Ho hum, let's get rid of our apathy please!
Aida Greenbury, Contributor, Jakarta
You know how some people are classified as a dog person or a cat person, a mountain or beach person. I'm guilty of being one who loves doing nothing but lazing around half naked on a warm white sandy beach under the hot sun, with gallons of coconut oil smeared on my skin, a perfectly glistening beached whale.
After months of hard work in a high-pressure city like Jakarta, nothing is better than escaping for a few relaxing days to an unspoiled beach on the Great Barrier Reef or simply the furthest island in Kepulauan Seribu (Thousand Islands).
Because, believe it or not, despite their close proximity to our heavily polluted capital, most of the islands within the Thousand Islands are not inhabited by mutant creatures. The Java Sea current somehow manages to block the black traces of Jakarta's waste from reaching the islands.
This phenomenon can be easily witnessed from inside a plane, just before landing at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport -- the murky waste flowing out from Jakarta's water gates gradually mixes with the bluish seawater. Then, just like a maestro's painting, the pollutant fades and blends away while slowly absorbed by the unknown deep. Sounds romantic, doesn't it?
As the beach has been such a happy part of me that always keeps my sanity in check, I was shocked to read a headline in a newspaper last February.
It said that Pabelokan Island, one of the beautiful Thousand Islands, has been heavily polluted by floating crude oil. Fishermen have lost their jobs, and the coral around the island suffocated. The fish either died or ran away limping to cleaner water. And most worrying of all, the pollution threatened to spread around the nearby resort islands.
Until today, this case has yet to be solved, and it is still not clear who's responsible -- the nearby oil rigs or the leaks from the passing oil tankers. The big and powerful as well as the environmental institutions and NGOs are still working hard to find the culprit.
A few weeks later, speaking to the chairman of a local environmental NGO, I was astounded to learn that the heavy pollution had been discovered and reported since September 2003. Why was it only mentioned in the newspaper in February 2004? Why did nobody know anything about it, except the environmental, the polluted and the polluted? Hey, I smell something fishy.
When I asked a local NGO chairman why most Jakartans didn't react to this problem, he just shrugged and said one word -- apathy. He said he is used to the cold shoulder attitude, our own society couldn't care less, while NGOs from Western countries are usually making so much fuss.
Basically Indonesia, especially Jakarta, is full of the apathetic. People who do not give a darn if their island is even sinking further into the sea, as long as they are not directly affected; their houses are safe and warm food is prepared on their dining tables every night.
All right, perhaps a few dozen people will give a yelp. Stage a noisy demonstration on the busiest street in the city's business district during lunch time, but then as soon as the sun goes down, they will likely go back to their own private business and forget what they said in the morning. The issue dies down by itself, forgotten, until the same problem arises again in the not too distant future.
A good example is the annual flooding in Jakarta. When it happens, everybody who lives in this city, who directly suffers from the disaster, protests in chorus: "Why? How? Who's to blame? Sue the governor! We can't go on living like this! Traffic jams for five hours, imagine! My BMW is screwed!" Whatever.
Just wait for a couple of days, and the hullabaloo will eventually disappear. People's lives go on as usual, until, of course, the arrival of next year's wet season
Do Jakartans tolerate and easily accept disasters as a part of their daily lives? Do they realize that some of the disasters and repercussions are created or triggered by apathy?
Is it true that polite, smiling Indonesians, well-known for spreading our own propaganda that we are fond of the traditional teamwork of "gotong royong" (mutual cooperation), communicating to find solutions to problems of "musyawarah untuk mufakat" (discussion to reach consensus) -- are actually careless about their country's dilemmas unless, of course, the problem exists at their door step?
How can we make us all understand that the pollution in the Thousand Islands is mainly a problem we should face and fix, not international environmentalists?
That instead of blaming other people we can stop the flooding and the traffic jams with our own acts? Such as, by not throwing crap in the rivers, and by not covering every inch of our house yard with concrete. By playing less golf, as in not further encouraging more businessmen to chop down more trees to build bunkers and artificial lakes.
I guess it's time that we stop the "turning a blind eye" attitude which sadly has become part of Indonesian culture. Problems will not go away when they are ignored, they will only grow bigger under the cover of indifference.
So guys, for the time being, let's just stuff the smiling and polite attitude, roll up our sleeves and fix the problems. Let's let the greeny extremists, with their little ponytails and flowery shirts but with sincere concern, know that we are not an apathetic nation.