The Woes of Kampung Senayan: Jakarta, West Java

By Barrie | August 16th, 2007 | No Comments

It’s within a stone’s throw of one of the most affluent parts of Jakarta. Hidden by a blue, tumbledown, wooden fence, Kampung Senayan or Senayan Village seems to be separated from the rest of the world.

Passersby getting off and on their busses at the Transjakarta Busway station Bunderan Senayan might have caught a glimpse of the scavenger site that accommodates 87 families, but the majority of them would get off on the other side of the road, strolling through the alleys to Jakarta’s upmarket shopping district.

Walking up a small path for 50 meters, one approaches the shacks of this village in the middle of the city, passing goats that graze on a rubbish-strewn piece of lawn.

The inhabitants eye strangers with suspicion and reservation, which is finally outweighed by their curiosity and hospitality.

At a moment’s notice, a crowd gathers in a small circle, once the first conversation with one of them has started.

Subang, a man in his 40s, the head of the neighborhood unit and in charge of the village, seems a bit absent-minded, but he is willing to talk.

“I came in 1972 from West Java to find work in Jakarta,” he says, looking moonily into the distance.

When he arrived in Jakarta, there was only one house and a few dorms that were not well-maintained in this place, so he decided to rent the house from the owner, and the land around it from a company, to start a recycling business in 1977.

Today, many of the 500 people that live in Kampung Senayan work for him, as scavengers. They collect rubbish from the streets to sell to him, Subang said.

For a kilogram of plastic water containers, he gives them Rp 3,000; for a glass bottle they get Rp 300. He sells the kilo of plastic to a recycling company in Depok, south of Jakarta, for Rp 6,000; a bottle sells for Rp 600.

Indrah, one of the scavengers, said he collected rubbish for four hours a day, which earned him about Rp 90,000 each week. Only his dirty fingers and nails make it obvious that the 22-year-old does not belong to the group of kids that hang around in Plaza Senayan mall, about 700 meters from here.

He said he also worked as a jockey (paid for passenger to avoid the three-in-one rule fine) in the mornings and afternoons to earn more money, for about Rp 30,000 a day.

“Back home in Indramayu, (West Java) there is nothing else to do other than wait for the harvest,” he explained his reasons for coming to Jakarta.

Not all of the inhabitants of Kampung Senayan are scavengers, though. Some of them also work as cleaners or have other jobs. Those who don’t work for Subang have to pay monthly rent of Rp 150,000 to 200,000.

Yet he still appears to lack financial access to primary health care.

The wounds he received in a recent motorcycle crash continue to fester and rip open in the absence of bandages to protect them from germs, flies or dirt, of which there are plenty in Kampung Senayan.

It’s a small miracle that the smell in the village is at the normal Jakarta level. Trickles of dirty water make their way into the canals that run beneath the sidewalks of Jl. Sudirman.

“There were 205 registered voters for the recent gubernatorial election,” he said, “but not all of them voted”.

Although posters and stickers of Fauzi Bowo and Adang Daradjatun plaster the shacks, it seems the people of Kampung Senayan did not have confidence in either of the candidates’ abilities to change their world for the better.

In front of the cobbled-together shacks, mothers play with or feed their babies.

Except for some women with toddlers and a few workers, the village seems fairly abandoned.

Turah is 28 and was born here. She is married and has three children, two of whom are in school. She wears a slightly corroded Louis Vuitton necklace.

“There are around 100 children in this village,” Subang said, “some are still too young, but most of them are in school now”.

“Elementary school is free,” he added, “for junior high, people have to pay at least Rp 100,000, plus money for school books”.

Residents have realized that proper schooling is the only way for their children to get out of Kampung Senayan. But sending their children to school puts them under enormous financial pressure, especially given that most of them have more than one child.

But as solidarity in the community and particularly within the families has not been eroded by tough Jakarta city life, for the time being, education goes on.

For the older people here efforts like these have come too late. “I want to save some money to build a house in my home village near Klaten (Central Java),” said Ibu Surip confidently. The woman, who is in her early 60s, came here in the 1980s and has not made it back to Klaten yet. Time is running out.

The younger generation seems a bit more humble when it comes to future plans. “I hope to become a taxi driver someday,” Indrah said. Maybe “humble” is the wrong word, “realistic” seems to sadly describe it much better.

Sascha Pries