You get thoroughly soaked very easily in a hundred metre dash in the tropics. Near the head of the lane giving onto Thambrin City the first drops gave insufficient notice. (After twenty-five months in the region the skies remain largely indecipherable.) A quick dash along with a number of others then for the tower, taking care with the pot-holes, darting motor-cycles and bajajs particularly. Finally, mincing steps over the treacherous tiled stairs, most dangerous of all.
The panama keeps the scone more or less dry. Nevertheless, one resembles the riff-raff of the lower rat-infested ground now. Poor bedraggled humanity. A corner somewhere away from the aircon to dry off. Teh kosong panas—tea without milk or sugar, hot—just the shot waiting it out. Two hundred metres further Grand Indonesia housed all the boutiques, sumptuous furniture stores, jewelers and parfumeries, as well as Kinokuniya Bookshop at Lower Ground, which usually had the Jakarta Post by eleven.
Outside the window of the Eatery the little operation underway around the stairs took a few minutes to comprehend. Young ragged street boys coming and going, to and fro, circling and hovering. Completely drenched the lads, despite the umbrellas most of them carted. Some of the umbrellas were furled; a good number giant-size, quite in excess of requirements.
To and fro. Dashing quickly here and there where they had spotted something. A good number barefoot like the day they were born. In that kind of rain shoes of any sort were redundant, some dangerous. High-gloss tiles over all the terraces around the perimeter of the buildings.
Larking and hijinks. Delightful kids. Bright, alert, ready for anything. Coming up through the lane one received a royal reception from the scamps. Drawing a response from the tall Bule, the White gives them a spurt. Shocked when their quarry unexpectedly stops to answer; all the more hearing some words of their own language. That was unexpected. Begging was not often part of it.
Twenty-seven days now in Tanah Abang, inner Jakarta, without a single, solitary Bule to be seen on Jalan Tubun, or anywhere else in-between it and the Malls. There is a particular quarter on the other side of the Malls where the Bule congregate at the Pizza Huts, pubs and department chains. Anna the Film Location Producer escorted the author through Sarinah a couple of days prior, assuming her new friend would naturally want to acquaint himself, perhaps take lunch at KFC or Starbucks.
Two days of rain meant a confinement to the room. The thought of a taxi in that splash was frightening. Sun, humidity and teeming rain to contend with in the Tropics. The floods two or three months earlier must have been really something. Incredibly, the day after the heaviest recent downpour the river beside the hotel had cleared most of the piles of garbage, even the worst of it thickly littering the banks either side. Almost a bone fide river again. The Ciliwung, chief water-way of this city of ten million.
This particular downpour now occurred a day or two before the deluge proper. Dramatic pelting rain; thunder-claps like Hollywood's very best. The only thing possible is to dumbly sit and stare. Even the locals can be caught doing the same. Out under the torrent bare-headed seemed demented. Yet every so often one sees people pacing through such downpours, literally without batting an eye-lid.
The rain that brought out the young scamps was not the worst of its kind; in the end little more than a quarter hour. As the rain continued the lads outside the window grew in number. Sometimes they came in pairs; sometimes threesomes, marching across the tiles. A party from the right meeting one from the left. Most of them utterly soaked through to the skin. Messi, Standard & Chartered, MU tops clinging, all bright colours; shorts and barefoot. Many could not have stood taller than 1.2 metres; later older, taller boys joined. School holidays in Indonesia, or Jakarta at least. Whether these kids had formal education was a question.
The first few times they came by with their customers one mistook a family connection. There was so much traffic to and fro the hints quickly mounted. Often when the boys came with their putative elders they walked outside the shield of the umbrella. One or two of the escorted women carrying shopping, the umbrella hoisted high overhead and leaving the rain pouring over the escort. Clearly this was something other than a loving family scenario.
Some of lads were significantly shorter than their umbrellas. First on the scene immediately the opportunity presented were children no more than six or seven years of age. Subsequent downpours in the days ahead again brought out the little tackers before any others. The shields borne were not of the cheapest, flimsiest kind either; none of the wires broken. All without exception clean and presentable and in sunny colours. More than one of the umbrellas was no less than a serious fashion item. The handsomest showed the street an edible orange tone, fringed with manicured green. A faux-wooden handle terminated in the shape of a golf club, an old-style wood of which there may be no more on the contemporary fairway. Gary Player generation this; preceding even Nicklaus.
The bearer here had possibly never seen golf even on the television. Many of the houses in the slums here in the shadow of the Malls are bereft of TV. However, courses there certainly are to be found in Jakarta, not too distant in fact. On the exploration of the high-end residential quarter with Budi the driver there was a gated community where a course was included. Hawkers, peddlers, pot-holes and dirt; hunger, ragged clothing—behind manned gates and hedges Florida all ablossom. Had this boy lugging been aware he might have had a game with his pals in the alleys with a plastic or cardboard ball—holes in the roads available.
Ten thousand to one the kid had no idea why the piece terminated in that stupid lump you couldn't get a grip on. Gila—crazy.
The matter should not have taken so long to guess. In this case the author had been slow. Enterprising lads. At the first sign of the downpour up the boys had run from their slum carting their best show umbrellas for the business with the Mall people caught without. People needing cover for return with their shopping to their cars and apartments; office-workers to their towers; women in fine gossamer orange-blossom dresses, curled hair, heels that forbade running.
One or two of the brolleys stood in the hands of these urchins like spears or javelins. The golfing example for instance. Somewhere not too far distant from the Malls a fellow had once upon a time putted over a tricky green toward a hole on a course while an attendant held this particular umbrella over his crouched, concentrated figure.... Curled around the cup and out! — Damn! Wouldn’t you know.... — Bad luck sir. That was in.
One bright-eyed drowned rat returned to the concourse carrying notes in his little mitts. A generous customer. Across the way Lotteria's bright luscious colours advertising burgers and fries. RightO. In we go then.
Three million children live in Jakarta, either at school or working. Recently Jokowi—Joko Wiwodo—the new Governor of the capital—likely the next President of the Republic - recently announced a plan to make the city child-friendly, as he had apparently previously managed in Solo, central Java, during a term as Governor there. Green spaces, policing abuse and exploitation, &etc.
Dusk out front of the hospital on Jalan Tubun the scamps stage impressive kite-flying competitions. Carrying their pieces under their arm they march across to the grassy plot and slowly unwinding let fly. When their birds catch a drift they can be hoisted sixty, seventy metres in the sky, riding the currents, soaring on high. (One recalls LKY in Singapore reminiscing about his own kite-flying days as a little boy—if the man could be believed.) Older lads in mid-late teens come up from the slums on their bikes bringing caged pigeons to release two-handed in a thrusting gesture before them out front of Thambrin City, possibly because of the slight rise.
NB. In the chief item on page one today headlined: Stunted, overweight generation: “Indonesia is facing the double burden of malnutrition that refers to the coexistence of both malnutrition and overnutrition affecting its children’s health…. A third of children under five stunted…. 36% of children under the age of five in Indonesia suffer from stunted growth…. This means that stunting rates are lower in Vietnam (23%) and the Philippines (32%)…. Indonesia is equal to much poorer countries, such as Myanmar (35%), Cambodia (40%) and Laos (44%)."
Jakarta Post Thursday July 11, 2013
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