West Java handicrafts makers unite for fair price

JAKARTA: In West Java, as well as in more remote parts of Indonesia, small handicrafts associations make mostly traditional items for international markets. Fair trade organisations around the world buy from developing countries where the producers get a fair return for their labour.

Fair trade organisations usually sell the products at their own retail outlets, which may be just backstreet lock-ups in grim neighbourhoods, while other organisations like Trade Aid in New Zealand have chain store boutiques all over the country.

The producer groups in West Java mainly use locally grown raw materials which are then turned into a wide range of household products and ornaments that will eventually adorn homes in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.

Working in associations allows small family businesses to flourish, operating in an environment of guidance and cooperation and economic viability. The associations in turn supply a Jakarta based company, Pekerti Nusantara that doubles as an export company and development foundation.

In the small village of Cibatu, near Sukabumi, Daddan Komaruddin is the coordinator of ten workers' cooperatives comprised of between three and 10 people in each group. Daddan has built up the business by allowing full participation of the members in planning and decision-making: members of the cooperatives attend regular meetings with the other producer groups and Daddan. Important issues like pricing, savings and loans and other managerial concerns pertaining to the business are discussed.

Daddan has developed and diversified the business since he inherited the workshops from his father some 10 years ago. Originally, they produced wooden kitchen utensils that were sold locally. Now they produce a wide range of items from ornately decorated walking sticks to picture frames, incense stands, coasters, magic cards and the traditional Javanese game called congklak. The items are finished and quality control-inspected in Daddan's workshop before being shipped to Jakarta.

Mutual benefit

Daddan has been successful in using his influence at a local level to establish this network of producers, to the mutual benefit of many families who would otherwise struggle to make a living.

Eti, a 35-year-old woman, lost her husband a year ago while the family was living in Batang, Central Java. With the loss of the family's breadwinner, she made the decision to return to the city with her 14-year-old daughter and father. She found part-time work as a maid but the income from her job was not enough to make ends meet. When told about the association, she quickly joined and started making magic cards: a brainteaser game made of small wooden pieces linked together with ribbon.

Eti continues to work as a maid, but also works at home for a few hours each day, along with her father and daughter. Together they earn more than enough to pay for their necessities and are, because of this, able to save money, too.

Eti has plans for the money that she is saving: "My dream is to buy a little house for us to live in. We rent this place at the moment, but even so, I can save money and hope that it won't be long until we buy a place. My father is 72 and he enjoys the work; it's light work, so it's not a strain on him."

The magic cards will be exported to a fair trade organization in the Netherlands.

Charitable acts and neighbourly deeds are common among the members of the association; they have recently built a house for a family that was previously homeless and whose youngest child suffered from malnutrition.

Domestic market

In the town of Sumedang, Enjang Sudrajad has opened two workshops and employs 16 men. The export products include didgeridoos and drums. Enjang has also developed a domestic market and makes fancy wooden pens that are sold in Bali, and furniture which he sells in Bandung and Jakarta.

His business has not always been successful: Enjang tells about his early experiences in the trade when he sold goods produced by other craftsmen: ""In the 1970s I sold to foreigners at Tanjung Priok Port, but the police wouldn't allow me to sell there and officials always demanded money from me.

"I spent my time running away from the police and paying off officials. It wasn't very profitable. I then started selling door-to-door in Jakarta. Later, I sold furniture in Bandung, Solo, Jakarta and Bali."

"Then, I decided that it would be better and more lucrative to start a workshop and make the items myself. We developed a domestic market and then moved on to exports through Pekerti in Jakarta. We had to improve the quality of our products for the export market."

Enjang is able to pay his employees more than local factories but admits that he does this to keep them. He also offers small extras such as meals, and a holiday allowance following the holy month of Ramadan.

Street beggars

On the streets of Indonesia's cities and towns, disabled people can be seen begging for small change from motorists and passers-by. Often these people have no family support networks and are unable to find employment.

Yamin, from Tasikmalaya, West Java, lost his sight when he was three years old. He is thankful that he has been spared the degradation of begging. His love of music -- coupled with his ear for tuning instruments - landed him a job tuning angklung for Papertas, a local handicrafts association with members producing a large range of products for domestic and export markets.

Yamin says that his job provides him with a reasonable living for himself, his wife and two young daughters. Although not entirely content with his daily tasks, Yamin feels fortunate that he has employment:

"This job is a bit like a hobby; at school I got interested in music and learned to play the guitar and drums. I've been tuning angklung for 11 years and, well, to be honest I get a bit bored with it at times, but I have no real chance of finding another job."

"I'm a trained teacher but couldn't get a job at the school for the disabled, so I started music groups that performed at parties and other festivities. Now I've got this job and we live reasonably well on my pay which is Rp.15, 000 per day."

Bonus

Working in the same association, Ibu Ocoy now aged 66, has made mats since she was 10 years old. She remembers having a brief respite during the Japanese occupation when they, the Japanese, commandeered the mendong - the raw material used by the producers to make the mats.

Ibu Ocoy joined a Papertas subgroup just one year ago and as a bonus of being part of the group she shares in the distribution of free rice to participating families, receiving a quota of 200 kilos every three months.

Now that she is working on mats for export, the quality of the mats has risen: "There are two kinds of mats," she explains, "those for export and those for domestic sales. Mats made for export must be of a very high standard, while we pay less attention to detail and quality for mats sold in Indonesia. There are three harvests of mendong per year. The mendong for export mats must be cut in the dry season and stored in dry conditions and kept free from moisture. These mats when woven get extra stitching, to ensure their ruggedness."

Venturing out of the centre of Tasikmalaya to the outskirts of town in the association leader's vintage boneshaker minibus, mendong can be seen growing in the fields on both sides of the road. Dudung Suparli is upbeat about the association: "After 15 years I see the results of my work. I feel happy working with the community and increasing people's knowledge and skills."

Pekerti Nusantara in Jakarta uncompromisingly invests in development work, assisting in the formation of new producer groups. Some years ago they sent a field worker to Tasikmalaya. He has subsequently stayed on for nine years and successfully built up the Papertas association as well as other initiatives in the area. With the help that the locals got in the formative years, they now have a strong footing in the domestic and export marketplaces.

While Indonesian handicrafts makers busy themselves turning locally-grown raw materials into fancy items, retail outlets such as Trade Aid in New Zealand gladly sell the exotic goods to curious customers. In one of Trade Aid's street shops, Maria, a 25-year-old visitor to Auckland, admires an angklung. Asked why she shops at Trade Aid outlets, she replied enthusiastically that they had a wide variety of interesting goods and that she was also greatly impressed by the concept behind the industry: "There is so much talk about acting locally and thinking globally, but the people making these things, and Trade Aid, are really doing it."

Making ends meet in an East Jakarta slum

JAKARTA: Cipinang Besar slum acts as a base in the capital for poor West Javanese families, with many subsidizing their low incomes from rice-growing by scavenging in the city, where there is a plentiful supply of scrap materials.

The slum is home to 300 families who survive in conditions of squalor and face dangers both known and unknown from the environment in which they eke out their existence.

Discarded building materials lie dumped by the wayside at the entrance to the slum. Hens and cats pick their way through the rubbish strewn on top. Slum dwellers cautiously make their way along the narrow muddy, uneven paths, where pools of murky water have formed in the potholes. A large pond of dark green stagnant water has organic and inorganic waste materials floating on its surface. Adjacent to the pond, a river carries a torrent of floodwater mercilessly through the slum. It has been dammed to help prevent flooding of the dwellings.

Roofs made of rusted corrugated iron, and others of tiles have been patched up, and plastic bags lie over the holes, often only secured by the weight of old bicycle tires.

On this rainy afternoon most people have taken cover, except small children, who jump and play around excitedly in the heavy downpour. Fishing rods lie temporarily discarded by the pond.

Teenage boys strum guitars, smoke and chat, while younger children gather around electronic handheld games on loan to them. Tattooed men lie around dozing, sheltered from the rain under the overhanging roofs.

For many of the families living here, Cipinang Besar is a second home, where they live for a period of about three months at a time, migrating to the city from the towns of Cirebon and Indramayu on West Java's coast. Some migrate to the city in order to subsidize their incomes from rice farming, which can no longer be depended on as their sole income.

They experienced difficulties making ends meet and sought alternative means to prop up their uncertain economies. The soil in their home areas is not very fertile, and yields and quality of rice are therefore low.

Through living in the slum and scavenging, they are able to get together much needed extra income, returning home to spend the money they have earned on their extended families.

The slum dwellers are creative in their bid to remain economically viable and find ways to make money. One woman runs a laundry service, collecting and delivering the laundry to her customers’ homes. By far the most important industry is scavenging: right in the centre of the slum there are piles of scrap, which will be reused in some way. Old bicycle wheels will be straightened and re-spoked; car parts will be repaired or beaten into shape and sold.

Many families rely on collecting old discarded nails to support themselves. Equipped with buckets and large magnets on handles, people cycle off all over the neighbourhood in search of old nails. Each day a dealer arrives and pays Rp.400 per kilogram for the nails.

One man relates that he and his family need to collect at least 50 kilograms a day to make ends meet. Collecting over this amount provides extra income, which will be used to buy little extras, or will be taken to West Java when they return.

All around the pond there are barrels of oil, which are purchased in bulk and then resold. The absentee owner of the business lives in Sulawesi and five men from the slum receive commissions on sales of the oil.

Unsanitary conditions

Some families have toilets, but the majority does not and they attend to their bodily needs anywhere out of sight of prying eyes. The river is so polluted that the slum dwellers were told a long time ago that they should not even wash their clothes in it. Up until then, some families were forced to drink the water because there was no alternative supply.

Now, the river's only ‘function’ is the removal of rubbish from the site as families at the slum, as well as others living upstream, simply throw their waste into the water. From where the river leaves the slum, up to ten items per minute float down the river: aerosol cans, plastic bottles, glass bottles and plastic bags full of household refuse.

Some rubbish is burned and the air becomes filled with the acrid smell of burning plastic and other synthetic materials.

As a woman draws well water from the ground, she explains that some days the water is clear and palatable, other days it is dirty brown and has a foul odour.

A community organization, Jentera Muda Jakarta, with its base at the slum, says that health authorities have not visited the site for many years; nobody knows if the well water is safe to drink, or if there are other health hazards present.

The whole slum area is prone to flooding. Two dams were built to reduce the risk of flooding, but they are not substantial enough to deal with the floodwaters in heavy and consistent downpours. Families living close to the river sometimes have to evacuate, taking shelter at neighbouring houses. Some dwellings are built on stilts, but even these are prone to flood water entering the living area. After a recent flood, a neighbour recalls that her house was so crowded that she could not find enough room to lie down and sleep on the floor.

On this November afternoon, after a couple of hours of rain, the occupants of a riverside dwelling stood outside their home, anxiously looking on, as the flood waters gradually rose up the side of the building. Some four years ago, the river claimed the life of a six-year-old boy. There is still no protection from slipping down the river's muddy banks.

A rickety wooden bridge, which links the whole slum dwelling area, was built over the river after the drowning of the little boy. It was felt that if there had been a bridge, rescue attempts may have been successful. The slum dwellers also realized that, at times, they need each other's assistance, and a bridge would facilitate communication between them.

For the slum dwellers, the bridge is a reminder of their vulnerability and also symbolizes the need for cooperation with each other.

Jakarta's street children take a closer look at themselves

JAKARTA: Recent initiatives for working with street children, such as the David Glass Ensemble, where children took part in drama and music workshops and performed the play The Lost Child, have taken an imaginative direction.

Street children, who usually spend their time begging, busking or selling, also took time off to try something new: becoming photographers in a new project to document their lives and the communities in which they live, able to take photographs of people without creating inhibitions as an outside photographer might.

The project was the initiative of 33-year-old English photographer Jonathan Perugia and is a part of A Child's Eye Action Group, a non-profit organization created earlier this year by Guruh Soekarnoputra and Choki Rezia. The organization supports children's initiatives in Indonesia and around the world. Jonathan, who is the art and technical adviser, has been involved at every stage, from finding sponsors to arranging exhibitions.

No expense was spared in equipping the 30 children. They went out into their neighbourhoods armed with good quality pocket cameras; only two of the 30 cameras issued found new owners.

The project was run in conjunction with Atma Jaya University's Studio 51 photographic club. Street children were selected for the project by five local non-governmental organisations that chose children from a range of social situations and locations around the city.

The children participated at every stage, attending workshops by professional photographers at Atma Jaya University. They then took photographs and assisted with editing, layout and selection of the photographs, which will grace the walls of the National Gallery in Jakarta from Nov. 17 through Nov. 23.

The workshops were designed to bring out the children's own creativity as well as to help them develop basic composition skills. They ran around playing musical statues and photographed each other with Polaroid cameras, seeing instantly the results of their work. In other workshops they learned the need to get close to their subjects through a "treasure hunt" - finding items of certain colours, shapes and textures and photographing them. The children even were assigned homework, on one occasion photographing places and people they dislike.

Fourteen-year-old Kokom, like many of the children on the project, enjoyed the experience.

"I was very happy taking part in the project. I had never held a camera before, so I wanted to try it out. Some of the time we could photograph whatever we wanted using our own ideas and imagination. I photographed street singers at a market. Before this I couldn't take a picture, now I can."

Throughout the project, the children could be creative and get positive feedback and guidance, which was beneficial for their self-esteem. The children could use this medium to tell their own stories, and for some this was the first time in their lives that they had contact with adults who were willing to listen to them.

Agung, 16, a street child since he was nine years old, was eager to learn from the experience: "I was curious to find out what it would be like taking photographs. It felt awkward in the beginning, but I was interested to learn. I learned more about life outside. I got to know lots of new people."

He photographed a disabled man who was on his hands and knees crawling between motorcycles begging. The children were asked to write comments on the back of the photographs.

Agung wrote: "This is a crippled man with his imperfect body begging for money to buy one spoonful of rice. He has been abandoned by his family."

Agung talked about his conversation with the man and his aspirations.

"The man said to me that this was his only job, and that he was forced to beg for money. What he wanted was for some organization to accept him and give him somewhere to live.""

A group of half a dozen boys was asked what they thought of the project and responded with a chorus of "Bagus" (Great). Asked if they would take part in a similar project, they responded with a resolute yes.

During the time spent on the project, the children took hundreds of photographs which clearly define the environment of urban decay in which they exist. The subjects of the photographs - often the street children themselves - portray the sorrow and struggle of their lives, the drug and solvent abuse and the squalid living conditions.

But they also depict moments of happiness where poor people share a collective spirit of survival, retaining their sense of humour and dignity; qualities which not even abject poverty can completely erode. Young people were photographed larking around while others simply sat smiling, whiling away the hours in the midday heat.

Jonathan sees the photographs as covering a broad spectrum of life in the capital. "The photographs the children have taken show all sides of life in Jakarta - the good, the bad, the joy and the poverty."

Jonathan is satisfied with the way the project has developed and sees its impact as lasting. "It has been a dance of synchronicity and chance, with people everywhere offering to help. This will not be just an arty-farty thing, quickly forgotten, but will leave real grassroots social and creative legacies."

A Child's Eye hopes that the photographic exhibition will provide an arena for discussion, attracting individuals, government officials and non-governmental and community based organisations. In particular, A Child's Eye Action Group wants to bring attention to issues concerning children's social welfare, and to stimulate interest in funding for welfare initiatives. It also wants to organize further arts projects for children.