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)