Sad tales behind the green farm

Sad tales behind the green farm

By Kafil Yamin

BANDUNG (JP): Things seemed all right in Cikuya, a small
village at the foot of Lagadar hill, West Java. Men and women
were working on a huge, green farm stretching out in front of
their neighborhood. Children were moving down the track on their
way to school.

Cikuya is divided into two parts, Cikuya Tonggoh and Cikuya
Lebak and is inhabited by some 4,500 residents altogether.

Strangers passing through the green area would think that each
family there possesses a large farm, dispelling any impression of
poverty commonly attributed to villagers and farmers.

But when one gets closer to the people, one soon notices that
their faces are not as merry as the green area indicates. And the
way they talk is not as exciting as the blooming vegetables
around them.

"You think this farm is mine. It's not. The whole area belongs
to babah (a familiar term referring to Chinese businessmen). None
of us have our own here," said Imas, 29, who was picking peanuts.

The young woman said she was working on 1,400-meter square
farm, growing rice, green chilis and peanuts. The land was lent
to her for an indefinite term. The land owner only asks her to
pay tax amounting to Rp 75,000 (about US$10) per year. "The owner
can take this land back any time he wants," Imas told The Jakarta
Post.

Lately, her rice and vegetables have not grown well because
she could not feed them with enough fertilizers. "Prices of
fertilizer are going crazy. We're really frustrated," she
murmured.

Imas' husband, just like other men in the village, works for a
building material supplier, blasting rocks on daily terms and
occasionally helping her on the farm. She said their income
together is just "enough" to make ends meet.

She earns more or less Rp 100,000 per month and her husband
picks up a little more. They can afford to send their three
children to primary school. "Well, things are just all right,"
she said with a smile.

Cikuya villagers make common reference to "enough" and "all
right", as Wawan, 36, a farmer, put it. "Enough" means having
three meals a day, with one liter of low quality rice and several
pieces of salted fish, sambal (chili sauce), and vegetables.
Fresh fish and meat are special items that they can afford to
have them once every three months. "Enough" is buying new clothes
once every five months and very rarely going to town.

And "all right" is for their children to take the five-
kilometer path on foot to school and helping their parents on the
farm soon after they get home. "All right" is for the whole
family to reside in bamboo houses with poor electricity. "All
right" is for their children not to have enough time to learn
their school lessons at home.

"Read? Read what?" said little Rina, a third-grade Junior
School student when asked whether she has time to read at home.
"We don't have books, newspapers or magazines. My parents cannot
buy me books."

"We play on the farm while working there," she said when asked
whether she has time to play.

Across from the huge farm and down the hill is another part of
the village called Cikuya Lebak, a village of waste, where the
residents eke out a living from used plastic bags. They wash them
in waste-contaminated canals, breathe polluted air and drink
contaminated water.

Every day, soon after daybreak, men, women and children go
down to the canal situated on the village boundary. Girls sort
the plastic bags out to make them easier to wash.

"What kind of water do you expect us to use for washing the
garbage? Clean water? That's crazy," said Rahmi, 42, a mother of
two children who makes a living from the used plastic.

Her two children lead their own lives with similar sources of
income, like their fellow children do in the village.

"Most of them are dropouts. Their parents cannot afford to
keep them at school," said Maman, Cikuya Lebak village head.

The waste washers work for one or two bosses and are paid Rp
500 for every kilogram they wash. Ujang, 12, washes 15 kilos a
day after five hours of working barefoot in the canal, giving him
a daily income of Rp 7,500. That is the average working capacity
of the washers.

The bosses purchase used plastic from collectors, many of whom
are children who wander from garbage heap to garbage heap. Each
kilogram is priced at Rp 200, a rate that provides the bosses a
wide profit margin because they resell the already-washed plastic
to processing factories at Rp 1,200 per kilogram.

"They are rich," said Dita, a local resident.

He said collectors and washers have never received a raise
when prices of used plastic rise. But bosses argue that washing
costs are twice the price of the used plastic they purchase. One
ton costs Rp 500,000 for washing plus Rp 100,000 for transport.
This does not include any weight decrease due to unusable waste.

"Factory men are very selective. They set aside unusable
items. In fact, we earn only Rp 250,000 or so for every ton,"
said Agus, 40, one of the used plastic businessman.

Amazingly, Cikuya residents use the dark and heavily-polluted
water not only for washing plastic. The canal also functions as
their public toilet.

Trash is also a source of living for Warya, 38, and his wife,
residents of Sukapura village, Kiaracondong sub-district,
Bandung. They have been picking up garbage from house to house
for more than 15 years and each earns Rp 5,000 a day with which
they raise five children.

Once their oldest son fell sick of malnutrition. Warya and his
wife were then really broke. They failed to get a helping hand
from their neighbors and relatives and their son died.

Warya's neighbors are small vendors and daily workers who earn
more or less the same amount as he does. Fifteen percent of the
48,000 Kiaracondong residents are civil servants and retirees.

Living along with them in the packed bamboo settlement are
also street hawkers, pickpockets, angkot (public transportation)
drivers. Maman, a street vendor, said sometimes he can only
afford to have one meal a day.

"We've been leading this kind of life since I was born. This
is just normal to us. Having one meal a day is no big deal at
all," Maman, a junior high school dropout, told the Post.

The most familiar menu for the Sukapura residents' daily meal
is salted fish, crackers, tofu, tempeh and chili, which is eaten
after being dipped in salt.

"Sometimes my Mom makes vegetable soup. She put in as much
water as possible to make it sufficient for the whole family," he
said. His mother pulled a small plastic chair from the dining
table, a gesture of inviting the Post to join their meal. Batches
of flies attacked the uncovered food on the table.

Dodi Suryatmoko, 48, the Sukapura village head, said that 20
under five-year old children on average died of diarrhea
annually.