Railway offers dwellers alongside life, fun, fortune

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

What do 11-year-old Rio and his neighboring friends love to do after school? Like any other kids, they are into kite-flying, mini soccer and badminton, games not normally considered extreme sports if they were not played on the railway.

The children have spent most of their lives in the shanties, mostly semi-permanent houses, that line both sides of the railway connecting Palmerah and Tanah Abang stations, Central Jakarta.

That has made them masters of every single step of the railway line and the schedule of trains, which pass from 4 a.m. to midnight every day, helping them to avoid falling or being hit by a train.

Without looking, they can tell what type of train is approaching -- whether it has a diesel or an electric locomotive.

"I'm not afraid of speeding trains," Rio, a fourth-grader from Al-Falah elementary school, Pejompongan, told The Jakarta Post last week.

"We're already used to the sound made by the trains."

Mariam, 62, has lived in a wooden shack alongside the railway for over 30 years after she was evicted from her house by the city administration in the late 1960s. Her eldest grandson is her only companion.

"Thank God, state railway operator PJKA (now PT KAI) allowed me to live here on one condition: not to disturb railway operations, which I have observed," she said, adding that she would never do her household chores close to the railway.

Her statement is ironic, given that the remains of many kites are stuck on the electric cables, which could disrupt the operation of electric trains.

Originally from Surakarta, Central Java, divorcee Mariam, with only one daughter, tried her luck in Jakarta. To earn a living, she runs a small shop in her house which faces Jl. Pejompongan Raya, Central Jakarta.

Eviction forced her to live in the backyard of the house, which faces the railway, but she has kept the business going until now. "Only one or two customers come by every day," she said. The city administration later leased her former house to a welding company.

After three decades of living with the sound of trains thundering by, she would never move in with her daughter, who now lives in Cengkareng, West Jakarta. "I feel fresh here," she said, trying to suppress a cough.