Bekasi child scavengers get new school at garbage dump

By Juliane Gunardono

JAKARTA (JP): Yan no longer bothers to shoo away the millions of flies which, like him, live off the endless heaps of municipal garbage in Bantar Gebang, in Bekasi, east of Jakarta.

He has lived here for five of the 10 years of his life, and he is used to spending his days in the middle of dirty plastic bags, used tissues, empty bottles, toilet paper and all the other things people from Jakarta, Bogor and Tangerang throw away.

About five hours a day he works as a scavenger on the 136- hectare dump site, like 500 or so other children living in Bantar Gebang, searching for anything which can be cleaned up and sold.

"The garbage is our living," he says. "And it is our playground, too."

Yan earns about 20 percent of the family income, which is about Rp 8,000 (less than US$1) a day. On lucky days, he is able to bring home leftovers from somebody's table to share with his family; vegetables, rice or even meat, which are boiled up for dinner.

Yan's world has been full of garbage for every day of the last five years. Garbage surrounds him everywhere, in the huts, between the trees and bushes and at school. Yan drinks water collected from rudimentary wells. The water is also used for washing and cooking, and, like most children living in the area, Yan sometimes gets intestinal worms.

In spite of that, Yan is one of the "lucky" children of Bantar Gebang.

Unlike most of his friends, he has been attending school since the age of four. This is unusual, as only 138 of about 700 children in Bantar Gebang attend school regularly. Most parents are reluctant to send their children to school because they depend on them to earn between 10 percent and 30 percent of the family income.

As far back as Yan can remember, his school was always rather ramshackle, like all other places in the area. "When it rained, we all had to run home because the roof leaked," he said. "And the tables were broken. It was a rotten building."

But lately, there have been quite a lot of changes in Yan's kampong which abuts the garbage dump.

Three months ago, volunteers of the new Lentera Hati group, which is part of the Yayasan Mata Hati organization, visited the inhabitants of the Bantar Gebang area. They started work straight away, advising people about cleanliness and health. They gave medicine to the children, 100 percent of whom have intestinal worms and 80 percent anemia, and they built 18 new water pumps, which provide the people from Bantar Gebang with clean water.

And finally, they built a new school for the children, maybe the first place in Bantar Gebang completely free of garbage.

The Bantar Gebang school is an informal school, which means that most of the students do not attend class when a decent delivery of garbage arrives. Subjects are tailored to the students' way of life. For example, there are more lessons about health and hygiene than in other schools. The teachers, too, have to adjust to the children's way of living.

"These children are not like other children," explained Tuti, who has worked here as a teacher for five years. "They are wild, they are used to earning their own living, they want to play like other children, but they can't. And they need special teaching, because most of them cannot attend school every day. When the trucks come, they run off."

At the inauguration of the new school on Saturday last week, the children from Bantar Gebang did not seem like little adults who have to work up to 14 hours a day as scavengers and who seldom have time to play like other children. The place in front of the new school was full of delightful, laughing children in neat white and red school uniforms, eager to get all they could out of this big party.

Only a few boys stood behind the crowds of parents, children and volunteers of Lentera Hati, not wearing school uniforms like the others but instead wearing their usual dirty shirts and shorts.

"I live too far from here," said one of them. "My parents don't allow me to go to school, because it would involve too much time."

But even though he is not able to go to school, this celebration was a happy day off work for him.

"We want this to be a special day in their lives, which they won't forget," explained Andi B. Salim from Lentera Hati.

"They not only need health and education, they also need entertainment, an opportunity to be real children."

So on that day, the new school was filled with balloons, and three clowns entertained the children by balancing pots on sticks. In addition to that, the cleanest children were given presents, like new schoolbags to encourage them not to forget what they have learned about health.

"We hope the new school with its three classrooms, new wooden tables, proper toilets, a teachers' room and a library, will make the parents more aware of the importance of their children attending school to achieve a better way of living, for when they are grown up," said Andi.

Even though the children do not have to pay school fees, the main problem, Andi said, "is not money, but the education of the parents".

But that does not seem to be true for all of the parents. The population of the area has increased from 638 households to about 1,000 in the last three months due to the economic crises, and earning a living has become harder for the families of Bantar Gebang.

"I can't afford to sent my children to school," one of the fathers said sadly. "I only earn about Rp 3,000 a day now. I need my children to work."

There is still lots of work to be done in Bantar Gebang. The new school building is only the beginning of improving their lot. "Aid does not stop with the building of this school. Lentera Hati will continue the health program here," explained Andi.