The Dieng children

The Dieng children

I appreciate very much Ms. Helen Tainsh's effort to revel something unique and interesting of the Indonesian culture in her article The Vagabond Children of the Dieng Plateau (The Jakarta Post, March 10, 1996).

However, I think the author (whom I presume to be a foreign tourist or an expatriate) erroneously translates the word gembel (both the "e"s are pronounced like the "e"s in English word "pen"), into "vagabond".

It is true that the word gembel in Jakartan dialect means vagabond, but in Central Java this very same word, spelled and pronounced in exactly the same way, has a different meaning. That is, the condition of hair correctly described by Ms. Tainsh: frizzy matted hanks or dreadlocks.

So a bocah gembel is not necessarily a vagabond child but may just have gembel hair.

There are other words like the word above. Let's take the Jakartan word kesel (here both "e"s are pronounced like the "e" in the English word "student") which means "upset" or "annoyed" for Jakartans but means "physically tired" in Javanese.

Ketoprak is a popular dish of Jakarta - and a type of Javanese play.

Maria Sulistiowati

Bekasi