Transplanted life of Jepara laborers at Grogol bridge

By Rebecca Mowbray and P.J. Leo

JAKARTA (JP): Soerya is one of Indonesia's upwardly mobile. He is happy, making money, and is building a future for his family and for Jakarta.

It does not matter to him that he lives under a highway bridge. Or that it has been 21 years since he left his native Jepara, and is still living outdoors. The new highway overpass that replaced the trees and grass where he used to sleep is an improvement -- it is a roof.

Soerya and the revolving community of 2,000 other transplants from Jepara, Central Java, who drift beneath the Grogol bridge between work contracts are among the hundreds of thousands of low-skilled rural laborers who flood Jakarta in search of economic opportunities each year.

A non-bridge dweller may deduce that after a decade or two of living outdoors between contracts, the Jepara migrant workers have become Jakarta residents, and that the temporary has become permanent.

But Soerya and the other diggers are possessed by a pioneer- like zeal that insulates them from the daily grit of reality and enables them to focus only on the promise of financial reward.

The men say that living under the bridge is a choice. They say they prefer to save the rent money, and have built a community around this belief.

"I can sleep anywhere," Soerya says. "Before we had this bridge, we often slept on sidewalks. There were many trees back then.

"In Jakarta it's terribly expensive to rent even a small place...and it's difficult to find a job right away after arriving here."

Soerya and his friends are focused on the future; they speak of the present not with gritted teeth, but with stories about laughing with friends.

They insist they are moving up, and someday, out.

"I won't be here forever," says Soerya. "I miss home, but we have to save money for our families."

Soerya digs foundations for skyscrapers and bridges in Jakarta because someday he wants to join his wife back in Jepara, open a business and give his three-year-old child more than the junior high school education he had.

Other diggers are edging closer to the dream. Sodikin, who came to Jakarta in 1978, has just saved enough money to bring his wife and three-year-old son to Jakarta where they rent a small house for Rp 40,000 a month.

Work is not always forthcoming for the diggers, even with Indonesia's 7.8 percent annual economic growth and Jakarta's never-ending building boom. Sodikin admits it has been four weeks since he has scratched the earth with his pick.

The work itself is slow and grueling. At the sites of future high-rise apartment buildings or future flyovers, the bridge dwellers dig from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., six days a week.

Using metal picks and scoops fashioned from bamboo and string by friends back in Jepara, these men, scoop by scoop, accomplish the same tasks as mechanized earthmovers.

But compensation is lucrative, even worth the stretches of unemployment. They earn Rp 50,000 a day, plus accommodation in the workers' dormitory. Meals are not included, but they are given temporary workers' insurance during their tenure.

Nearly every rupiah they earn goes straight to families in Jepara, ferried by trusted friends within the bridge community who return home for one month a year.

"If I don't ask a friend going home to take even Rp 25,000 to my family, I'll end up spending it here," one of them says.

Their lives are made easier by other friends in the informal sector who have built businesses around this permanent community of temporary workers.

Ibu Warsia runs a tab for the men who eat and drink from her food cart. When they return from a contract, they settle up. It costs Rp 800 for a standard meal of rice, vegetables, fried tofu and tempeh. Nearby is a public bathhouse and toilet which costs Rp 300 to use.

Meanwhile, they await the arrival of the mandor, the construction project representative who rides up on his motorcycle like a knight, offering short-term work contracts at Jakarta's construction sites.

Karsan, a mandor from PT Putra Duta Anggada, says he recruits people from Central Java first, then fills the ranks with those from temporary workers' communities. That day he was looking for 15 people to work on an apartment complex project in Kemayoran.

Not all mandor are as trustworthy. Sumari, a 71-year-old man from Jepara who has been doing temporary work in Jakarta since 1969, returned to the bridge with four other men, all of them sweaty and angry.

A mandor named Bobo had duped them, promising big project wages for hard work that, in reality, did not pay. In standing up for themselves, Sumari and his cohorts lost what they thought would be a few weeks of work. And they had to pay bus fare both ways.

At times like this contract work outside Indonesia looks good. Last year, 30 members of their community went to Taiwan to build a bridge, and they will be there for two more years. The men at this bridge say they would go there too if given the chance.

While waiting for opportunities, the community beneath the bridge strengthens and helps the diggers get through hard days. They enjoy their time together, drinking Ibu Warsia's coffee, talking, playing chess or playing cards with their own special rule twists.

Each player has to hold a water bottle between his chin and neck. The first one to laugh and drop the bottle loses.

"Please don't take a picture!" one says. "We'll be driven out from here if we're seen in the papers." They fear raids on their playful gambling stakes of Rp 100 each.

The flyover home of the construction men is tidy, reflecting the care they take with their community and their few possessions. Chards of burned trash are left to one side, away from their living space, which has an open-air picture window view of Ciputra Mall. A clothesline is fixed between the bridge's supports, where the clothing dries in the air pollution.

The three men's possessions are neatly lined up under another part of the bridge: three small rucksacks of clothing, three empty rice sacks stuffed with mats and bedding, and three dirt picks, all ready for work at a moment's notice.

Jepara is their home, but the bridge community is their life. "Staying in Jepara without a job is no good. I can do more for my family here," Soerya says.