Suratman mops the floor, dreams of better job

By Santi W.E. Soekanto

JAKARTA (JP): Have you ever noticed that people tend to look through waiters, taxi drivers and cleaners, as if they are too inconsequential to bother with?

That is what usually happens to Suratman, an employee of PT Resik Cemerlang cleaning service company in Jakarta, who has been posted for almost a year at The Jakarta Post office building in Palmerah Selatan.

Very often people look through him, as if he wasn't there.

"After a while, I begin to feel invisible," Suratman, a young and modest Javanese man, explained. Other than the other cleaning staff and some office boys, he can name only a few other employees who take the time to smile at him or talk to him.

"But that's all right, I know my place. I'm a man of very low status, so it's understandable if the employees ignore me," he said. "Besides, this is a newspaper, I know the staff is too busy to notice."

He said he often wants to get to know or start up conversation with some of the Post's employees but is afraid to.

"What if I talk to or smile at someone and they ignore me?" he asked quietly. "So I tell myself that I'm here to work, to mop and clean the floor. What's important is that I do my job well."

Consequently, not many people know that Suratman is not only a cleaner, but also a third-year student majoring in tax management at the Pembangunan School for Trade and Finance in Srengseng Sawah, 25 kilometers south of Jakarta.

Suratman was born 25 years ago in a small village called Bener, in the Sragen regency, Central Java. He is used to hard work and is know exerting all his energy to continue working so he can study.

He leaves his rented room in Petamburan, Tanah Abang at 6 in the morning to start his cleaning and mopping by 6.30 a.m.

Immediately after his shift ends at 5 p.m., he catches several buses to his campus. He gets home about 10 p.m. and is usually too tired to do anything else.

"I don't have much time to read or go over my notes. No wonder my marks aren't great," he said, adding that he sneaks in a little studying during the day in the newspaper's library.

He is optimistic that he will complete the course in his fifth year. "I am doing my best, so I pray God will help me with my studies," he said.

Bakso vendor

The second of three children, Suratman became intimate with hardship when his father died when he was in sixth grade. His mother leased their rice-field to tenant farmers and received one-third of the crop as payment. They barely scraped by.

After graduating from high school in 1989, Suratman began working as tea picker at the state plantation PTP XII Gunung Mas in Puncak, West Java.

Several months later, Suratman found that he didn't earn enough as a plantation worker to cover his daily needs.

He then went to Cianjur, a small, beautiful town 90 kilometers southeast of Jakarta. With a friend's help, he started selling mie bakso (wheat or rice noodles with meatballs), around the kampongs.

"Within weeks I had enough money to open up my own bakso stall," he said. "Perhaps I made tasty bakso, because in a short time I had many people waiting in front of my stall even before I opened."

Business was good, but a sweet girl called Aisyah, the niece of Mang (Uncle) Ajun -- the man who offered him room and board -- caused a few problems.

"Aisyah used to help me prepare the bakso," Suratman reminisced. "And then suddenly she asked me to marry her!"

Suratman liked the girl but was not sure he was ready for marriage. Unable to deal with the pressure that Aisyah and her family had placed on him, Suratman coped the only way he knew how. He took off again. This time to Jakarta.

In 1991, he joined the cleaning service company and was posted in the printing room at Gramedia, also in Palmerah Selatan. He made many friends, who treated him "very kindly because many of us were in the same (low) position."

"I loved it there, although my job was harder...there was always oil, grease or ink stains that had to be cleaned up over and over," he said.

After finding out that he could save Rp 100,000 (US$ 45) of his Rp 300,000 monthly wage, he decided to continue his education.

He is now determined to earn his diploma as soon as possible and establish a tax consultant firm back in Sragen someday.

Does his job make him feel inferior to his college friends? "No. I told them that I am a construction worker because my skin is so dark," he said, laughing. "They appear to like me the way I am."

He hasn't told his mother about his studies yet. "I decided that I won't say anything to her, because I don't want to raise her hopes too high," he said. "Instead, I told her I have been working but my salary is too small to send her any money."

"When I graduate will I bring her here to see me get my diploma," he asserted.

What about Aisyah? "I'm still not ready. But I'll think about marriage when I am," he replied.