Tomang flyover streetwalkers in serious financial dilemma
By Yogita Tahil Ramani
JAKARTA (JP): For years, the Tomang flyover in West Jakarta was a lonely place at night.
Only one or two homeless people dared to spend the night in the shadow of the giant concrete piles of the toll road.
Occasionally a group of street children could be seen laughing and chatting beside Tomang junction beneath the flyover, killing time before retiring to sleep on sheets of dirty cardboard.
However, these quiet, sad evening scenes changed dramatically late last year with the arrival of dozens of male and female prostitutes.
The country's ailing economy and strong public demand to rid towns and cities of prostitution have lured the men and women to the safe haven of Tomang flyover to practice their trade.
Here they can work undisturbed because it is apparently a less attractive location for the local Tibum (law and order agency) officers to carry out routine raids designed to curb prostitution.
Holding mineral water bottles which they use to wash themselves out after sex, the Tomang prostitutes wait patiently for clients in the dim light under the flyover.
When interviewed by The Jakarta Post at the site last week, they claimed their waiting hours had become even longer than usual since the crisis broke.
They have reacted by cutting their old service fee of Rp 15,000 in half, but still clients -- mostly truck drivers, street vendors and construction workers -- have remained scarce.
"Since the crisis started things have become even more terrible for us," a mother of a 10-year-old boy said.
"I might get one customer in three or four days ... and they never pay more than Rp 7,500," the 37-year-old woman added.
Tami, not her real name, said some people had urged her to change her profession and become a beggar, but claimed it was hard for her to do so.
"A newspaper man told me that a beggar can earn at least that much (Rp 7,500) in a day ... but I don't know if I can. It's so humiliating," Tami said.
"Someone even said that I should send my boy to sing on the streets, but then we might not even be able to afford to buy an Rp 2,000 meal after a full day under the hot sun," she said.
Prostitution is different, she added.
"I don't see it as something shameful. I just perform ... what is there to opening your legs? Nobody sees us," Tami confided.
Her colleague, "Dewi," 40, said from her hiding place behind the trees, where she was waiting for a client, that she supported Tami's opinion, and argued that many housewives did the same thing, albeit in a slightly different way.
"For instance, the wives of my street vendor friends always sleep around with other men when their husbands are out.
"They are hypocrites. We are not and we never will be. We enjoy this thoroughly," Dewi said.
Like many other women of their kind, the Tomang girls are hardly willing to listen to the wise words of religious leaders, let alone a minister.
When State Minister of Women's Affairs Tutty Alawiyah recently advised sex workers to seek alternative work, a light brown-eyed Tomang prostitute retorted: "Is she (the minister) a woman? If she is, then she is a rich lady. Or maybe her husband has only one wife and even if he has two, he must have a lot of money."
According to this second wife of a taxi driver, she chose the profession after her husband could no longer afford to feed his two families when food prices began to rise drastically at the end of last year.
"I went into prostitution with his blessing and his permission," said the mother of two children from Purwokerto in Central Java.
Why prostitution?
"Because it's the fastest way of making good money... it's not me I am scared about, it's my daughters."
The cross-dressing transvestite prostitutes at Tomang have also suffer serious financial problems over the past few months.
Like many, they blame the crisis.
"One week, I get one customer. Another week, I don't. Sometimes the customer hands me only Rp 5,000 and walks off," said 43-year-old "Parni," born as "Parno", clutching his plastic pink makeup pouch.
"It's tiring waiting for a man to show up these days. I can wait until after 11 p.m., but then there is the fear of police raids. I went to jail once and it was so boring," Parni said.
Instead of waiting until midnight and not getting a customer, Parni often goes to sleep in a garden 100 meters from the flyover.
"I have to eat everyday, so during daylight hours I help a few female friends of mine sell packed meals on the street."
At the end of the day I get my coffee and a meal. Sometimes they give me Rp 2,000 ... which I use to purchase a bottle of Sprite or cigarettes," the bone-thin transvestite from Cirebon, West Java, said.
Parni confided that he left his hometown a year ago after his parents tried to force him to marry a woman.
Like many of the Tomang prostitutes, Parni claims he always asks his clients to use a condom.
The venue can be decided by the client or couples can rent the room run by a woman in the nearby park for Rp 1,000 per short time.
The "room", which measures 1.5 meters by two meters, is made of transparent cloth nailed to trees and the flyover support piles. There is also a rusted tap nearby where couples can openly wash themselves after sex.
Her staff often double the price if strangers want to rent out the room.
Despite their seemingly endless nightmare, the Tomang prostitutes can still laugh and share funny stories together.
"Sometimes I shock my customers by whispering in their ears that I am a transvestite. It's funny seeing them do a sprint and run," said Parni, bursting in laughter.