Displaced children want to study
M. Azis Tunny, The Jakarta Post, Ambon
Ambonese refugees La Hali and his wife Wa Uhi may be poor and illiterate but they do understand the importance of a good education.
In fact, Wa Uhi made enquiries as to how much it would cost to send her two girls, nine-year-old Wa Amala and seven-year-old Wa Labi, to school.
"They want to go to school, but we can't afford it" she told The Jakarta Post at her modest home.
She was forced to forget the idea when she learned there was a Rp 75,000 (US$8) admittance fee -- plus the cost of uniforms and books.
As a pedicab driver, La Hali, the sole breadwinner of the family, brings home barely enough for food, Rp 15,000 a day at most.
The family, who were displaced by the communal conflicts in Ambon in 1999, has nothing left.
After the conflicts, they returned to La Hali's hometown in Buton, Southeast Sulawesi, hoping to find jobs. When their situation did not improve, they returned to Ambon and have been renting a simple three-by-two-and-a-half-meter house in Waihaong park -- where many other refugees are staying -- for Rp 100,000 a month since May.
When the Post visited the house, four-month-old La Rahman, the couple's youngest child, was sleeping. His mother said she had no breast-milk and had resorted to rice porridge.
"My neighbor also has a baby and she used to give his leftover porridge to Rahman," said the woman, who lost two babies in their first year of life. According to data from the Institute for the Empowerment of Women and Children (LAPPAN) -- which assists displaced people living in the Waihaong park area -- many school-age refugee children have never been to school.
"We found some 100 children had dropped out, or never attended school due to financial reasons," the organization's coordinator, Baihajar Tualeka told the Post on Saturday.
Set up in 2002, the organization has run several programs that focus on the problems of women and children, primarily children's education.
Amid Waihaong's makeshift houses, the organization has established classroom and a library. However, not all parents are as keen to enroll their children in school as La Hali and Wa Uli.
The institution has also deployed 18 volunteers to other shelters in Ambon, such as in Waiheru, Waringin and Tulehi. Some of the volunteers are refugees who have been trained as educators.
With assistance from Terre de Hommes of the Netherlands, LAPPAN has, for three years now, been providing alternative education, uniforms and books for refugee children. Some 250 children in Ambon are the recipients of scholarships from the foundation.
"If the children have never attended school, we first teach them how to read and write and (after they can) then enroll them in an elementary school. If they are dropout students, we approach the school, (encouraging it) to take them," Baihajar said.
Of 3,000 residents living in Waihaong park, 85 percent are under the age of 18, but the organization is only able to assist 436 of them.
Baihajar said the government needed to give children living in shelters for displaced people an education.
"The government (officials) should visit the shelters to see for themselves what the children need. It's not just a matter of relocating them, the children's real problem is their education," he said.