The Life in Jakarta #8-Exploring The Slum Area 2

November 22.2015

[I went to the slums in Jakarta #2 ]

This is the second article of the slums in Jakarta. The slum area is located in central Jakarta, close to Mangarrai station (refer to the map below). Even though Mangarrai is located in central Jakarta with many accessible train lines, the area around the station is very poor, which I find miss-matching. In the previous articles, I introduces Indonesias largest Mosque and the Tower of Independence, both of these are in Gambir area,  Sudiman area is modern and beautiful business district. There is a very big contrast between rich and poor.

As I wrote in the previous article, the further you get away from the river, the less slum-like it will become, therefore I returned to the river once again. I decided to walk alongside the river in the area that I visited a while ago. On the opposite riverside, I saw young people handling chickens and doves.

Alongside the riverside, the streets were made of concrete; it was completely different from the area with cheap houses on muddy area. As I was walking, many people showed up. It looks like I was in the backyard of their houses. From the houses children came pouring in to the streets and they started to play. The children were chasing thin cats. This place is considerably poor, but I didn’t feel that it is the poorest.

In the first picture above, the child was looking at me with the expression “who is this person?”. The adults looked at me as I was a rarity. As I proceeded further, one older man said something to me in Indonesian. Since I don’t understand, I just kept smiling. Maybe, he thought that I was lost and wanted to show me the way. When I said “Japan”, he said “ahh ahh” and smiled, and told the other people around “She is Japanese”. After that everyone smiled to me. The picture below is a snack shop, the man in the left was gentle.

The left picture is a prayer room for Muslims. Even though it was a rather poor area, they still have prayer rooms. The right picture is a dentist? Or a denture shop? Is this a decent place?

On the street, I found a shop that was selling something that looked like spring rolls. I was hungry so I wanted to try and buy it. She was preparing the spring rolls in a rather unclean kitchen, but since she will deep fry them it will be okay. I didn’t know the price, so I gave her 50 yen and said “one”, but she gave me 5. One spring roll equals 10 yen. The lady said something in Indonesian, but since I couldn’t understand, I said “This is good!”. She was happy that I praised her spring rolls. Everybody showed a friendly attitude.

The spring roll contained rice noodle and carrots, the vinyl bag contained some sort of chili sauce. It was good without sauce. I didn’t get stomach ache.

Once again I strayed away from the slum area, so I tried to get on the right track to the poorest slum area (as showed in the picture below). Even though I think it was possible to access the slum area by going through the narrow streets between the houses, I didn’t have enough courage. Furthermore, they would have looked at me with weird faces.

Then, young street musicians showed up. They were performing musical pieces in order to collect small money. They only received 10 or 20 yen bills. The music that they played was a traditional folk music from areas in Jakarta. The street musicians was about to go through the small paths, so I followed them. I recorded this in the movie below. Many people showed up, and children were following the musicians. In the later part of the movie, older people were playing something that looked like chess.

After recording the movie, I tried to give the musicians some money, but they were already gone.

Then I left the slum area and went to the west side of Mangarrai station. On the west side there is no river, and the shops looked more organized and clean, and I got a slightly better impression. But when I was walking, I could see poor looking houses close from the ditch, so I went there.

One the bridge, the children was trying to catch something with the strings. I could feel the scent of ammonia. I think that if I would live in a place like this, my clothes would reek.

It is maybe perhaps little bit hard to see, but the children are doing something on top of the roof. The buildings look like they are about to collapse.

There are so many children in front of the houses. They were riding their bikes. Even further ahead, many children were playing. I guess they are big families.

The children were playing. When I got close, a boy gave me a wooden stick with the expression “here use this”.

They had many doves. I wonder what they will use them for. Since my sister hates doves, I was wondering if she would scream if she came here. I was thinking like this while walking.

At the end of the way there was a road block, so I went back. Once exiting to a bigger road, there were many bikes. Walking around the station took around 4 hours. Since I was tired I went back to Mangarrai station, I went to Starbucks and had a cold frappuccino. The price for it was 20 times more than the price for that days lunch. ( in fact I got full of 2 spring rolls)

I think that I am already blessed since I can experience slightly luxury areas as well as poorer areas.