Let's be resourceful and innovative

JAKARTA (JP): "We need to adopt a new life style," wrote my friend Zatni in an email message. "Everything has gone up in price, from the computer magazines I need for my writings to all food stuff. So now, we are cutting down on pizza, hamburgers and those sorts of things. We eat more tempeh and tofu. I think I have lost some weight."

I was happy to read that. I suspected Zatni had been feasting too much on junk food because he seemed to have gained a lot of weight when I last saw him. I think, however, cutting down on pre-processed modern foods is only a tiny step in the right direction. We have to return to our traditional lifestyle to cope with the monetary crisis.

Since the early 1970s, Indonesians have adopted a lifestyle to match the changing skyline. We have reached up so far in the sky that we have forgotten the basic, down-to-earth way of life that made us the friendliest people on earth.

At a lunch recently, there was a lively discussion about the resourcefulness of Indonesians in coping with food shortages during the Japanese invasion. My friend Nora could remember her mother making her own soap and cosmetics.

I told people proudly that my mother made her own cooking oil from coconuts bought from the villagers or harvested from our plantation. It was a simple but somewhat time-consuming procedure because the coconuts had to be grated one by one. After a harvest, the women in the family would gather to make the oil which they would share among their families.

We would make a nice snack with the coconut remains by mixing it with sugar. Nowadays we see people lining up in long queues to get their oil -- just as time consuming but less creative.

Or sometimes people become destructive and loot and burn shops.

I was not surprised when I heard a waitress from a restaurant in Bali saying her mother was not affected much by the monetary crisis.

"Like most of the villagers, my mother does not drink milk. She has rice from her own fields and raises her own chickens, pigs and goats. She plants her own fruit and vegetables and gets her eggs from the chickens, so all she needs to buy is sugar and, maybe, a new dress soon."

But I was disappointed when I heard a well-known economist, being interviewed on TV, saying he was surprised to see people on Lombok island making their own cooking oil from coconuts, raising their own cattle and planting their own rice and vegetables. If I could answer back, I would have told him that I already knew such a thing would happen and he didn't have to go to Lombok to witness it.

The rural people seem to adapt more easily to economic problems. They may need help in many areas, such as hygiene and efficiency, but we city dwellers can learn from them too.

To come back to Zatni, I think that he can learn "sharing" from the rural people. Instead of buying expensive magazines for his private use, he could set up a share system with his friends and colleagues who share a passion for the same publications. They could circulate the magazines until each one had read them all.

The same applies to a teacher, whose letter to the editor on March 3, 1998 said he could not continue paying for the subscription to The Jakarta Post. Why not share a subscription with a friend? Instead of losing two subscriptions, the Post would lose only one.

However the participants have to be aware that the papers are not their property anymore. They can use them as wrapping paper, sell them by the kilo or use them to clean up the mess that their dogs make only after it has been decided who is the owner of the lot after its use as reading material is over.

Not attractive? Maybe not. But I propose it only to show the world, or at least the great economists, that we inhabitants of the Metropolitan Jakarta can be as resourceful and innovative as our friends in rural areas.

But lacking coconuts, chickens and goats, we have to deal with more urban material.

-- Myra Sidharta