Richard Oh

Nineteen
the untold tales of street vendors
Text by Irfan Kortschak Photography by Josh Estey
MercyCorps
201 pages

They prevail all over the landscapes in Jakarta. They are so prevalent, fitting into every frame of the cityscape; we don’t see them at all. They’re the invisible people of Jakarta. They are by no means marginal people, in the sense that their identities are shrouded over or their presences are obscured from our sight; they are right before our eyes but as Sidharta’s friend, Govinda, who keeps missing what’s under his nose, we just fail to cognize them. Through our inurement or our indolence, we’ve taken them for granted.

One illustrated book, commissioned by MercyCorps, entitled Nineteen will help realign our vision and direct our attention to the existence of the street vendors in Jakarta. MercyCorps commissioned a team of two of the city’s most savvy journalists, Irfan Kortschak (for the text) and Josh Estey (for the photography) to bring out the myriad tales of Jakarta’s street vendors. Their mission was simple: find out and capture in photography and text how these street vendors survive in this city.

After dithering over a method to carry on with their task for some time, Irfan and Josh eventually agreed to pick up their subjects desultorily as they hove into their sights in various parts of Jakarta. As a result, Irfan’s interview and Josh’s superb photographic studies show us a penetrating glimpse of human resilience in the face of the most challenging circumstances. The scales of our trials and tribulations are dwarfed in comparison to these people’s unwavering perseverance and simple hopes.

There’s the story of Wati, a junior high school student, who lives with his parents and four brothers in a shack made of brick, scrap wood and tarpaulins, next to a railway line that is subject to regular evictions. Her father is a garbage collector and scavenger. Mother sells snacks and drinks to customers in train cars, just as Wati does in her spare time before and after school. Wati is nonetheless the breadwinner of the family, making about Rp. 1.1 millions a month, much more than both parents. She pays for her school fees and books out of the money she earns. Their lives are precarious, under constant threat of evictions. Her father confesses, “I can remember more than a hundred times in the ten years before the fall of Soeharo. Now, it’s like the raids on pirated DVDs in the markets. They clear everyone off, but the next day everyone moves back to where they were.” Unlike most urban adolescents of her age, Wati’s outlook for the future is unclouded by any illusions. She dreams of getting a job in the office just as Sonata, the social worker, who used to live in the same squatter’s complex.

There’s also the story of Li Chung Mei, the 56-year old Cina Banteng, a member of the small community of Cina Banteng, the Chinese minority who were purged to the Tegal Alur district, in the fringes of West Jakarta, during the Dutch colonial rule in the 18th and 19th centuries. Chung Mei lives in a small place with 15 members of her family, her children and grandchildren. She makes about Rp 500.000 selling Nasi Uduk, coconut rice. She sells about 25 packets of rice at Rp 2000 a packet. Her customers are mostly her neighbors. She doesn’t make any money out of her daily business, but is able to feed her family with the leftover of the day’s fare.

Chung Mei lives peacefully among the majority of Betawi Moslems. Her problems are mostly with the bureaucrats in government offices, because of her Chinese ethnicity. “If you are Chinese, you have to show the government a certificate of Indonesian citizenship. Officially, they’ve abolished that now, but lots of offices still ask for it. Lots of Chinese didn’t have one and it was very, very expensive to get more than Rp. 2 millions. People who live around here know that we are poor. But everyone else still thinks that the Chinese are rich. I don’t even know any rich Chinese myself. When the government had a program to provide poor families with sembako (the nine staples: rice, sugar, kerosene, salt, salted fish, cooking oil, coffee, eggs and flour), they only gave to the Betawi families.”

It’s a feat of journalistic self-restraint and professionalism that ultimately makes this illustrated book invaluable. The idiosyncratic precariousness of the lives of these subjects, which range from a blind masseuse to a prostitute disguised as a soft drinks attendant, come off with sheer force of irony. Their testimonies are without pathos. Undaunted by their lots in life, they plod on with unflinching spirits. Some even dare to hope for a better tomorrow; most however can only worry about how to get by the day. Always and always they stick together as a family. Now, their stories are told. Our eyes cannot ever be averted from them when we see them on the streets.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.