Bekasi child scavengers get new school at garbage dump

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.