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