'Gado-gado' vendor strives to survive economic crisis
'Gado-gado' vendor strives to survive economic crisis
By Santo Koesoebjono
JAKARTA (JP): "Since the economic recession my daily gross
earnings have dropped by almost 60 percent," related Soekardjo, a
79-year-old seller of gado-gado, the popular dish of vegetables
in a peanut sauce.
He and his wife live in a tiny wooden house in the Poncol
area, a stone's throw from the glitters of Senen plaza. They
share their house with their two youngest sons from their six
children.
His roadside stall is located in a posh area of Kebayoran
Baru, South Jakarta.
Customers vary from schoolchildren and policemen to the
wealthy, who order gado-gado while they wait in their car or send
their servant to purchase it to go.
But the monetary crisis has eaten away at business.
"We are happy we can make ends meet but we cannot save money
for emergencies," said Soekardjo.
He employs four family members. An additional burden to his
ever increasing spending is expensive medication for his heart
problem.
Soekardjo is a third generation gado-gado seller. The business
was started by his grandfather and continued by his father. With
strong support from his wife, he took up the enterprise in 1963
after trying his luck at various odd jobs.
He developed his own recipe.
"I started it in Jl. Lembang, Central Jakarta. At the time the
price of my gado-gado was about Rp 35 per portion."
In the early 1970s he moved to different places in Kebayoran
Baru before settling at Jl. Panglima Polim, opposite the Wijaya
Center, beginning in the mid 1970s. The location suits him well
as cars can park nearby.
His stall usually opens at 10 a.m. Before the crisis, clients
would have to queue up and Soekardjo and his eldest son worked
nonstop until they closed the stall at about 3 p.m.
Things have changed. Although he has met customers' requests
to open at 8 a.m., few people come. With falling customer numbers
and orders from businesses, he is now forced to close at about 1
p.m.
Due to his poor health, his business is experiencing drastic
changes. Following doctors' advice, he has to restrict himself
only to taking orders, checking the quality of the gado-gado and
supervising his assistants, cleanliness of the stall and its
surroundings.
After more than 35 years of hard work, he now has to hand over
the preparation of the dish to his eldest son, who is assisted by
a younger brother.
Soekardjo is happy to give work to his children, and in return
the children take care of him. Soekardjo has long passed
retirement age, but still has to work for his living.
Still, he looks very young for his age.
Four people have to live from the food sales. Another member
of the team is his wife. She helps Soekardjo do the shopping and
cooking, and gets paid for her contribution.
His poor health forces him to take a taxi from Senen to the
location of his stall in Kebayoran Baru, which costs him around
Rp 15,000 per trip. He goes home by bus. In the past he was
strong enough to go to and from work by bus.
He is grateful that someone living in the neighborhood of his
stall is willing to keep his cart at night and to provide him
with clean water every day.
Mrs. Soekardjo buys vegetables in Pasar Nangka in the evening
and cooks them. At about 5 a.m. she buys tofu and lontong (rice
cooked in banana leaves). Then she goes out again to buy
ingredients for the sauce. Her husband insists on buying the
ingredients from particular shops because he trusts the quality
of the goods.
"But the prices of these basic materials have skyrocketed
now," sighed Mrs. Soekardjo.
She formerly paid Rp 3,500 for one kilogram of sauce but it
now costs Rp 8,500. The same goes for prices of other ingredients
for the gado-gado due to the more than 77 percent inflation rate
in the past year.
Her complaint is understandable considering the drastic
decline in their daily income. Nowadays, fewer schoolchildren buy
gado-gado for their lunch.
"Some of my customers apologized and said that now bring their
lunch from home," she said.
Despite the price increases, Soekardjo has not raised his
gado-gado price. It should in fact be raised from Rp 3,500 to Rp
4,500 per portion, which is still lower than the price of gado-
gado in a restaurant.
"Prices keep rising and I do not know how high it will become
when we start business again after Idul Fitri," she said.
Soekardjo closes his stall during Ramadhan fasting although
other people open food stalls in the second week of this fasting
period, especially in the afternoon and at night, when people go
out to buy sweets and food to break the fast.
Soekardjo and his wife were born in Kuningan, West Java, but
had lived in the Poncol area even before they married 47 years
ago.
They live in a wooden house with a door and two windows. It
has two rooms measuring two meters by three meters each and a
space of about one square meter used as a kitchen. The youngest
of their two sons attends a technical high school.
Mrs. Soekardjo said heavy rain causes the black smelly water
from the gutter running along the lane to enter their house. They
retreat to the small loft upstairs where they stack their
belongings.
Family members sit on a mat on the floor on a mat, with their
only luxuries being a fan and a television set.
"We have to bathe and wash our clothes in the public bathing
area next to the house," she said.
Drinking water is brought in a tank from a public water tap in
Poncol, which is notorious for crime.
"You know, although there are many thieves and crooks living
in this area, we feel safe. We need not to lock our door at
night. It is safe to walk in our quarter even at night," said
Soekardjo.
In the shadow of gleaming plaza and modern shops in the Senen
area, the Soekardjos' neighborhood cannot be called modest.
It is much poorer than that.
People's income here is just sufficient to keep their heads
above water. The physical environment confronts them daily with
piles of waste, a small creek without running water and an open
gutter, regularly flooded with polluted water.
Asked whether the number of roadside vendors is declining as a
result of the economic crisis, Soekardjo said people tried to
keep their stalls running despite the drop in earnings. Others
have even joined the business by setting up stalls selling food
and other goods because it is their last resort.
It is their only safety net because they are ineligible for
the government's social safety net program.
Testimony to the fact that even the wealthy are watching their
food expenses is the mushrooming of a large number of sidewalk
restaurants, sometimes called cafes, in and around Jakarta parks,
each selling different foods and drinks.
Many of the tents are run by celebrities and other people new
to the business. However, their presence ups the competition for
regular street vendors.
The competition is actually unfair. The new cafes attract
customers, many of whom want to meet their favorite celebrities,
whereas the street vendors who sell food as their sole means of
income are losing their clients.
For these real vendors, life means an endless fight to just
get by.
The writer is an economist-demographer based in the
Netherlands.