NENGAH LATRA - TESTED BY FIRE, NOT FOUND WANTING

It was an evening I Nengah Latra can never forget – 3 March 1986. The 19-year old Balinese farmer’s son who had his heart set on a career in the army was taking part in a cremation ceremony.

A kerosene lantern wasn’t working properly. He opened the glass and tried to adjust the wick. Tihe lamp exploded, showering him with burning fuel.

After 42 days in the Karangase hospital Latra was sent home to his village in East Bali, only partly healed. His blistered wrist was fused to his upper arm. His fingers on one hand were webbed, like a duck’s foot, his flesh appallingly mutilated. He was tortured by pain – and bitterness.

“I was angry with God, my family, everyone,” he said. “My hopes of joining the military and breaking free from poverty were gone. I thought it was the end of my life. I was ashamed. For two years I hid, avoiding contact.”

But that’s impossible in Indonesia, particularly in a small, dirt-poor farming community. Agus Safyi, a one-legged field worker from a Yogya rehabilitation centre found the physically and emotionally twisted man and suggested he go west for training.

Latra resisted for several months. “In my village Java was another country, far away. Even if I’d flown to the US people would still say I’d gone to Java and would probably never return. There had been cases of Javanese collecting Balinese cripples promising work, but using them to beg.

“It took months before I persuaded myself that it was not a trick, and much longer to get my family to let me go. Yet my real motive was to hide somewhere else, to disappear.

“Eventually I went and it was the turning point in my life. I met these extraordinary people who were in a far worse situation, yet they were happy and productive. I realized I’d been wasting my time on self pity.”

In Yogya he was trained in radio repairs and did so well the center’s founder, New Zealander Colin McLennan, arranged for Latra to have plastic surgery.

The operation was a success and he could now use both arms and hands. The anger started to ebb. But back home he found his new abilities difficult to use. In a village without mains power few appliances needed fixing.

He returned to Yogya and after working as a cleaner learned more skills, including English and management. Eventually he joined the rehabilitation centre staff. On regular trips to Bali he searched for other disabled people who could benefit from training.

Many were victims of the polio epidemic that swept Indonesia in the 1970s. Others were congenitally crippled or had been injured in accidents. All hid their anguish from the stares of neighbors, silently seething, compounding the agony.

Their misery was twisted further by diehard cultural beliefs. Surely the families had badly sinned to be so terribly afflicted? This was their fate, and nothing could be done.

“Government statistics claimed only three per cent to the population was disabled,” said Latra, “yet I knew the real figure was much higher, with even more in Nusa Tenggara. There was a need for a rehabilitation centre in Bali, but no money.”

He put together a proposal and sent it to the British Embassy. Within two weeks the sum sought, Rp 75 million (US$ 8,000) had been granted. The governor of Bali gave a building originally set up for the handicapped, but left empty because there was no operating budget.

The large foreign community in Bali stepped in with resources and the center was a success. Then came the Bali bomb in October 2002. Most non-Indonesians fled the island.

“Our organization was unconscious,” said Latra. “I prayed to God: ‘Should I give up and close? Run away, do something new?’” But one outsider did stay in Bali, Kiwi tour operator Jan Mantjika. She helped found a support group.

“The NZ Embassy endorsed Latra and I was impressed with his enthusiasm and integrity,” said Mrs Mantjika. “He understood Balinese culture. He knew what the disabled were thinking and how difficult it was to become an acceptable member of the community. But he was doing everything himself.”

Among the 202 people killed in the first Bali bomb was an Englishwoman, Annika Linden. Her grieving fiancé, finance trader Mark Weingard set up a foundation to help bomb victims and also supported Latra’s enterprise.

The philosophy behind the Annika Linden Foundation (ALF) is that ‘positive action is the only way to counter the negative impact of this event’.

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the tragedy next October the ALF will open a building in the Denpasar suburb of Tohpati to house four charities supporting the disabled.

Latra’s enterprise, now named Puspadibali (Bali Foundation for empowering people with disabilities) has so far helped rehabilitate, make and fit prosthetics for more than 1,140 people. It will be housed in the one-stop shop for the disabled, integrating services.

The present workshop will be used to repair and store wheelchairs

It all sounds good and grand, but Latra looks forward to the day when there’s no need for overseas-funded charities and altruistic foreigners to help the disabled. That’s because the government will fulfil its constitutional responsibilities to care for all citizens, and the handicapped will be accepted into society.

The Indonesian Parliament ratified the UN Convention on the rights of Persons with Disabilities last month (Oct) four years after signing the document.

Latra and his colleagues, including volunteers from Australia, hope this means action will follow, sidewalks will be made safe for wheelchairs, access to buildings will be up ramps, toilets will have grab rails and employers will recruit the competent disfigured.

In a society where staff selection is often based on youth and good looks, this climb over the barriers will be near vertical.

“That’s my dream, but it will take a long time, maybe a generation,” Latra said. “There are so many things that need to change. We often find people who cannot be trained because they haven’t been to school, so we first have to teach them to read and write.
“Ten years ago charities’ reputation depended on what they were doing for the people – now the issue is what they’re doing with the community.”

Latra no longer wears long-sleeved shirts and doesn’t keep his hands in his pockets. Curiously this means his livid scars are barely noticed. The man’s personality and unflagging advocacy dominates, pushing aside any disability. He’s married and has four children.

Does he ever think that if he hadn’t been burned he would have joined the army and might now be an officer?

“Perhaps, and I might have been killed,” he said.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 14 Nov 2011)

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CAMPAIGN FOR RIGHTS OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Push for handicapped rights in East Java © Duncan Graham 2008

A campaign is underway in East Java to force the next provincial governor to ease the plight of the disabled.

Spearheaded by prolific award-winning author and activist Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim, 59, of Malang, a five-member committee called Bhakti Nurani Yayasan (Foundation for the Handicapped) is demanding gubernatorial candidates reveal their policies on access by the handicapped to public facilities.

The election campaign for the position of East Java governor is well underway, though voting will not be held till later this year. Ratna said the candidates had yet to respond to letters.

She hoped to get wide public support from famous people and major companies willing to lead the way in adapting their buildings to make them accessible to all.

Indonesia has signed the 2007 UN Convention on the Rights and Dignity of People with Disabilities, but Ratna claimed there had been no action.

“There are about two million disabled people in East Java, but it seems that we are the forgotten ones,” she said.

“The authorities think we are not important and have no potential. This campaign isn’t for me – it’s for everyone who can’t get access to public facilities.”

Ratna is confined to a wheelchair after suffering from a complex form of rickets, a bone-wasting disease. Despite the severity of her handicap, which means she cannot use a keyboard and has to dictate her works, she’s had more than 300 short stories, poems and articles published.

Ratna said she had visited Australia and the US where building owners and civil authorities were obliged to install special parking areas, wheelchair ramps, wide doorways and toilets for the handicapped.

This is not her first attempt at change. In 1994 she was given a national award by then President Soeharto for agitating on behalf of the disabled – arguing that the public should see the person, not the problem, and that all citizens have the right to use public space.

“Roads in Malang and other cities are so crowded and in such bad repair that using a wheelchair is hazardous,” she said. “Travel is a real difficulty in Indonesia, especially in the villages.

“I have to be carried up stairs in public buildings. Handicapped people don’t want to rely on others. Because someone has a physical disability doesn’t mean that we can’t use our brains and contribute to society.

“There should also be a quota ensuring employers include people with disabilities in their workplaces.

“This campaign isn’t just for the handicapped. It’s a human rights issue that should concern all members of society. I want the media to take this up as a serious issue and stop focussing on matters like celebrities’ divorces.

“It’s my duty to try and get these important changes in place before I die.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post Friday 9 May 08)

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RATNA INDRASWARI IBRAHIM

SEE THE PERSON, NOT THE PROBLEM:
CONSIDER THE IDEAS, NOT THE MYTHS
© Duncan Graham 2007

She's one of Indonesia's most prolific short-story writers with more than 300 published. Plus novels, poetry and a basket full of articles. For these she's collected several awards. When she's not writing she's pushing social and cultural causes.

All this makes Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim worthy of respect; add to this her work practices.

For Ratna is severely crippled and cannot write or use a keyboard; all her stories have to be dictated and transcribed. Duncan Graham met the determined author at her home in Malang, East Java.


While the interviews for this story were being conducted Malang was gripped by a bizarre family tragedy. A young Mum who seems to have suffered emotional, domestic and financial problems – and was clearly mentally unbalanced -poisoned her four children, then herself.

Adding to the tragedy is that the mother (ironically named Mercy) used her handphone to video the deaths of her youngsters. She then arranged their bodies neatly on the bed before committing suicide. The local media published the pictures.

Don't bother ploughing through newspaper archives for more details – just wait for Ratna's next story.

"I'm thinking about it," she said. "The seed is definitely there. I have to get my ideas from newspapers and books. It's not easy getting around."

But she does, and has already visited Australia, the US (where she had leadership training), and China. In some places mobility has been simpler than in her homeland. In many Western nations pavements should be smooth and level, and public buildings must have wheelchair-access ramps and wide doors for the physically challenged.

Ratna has been campaigning for similar laws in Indonesia for decades. Back in 1994 she was given a national award by then President Soeharto for her agitation on behalf of the disabled – arguing that the public should see the person, not the problem, and that all citizens have the right to use public space.

But architects and town planners largely remain unconcerned with the plight of Indonesia's handicapped; the legislation is still not in place, ensuring the disabled usually stay indoors.

"I should start a political party," a frustrated Ratna grumbled as an aside. "There are ten million disabled voters in Indonesia. Maybe then the lawmakers would start to pay attention."

It's not just the indifference of politicians that keeps the crippled out of sight. To have a child who is labeled abnormal is often regarded as a curse, proof to the superstitious that the family has committed some grave sin.

Fortunately for Ratna her parents - who came from Padang in West Sumatra, a region with a reputation for practising heavy-duty Islam - were open minded, progressive and liberal,

"I was born in 1949 and had a good and happy childhood," she said. "I could swim and loved playing outside. I was considered to be a tomboy."

When she was about ten tragedy struck. At first it was thought she'd contracted poliomyelitis, though later diagnoses indicate it may be rickets, a disease that softens bones. Whatever the cause, she lost the use of her limbs and has had to rely on others for her daily needs.

"For the first five years or so I was very angry – particularly with God because everyone else in the family was so fit," she said. "All my five sisters were beautiful. However I think I've only written one story expressing that anger – and I can't remember the title.

"My mother, Siti Bidasari, died only five years ago. She lived long enough to see and enjoy her daughter's success. I'm not trying to be immodest, but she was very proud of me.

"When I was young she told me: 'You cannot walk, but you can write. Not everyone who walks can write. You will do much more than other people because God has given you brains to use.'

"It's true that I may not have become a writer if I hadn't been disabled. I love plants and all living things, and I wanted to become a farmer.

"God made me like this so I could be writer. Originally I wrote for myself – and to please my parents, to show them that I could do other things. I didn't want them crying because I was sick."

The home environment was ideal. Dad, Saleh Ibrahim was fluent in numerous languages, an idealistic lawyer who quit his profession over issues of principle to become a businessman. The family did well - it owned a major cinema and the house was full of books. If it was a toss up between spending on haberdashery or hardbacks the novels usually won.

It was also a remarkably tolerant environment. Young Ratna was sent to a Christian school, liked some of the rituals and asked her parents if they could celebrate Christmas with a tree. They agreed – and they didn't prohibit her from talking to the prostitutes at a nearby brothel.

"I was taught not to see people for their faults," she said, "but to look at their characters piece-by-piece." It's a quality she has taken into her literature.

Mum was an admirer of intellectual and diplomat Agus Salim who also came from Padang. He was one of the founders of modern Indonesia and a writer of the Constitution who stressed the value of education.

While other kids were running the streets, kicking balls and testing the limits of their bodies and the physical environment, Ratna was exploring the limitless world of imagination.

She was exposed to the works of Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Hardy, Alexandre Dumas and others. Her parents would suggest books she might like – including Karl Marx's manifesto Das Kapital. This was before Soeharto introduced a ban on all works by communists.

"My parents said they would stand by me and visit me in jail if I decided to join the PKI (communist party), but they'd disown me if I was imprisoned for corruption," she said.

She didn't become a Red, but Marx influenced her to consider the plight of the poor, marginalized and dispossessed – the people who now feature in her stories.

Ratna went to Malang's Brawijaya University where her friends had to carry her up stairs to lectures. She wanted to learn more about human psychology but lost interest and channeled her energies into writing and activism.

For 13 years she chaired a Non-Government Organization (NGO) for disabled people, then founded an NGO concerned with environmental issues. She also works for Yayasan Kebudayaan Panjoeng, a cultural foundation to stimulate and preserve local history and the arts.

Her once secluded 93-year old home in central Malang is now overshadowed by a hotel on one side, and a high school on the other. When prayers and public announcements are made on what must be East Java's most raucous and deafening sound system, the mind hibernates for self-protection.

It hardly seems the ideal environment for creativity, but Ratna resting on a bed in her library while she structures her next sentence to be transcribed by secretary and poet Ragil Sukriwul, doesn't seem to mind. She has many visitors who bring her stories that may eventually find a way into her work.

Then there are the students seeking the magic elixir: 'Please tell me how to write.' Ratna's answer is blunt and direct: "Just do it!" So what sort of courses should they take? "Education is not the same as intelligence."

Relationships between the sexes are a major theme in her stories, with situations growing out of male domination of women in a society that's overwhelmingly dogmatic and masculine, and often violent.

Her female characters are usually semi-urban Muslims struggling with life and injustice, battling to raise families while maintaining a sense of self-worth. Their situations are real. Her popularity depends on her readers identifying with the characters and their daily lives. Surprisingly many of her admirers are men.

There are two main streams of women's literature in Indonesia, the traditional romantic novel (love lit) and the new kid on the shelves, sastra wangi (literally 'perfumed writing') but known elsewhere as chick lit.

Ratna rejects both as "pop writing". Despite her distaste she recognizes that the boom in sastra wangi featuring metropolitan teens coming to grips with their sexuality is encouraging young women to learn more about their bodies, human nature and the world they've inherited. "Better read than gossip," she conceded.

The success of these novelettes (check the number of titles in your nearest bookstore) clearly shows there's a great need among curious youngsters constrained by culture and imposed taboos. But it's the open discussion of sex that worries the 58-year old author.

"Sex belongs to God," she said. "It's a matter between two souls, it's not an issue that should be discussed in the open, or treated as vulgar which is how it's handled by men."

She lumps feminism into the same category because of the stress on sex – though in a Western reading of her work she is clearly a feminist writer striving to empower.

The traditional romantic novel is given the flick because it reinforces what Ratna calls the 'Cinderella complex'. This has a passive young woman waiting for some bloke to rescue her from hardships, then transport her to an abode of bliss. How he's constructed this is of no concern to author or reader.

In this genre the woman does little more than hang around, braid her locks, keep her legs together till marriage and look enchanting. She doesn't have to use her initiative or generate ideas. In fact any outburst of intelligence would probably frighten away Mr Right who has a fixation on body, not brains.

Sadly, claims Ratna, Indonesia is an "autistic country." Most women still believe in the Cinderella fantasy, even as they pummel clothes in streambeds, hump water up hills and fall pregnant too early and too often to male chauvinists.

She also attacks public perceptions of Islam as a religion that oppresses women. "People confuse culture with religion," she said. "Islam protects women's rights. It's the culture that creates the role of women in society.

"I want my readers to think about women, how they are treated, to understand their fate. I want to talk humanity – not feminism or individualism and selfishness.

"Our keraton (Javanese regal) culture promotes mutual support. Human beings were created to help each other. Readers will get what they want from my books."

(First published in the SundayPost 17 June 07)##


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