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Blog Post Posted August 4, 2009, 6:05 am by Roger Burks

Exploring Jakarta's hidden city

Country: Indonesia
Topics: Water/Sanitation, Urban, Marginalized Groups, Livelihoods, Environment, Displacement, Citizen Involvement

Mercy Corps Indonesia's Julisa Tambunan (foreground) and Elpido Meido interview residents of Jakarta's Penjaringan slum, taking turns as reporter and photographer to gain experience in documentary field work. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

In North Jakarta, Indonesia, there is city hidden under a long highway overpass. It's a place where residents live in boxes made from scrap wood — many of these places no bigger than cupboards or small closets — perched on knee-height stilts in case it floods. A system of open sewers serve as toilets. Even in the blazing light of day, it's dim under here, small gaslights and cooking fires illuminating all manner of small commerce from shanty restaurants with bits of food on plates to a group of transvestites readying themselves for whatever the night holds.

This place is called Penjaringan, and it is the biggest slum in Jakarta — home to thousands of individuals and families. It is where we brought more than a dozen students to continue the writing and photography training we began yesterday in the classrooms of Mercy Corps' office in South Jakarta, more than an hour away.

While our students took turns documenting the lives of Penjaringan through words and pictures, my colleague Thatcher Cook and I walked around the neighborhood to check on their progress and see if they had any questions. It gave us a chance to do a little work of our own, as well as experience the overwhelming life that exists beneath the bridge without the benefit of a translator. All we could understand was people greeting us with an always-friendly "Hello, Mister."

Because even though there is squalid poverty here, there is vitality. There is ruckus, even joy. A father walks, holding a newborn baby to his bare skin. A mother maintains an anxious distance as her young daughter wobbles along, trying to get the hang of a tiny, rusted bike. Children play as they do everywhere.

Penjaringan feels like a displacement camp, much like the ones I’ve experienced in places like Congo, post-tsunami India and Uganda. Only here, neither disaster nor conflict has forced families under the overpass: rather, they’re displaced by extreme poverty, relegated to an ever-expanding informal economy that is literally hidden from the eyes of most citizens who simply drive over it each day.

Mercy Corps is helping the neighborhood maintain better sanitation through a project called Rumah Kompos — the Composting House. Work crews collect organic and non-organic solid waste from households around Penjaringan. Organic waste is composted and turned into rich black soil, while much of the non-organic waste is recycled and transformed by local housewives into crafts like handbags. It’s a small, yet innovative way that residents can clean up the place where they live while earning an income to support their families.

Senior Writer Roger Burks under Penjaringan's overpass. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Late in the sweltering Jakarta afternoon, our students straggled back to the cars that would take us back to the office, exhausted yet abuzz about who they’d met and what they’d seen. They were journalists working in a harsh environment, asking tough questions and internalizing stories that will likely last a lifetime.

Tomorrow, the last day of our workshop here, Thatcher and I will help them edit photographs and shape stories from their experiences in Penjaringan. In the afternoon, we’ll have a slideshow of pictures and our students will read their stories.

Together, we’ll help give words to those silenced by the roar of trucks passing overhead. We’ll show the faces of those who take shelter in tiny, dark boxes that many of us would mistake for newspaper kiosks. We’ll get their stories out to the world.