Madurese toil for a better lot in life

Madurese toil for a better lot in life

SIANTAN, West Kalimantan (JP): Here is an ordinary town on the
bank of the Kapuas river, the main business artery in the
province.

It is a town around which the Madurese -- who number 80,000 of
the province's four million inhabitants -- are mostly
concentrated. There are 6,000 of them in the town itself. In the
Pontianak mayoralty, of which Siantan is a subdistrict, there are
around 500,000 people. The provincial capital of Pontianak lies
about 350 meters to the south of here, on the other side of the
great river.

Siantan is the gateway to the north for people leaving
Pontianak. Even those traveling to Kuching in Malaysia go through
here.

Madurese dominate all means of public transport in the town,
including the inter-city buses, the sampans (canoes) and motor
boats serving the river-crossing, and the becaks (bicycle taxis).

Some own coffee shops and food stalls, mostly frequented by
fellow migrants from the island of Madura, which lies just off
East Java, 800 kilometers to the southeast of here. Their native
island is dry and unproductive. Its inhabitants have been
migrating here to work on roads being carved into the interior of
the province since the 1960s.

"It's only these men who can really work hard under the hot
sun, naked from the waist up," said a Chinese-Indonesian woman in
Pontianak when commenting on the Madurese work ethos.

"Just imagine, they can begin a business by selling cigarettes
from a small kiosk, plant cassavas and vegetables around the
kiosk and then prosper," she added, amazed.

A renowned and successful Madurese here is Haji M. Sulaiman,
54, who serves as a role model for many Madurese in the province.
So well known is he that it you can easily find his office or his
house, just by asking.

"Just ask anybody in Siantan, if he doesn't know Haji
Sulaiman, he's not Madurese," a friend in Pontianak said.

Sulaiman is the chairman of the Pontianak Chamber of Commerce.
He also chairs the West Kalimantan Association of Salt Companies
-- a organization which control the procurement and distribution
of salt in the province.

From his office in Siantan Indah complex, a relaxed Sulaiman
said he began business as a fruit and vegetable trader in 1964.
He sold goods to small cargo boats trading between Jakarta and
Pontianak.

"I've worked with the Chinese for a long time too," Sulaiman,
who is a second generation Madurese in the province, said. His
mother was from Bangkalan and his father was from Sampang, both
in Madura.

Now the proud owner of a BMW sedan, Sulaiman said he managed
the procurement and distribution of salt in the province, while
some Chinese-Indonesian businessmen control the marketing.

But Sulaiman's success has not been shared by Dullah, 33.
Since crossing the Java Sea from Telaga Biru in the Bangkalan
regency of Madura in 1978, Dullah's fate has been that of a poor
sampan oarsman.

Sulaiman and Dullah exemplify the mixed fortunes of Madurese
migrants in West Kalimantan. Many have become successful through
their hard work, while similar efforts have left others just as
poor as when they first arrived.

"I don't want to make my life complicated. I just act
naturally. Fortune is in Allah's hand," he said of his philosophy
of live. He earns Rp 15,000 (US$1.3) for a day's work, rowing
passengers across the river in his friend's sampan.

Dullah said he ate twice a day and rents a small house in an
alley not far from the Siantan river pier where he works for Rp
30,000 a month. His landlord, of course, is a fellow Madurese.

However, the father of a three-year-old son has his own dream.
"I want my son to have proper education," he said.

Dullah himself is illiterate. His wife helps him earn the
family's living by washing clothes in a local community health
center.

Although many Madurese remain poor, the few success stories
help retain their image as a highly determined group.

Their success in business has become the main attraction for
others in Madura to follow their brethren here, although Chinese-
Indonesian business operators remain predominant in West
Kalimantan.

Sulaiman said the police could do more to prevent personal
disputes from turning into ethnic conflicts. Madurese are
typically a rough people, he said. H.A. Latief Wiyata, an
anthropology expert at Gajah Mada University, has also said the
Madurese are humble and obey their elders, teacher and the
government.

An elderly Dayak, Rachmat Sahudin, 69, also said ethnic
conflicts in the province were frequently inflamed by a failure
on the part of the police to keep the peace and arrest
troublemakers. He said this sometimes allows small, personal
disputes to escalate into large ethnic conflicts.

When a Dayak is killed, he said, people of other ethnicities
should understand that the Dayak custom requires compensation
within 48 hours -- if not, "it is blood for blood," a custom that
the sociologist A.B. Tangdililing has said needs to be
socialized.

A lack of communication and a series of misunderstandings can
very easily flare up into ethnic violence, a fact evident last
year when many Dayaks and Madurese were killed.

But following last year's tragedy, analysts have sought
explanations beyond those along simple cultural lines. One such
explanation was the government takeover of large areas of Dayak
land for transmigration projects and plantation estates, which
after decades as a potent issue has still not been addressed in
any earnest way. Madurese, who settled on large areas of the land
taken from the province's native population, then became a
convenient scapegoat for the underlying frustrations felt by the
Dayak population. (aan)