholic brother.

“My grandfather’s philosophy was simple: Be nice to each other – because everything else is secondary”.

After studying she joined SurfAid International, a humanitarian NGO started by New Zealander Dave Jenkins.  In 1999 the Singapore-based doctor was holidaying on a yacht in the Mentawi Islands when he encountered malnutrition, deep-seated poverty and easily preventable disease in coastal villages.

He gathered a few mates to register SurfAid, and then started raising funds from Western surfers to buy mosquito nets and provide basic health care. The organization has since expanded and now runs multiple projects.

Nias was brutally damaged by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that killed 155 and shredded coastal communities.  Three months later a major earthquake took 800 lives, injured 2,000 and left many thousands homeless. 

Endah often had to walk for hours to reach villages because the interior roads were too rough to take vehicles.  At other times she slept in boats.

“As an Indonesian living in Jakarta I had absolutely no idea how bad the situation was for so many people,” she said. “Now I consider myself lucky because my eyes have been opened to see other sides of my homeland.

“When I arrived in Nias I was shocked.  In the city we’d been talking about issues like globalization and free trade, yet here were villages without running water and toilets, where the people had little schooling and didn’t speak Indonesian.

“I felt inadequate because there was so much I couldn’t do.  I had to adapt and learn the local languages. Although the infrastructure has been repaired and the situation is almost back to normal, the psychological damage remains.

“The experience made me think: ‘I’m lucky enough to be strong, educated and enjoy a good life.  Why don’t others have the same opportunities?’

“Apart from poverty, the problems in such areas include a lack of resources, proper hygiene and knowledge about good health, the key to a better life.”

In Wellington Endah lives alone in a student flat and when not studying swims in the ocean and tramps the hills surrounding the NZ capital.  She mixes with locals to improve her language and cultural skills and follows the outdoor life favored by New Zealanders rather than the mall culture of Jakarta.

During the Christmas break she returned home, surprised to find her friends happy with her new life.

“I didn’t realise that I could motivate others,” she said. “Make the most of your opportunities. If you work hard and have a dream you can be what you want to be. Without realising it you will start to walk in that direction.

“Compared to others I have only done a little for the community. I know I have to do much more.

“Thank you for interviewing me – I hope my story can be useful for others.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 19 February 2014)

Khusnul Nurdiana

A hardscrabble life     

                                              

In the clouds above sit the business tsars, but atop the media mountain are the newsmakers.

On the foothills below squat journalists, recording the triumphs and misfortunes of us all, and the fancies and foolishness of those on high.  Sometimes we write of their good deeds and noble aspirations; mostly we report their villainy.

Further down in the steaming floodplains where the ink river ends, grind the smallest yet most essential cogs in this mighty industry:  The peddlers of print.

If Khusnul Nurdiana (Ana), 37, and the thousands of other newspaper sellers across the archipelago fail to flog our words, then the whole edifice will collapse.

Ana knows how tough her task.  Seven days a week she stands at a junction in Malang, East Java, most daylight hours, hoping passing motorists see the screaming headlines and stop to buy.

“If there’s a big news event then I might make Rp 50,000 (US$5) a day profit,” she said.  “Normally it’s half that sum.

“Politics seems to attract, then football and the economy. I sell near a university and a rich suburb.  Scandals and artists seem less important – they can get that from television. They can also get their news from the Internet.

 “I read the papers and discuss the news with customers.  I like to talk, express my concerns and opinions.  That surprises some people.”

It wouldn’t if they knew her story, a classic Indonesian tale of crippled talent and endless struggle.  Her father, a pedicab driver in Surabaya, died when she was three.  Her mother worked in a plastics factory.

Bright and ambitious Ana won scholarships that took her through to high school.  She loved English and had private lessons, but is now rusty after years of little use.

She wanted to teach in rural schools (“so I can encourage village children to be educated”), but her mother needed money for her other two children.

So Ana’s dreams were crushed by hardscrabble reality long before her potential could be realised.  She sold cosmetics in a mall, unafraid to chat with foreigners and use her language skills.  Later she worked in a Gramedia bookshop where her thirst for knowledge could be slaked a little.

Then came the economic crisis.  She lost her job, then found another in Malang.  She married and has two children. 

“I will wash clothes, clean shoes, do anything,” she said.  “It was stressful. I tried selling fruit salads, but because we don’t have a fridge the unsold food rotted.

“So I then sold newspapers outside shops while carrying my daughter, but got moved on.  Then I found an ideal place outside the gates of the PLN (Perusahaan Listrik Negara - State electricity company) office.

“The manager gave permission provided I kept the site clean.  He also said no-one else had survived there for more than three months.  I’ve been selling for more than eight.”

Before sunup the family of Dad, Mom and Afifah  (daughter Alisah, 7, stays with relatives) rides a motorbike ten kilometers from their rented home to Ana’s patch under a sono (rosewood) tree.

Before husband Agus Sutianto, 30, heads to work in a local supermarket’s fruit section he retrieves a crude timber frame hidden behind a building and ties this to the trunk with twine.  Ana goes to an agent to buy newspapers and magazines, which are then pegged for display.

Ana is not alone.  Afifah, 3,  plays with a radio or looks at the children’s comics.  These show wide-eyed princesses floating in a fantasy land of towering castles and pale-skinned youth, glowing with promise.

The tabloids feature ‘celebrities’ flaunting their baubles, breasts and spoilt kids.  Wherever this world of frippery and fads exists, it’s as distant as Mars from the crush and toil of Jalan Danau Sentani Raya.

The site may be ideal for sales, offering motorists a long view and space to stop, but it’s no place to park a kid. There’s little shade. Burning rubbish and car exhaust fumes set pedestrians coughing.  The background noise is as shrill as some covers, with horror and haunting stories the loudest.

The upside is access to a PLN toilet.  The negative is staff thinking they have the right to read without paying.

Ana wants to buy a lock-up rombong (small shed), like one selling cigarettes just two meters downroad.  Here little Afifah would be safe and snacks could be sold.

A two-meter long rombong would cost about Rp 5 million (US$ 500).  A cheaper alternative would be a kaki lima (five feet – a mobile food stall) for a third of the price, but no shelter from sun and rain.

All the couple’s earnings (Agus gets Rp 1.5 million (US$150) a month) go on paying bills so advancement opportunities are limited. 

Ana doesn’t grieve for what might have been. “I wanted to go to University, but how was that ever possible?” she said. 

“Now I want the best for our daughters.  I want them to be independent, not exploited.  With a good education you can get knowledge that will serve till you pass away.

“I want honesty in government and transparency in decision making. I want to know how the rich get their money and where the taxes go. I used to support the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Prosperous Justice Party – PKS), but not now we know the leaders are corrupt.

“I’m not into escapism. I’m not interested in entertainment, gossip and sinetron (soap opera) news– everyone has their headaches.

“All Indonesian children should have the best education opportunities, wherever they live.  The government’s job is to help the poor and distribute wealth fairly, but we should also be prepared to change.

“Religion is important to me. It should be about tolerance. Terrorism is not Islamic teaching.

“We have the will and conviction to do better.  I don’t accept that our destiny is written and cannot be altered. We must believe that things can be better.

“I know that God helps those who help themselves.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post, 8 July 2013)

##