A day with a zookeeper at Ragunan

Maman A.S., 48, has worked at the Ragunan Zoological Park in South Jakarta for over 17 years. Now head keeper of the zoo's nursery, a rehabilitation and temporary sanctuary, the Bogor native lives among his charges in the care center. In conversation with The Jakarta Post's contributor William Furney.

JAKARTA (JP): I'm up until the early hours of the morning, so I don't get out of bed before 9 a.m. Half my house is given over to animals that need a lot of care. There's a malu-malu (marsupial) who's very stressed because he was kept as a pet before being donated to the zoo. He's always curled up in a ball. They're very shy and nocturnal by nature, but he doesn't want to move at all.

I have a big cup of coffee and smoke a couple of kretek (clove cigarettes) before I do anything. My room is in the middle of the animals' houses and bird cages, so there's a lot of noise and things going on. At one end, the lions are roaring and the birds are squawking back at the other end.

There's four other staff at the nursery, and they get on with their work as soon as they come in. I'll go to the central store in the zoo grounds and get a special food mix for the baby birds. We've got a lot of cockatoos here and some of them are very stressed out. One of the adult birds has lost all his feathers because he wasn't looked after well as a pet. His owners gave him chocolate and other foods that are not good for cockatoos. But he's getting on well with the other birds.

It annoys me that Indonesians go to markets and buy endangered animals. It's all about status, as far as they're concerned. Nine times out of 10, the animals are mistreated or poorly fed, and we end up with then. I wish people would stop buying them.

There's a critical care center here, where we have baby cockatoos under lamps. They have to be syringe-fed warm formula. Some of them are only a couple of weeks old and are tiny. Other birds in the center had been fighting in the zoo's aviaries, so they've come here for a while to cool off.

At about midday, the cages and houses have to be cleaned out, and I muck in with the other staff. Among the animals we have now are a baby pigmy hippopotamus, dozens of otters, leopard cats, lions, a Bengal tiger, a fawn, an eagle and various monkeys, including a gibbon and Javanese and crab-eating macaques. Some were given to us after the police raided markets, others were born in the zoo and the rest are from the public. We've had the lions and tigers since they were six hours old. They were rejected. They're big enough now to leave the nursery but there's no space for them elsewhere in the zoo. So they have to stay here for the time being. Someday they'll move out.

My favorite of all the animals here are the otters. They were born here as part of our breeding program. They're so funny when they run up their cages and play with me. I have to be careful, though, as they bite. I like feeding them fish and chicken. We require a lot of food for the nursery but it's never a problem. The zoo has built a new central food store and all the food is subsidized by the Jakarta administration. We've never had any financial problems, even during the early days of krismon (monetary crisis).

Apart from stress, the animals here are healthy. My brother is a vet at the zoo's clinic and he comes every day to check on them.

I have an afternoon nap at about 2 p.m., as I stay up during the night to take care of the babies, especially the new birds. I became head keeper of the nursery and moved into the zoo in 1992. Before that, I used to sleep in the zoo sometimes. I slept with the baby animals, like otters and tigers, in my room.

I'm Muslim, but only on my KTP (identity card), and I don't pray. I've never married and had a family - the animals are my children. For me, this job is more of a vocation, which is just as well because living in the zoo means no time off. When I get bored or stressed, I go walking in the fields and hills outside the zoo. They call me "Tarzan of the Jungle" because I don't like the city. I take plant cuttings and bring them back to the nursery, where I have a collection of potted plants. My salary is small, less than Rp 1 million, but it doesn't concern me. I'm happy here and will continue to do this job for the next eight years, until I reach retirement age. If they still want me after that, I'll stay. If not, I'll probably go back to Bogor, where I still have my parents.

The evening is my leisure time, and I like to take care of my plants and play with the otters. After that, I look after the baby birds. Now I'm preparing for our new arrival - another pygmy hippo, which we'll take from the mother, as she'd hurt it. About 4 a.m., I fall into bed, these days on my own."