Poor majority are the real Indonesia

Poor majority are the real Indonesia

The article of Lourdes Didith V. Mendoza in The Jakarta Post
on July 8, titled The closer look at the Philippines' poor is a
cry from my heart. It is as if she were writing about the
Indonesian situation. She did not mention that the poor are
skivvying for us, polishing our shoes, washing our clothes,
cleaning our houses, looking after our gardens, taking care for
our little children, and that if they did not, we would have to
do it all ourselves.

Yet, I can hear people say that they are less intelligent, so
your cannot treat them as people of your own kind. I can hear
people say that they are even a different human subspecies:
People smile at me when I say I like to talk to them.

We are expats who haven't lived long in Jakarta. I'm
interested in what they think about society and their way of
living. People think I'm kind of strange when I say I have
visited the house of a grobak (trash pushcart) man. Maybe they
knew already; you cannot see the way he lives with his family
without becoming very confused.

You think the Indonesia we live in is the real Indonesia, but
when I see so many people (perhaps the majority?) struggling to
survive in a very intelligent and creative way I think sometimes
the real Indonesia is that of the man in the street.

A.L. ZICKHARDT, Jakarta