The Rich and the Poor

Many of my colleagues have chauffeurs to drive them to work. This is one of the luxuries in Indonesia that even the middleclass could afford. The average middleclass household has two maids--one to care for the baby and another to do the cooking and cleaning.

Even for us office workers, we enjoy certain luxuries that our counterparts in other countries would envy. There's always a retinue of office-boys (referred to as OB, pronounced "Oh Bay"), to help us do menial tasks such as photocopying, buying lunch and running other personal errands around town.

Having such luxuries also comes with its headaches. Drivers normally don't work for long. Once they earn enough money, they would want to go back to their kampung to rest until they run out of money again. Some maids are kleptomaniacs--always pilfering things from their employers.

One will also be surprised to know that the average middleclass housing areas in the suburbs do not have piped water supply from the government. For washing and cleaning, residents have to draw water from the ground using pumps. And for drinking, they actually get regular supplies of mineral water from Aqua. These are delivered to homes--just like cooking gas--in large 19 litre bottles.

Many of the working class and young executives live in boarding houses or rumah kos. Typically five rooms would share a toilet. If you are willing to pay more, there are also "executive-class" rumah kos where you have air-conditioning, attached bathroom and a fridge.

For transportation to work, they take a combination of ojeks(professional motorcyclists who take pillion riders), bajajs (motorized three-wheelers), mikrolets (Kijang minibuses) and buses.

The really poor live in shanty dwellings that sprout beside dirty canals and in every nook and corner between gleaming highrise buildings. They cover the city like an ugly skin infection.

The rich easily squanders away 1 million rupiah in one afternoon of golf. The driver (supir), who sleeps in the car waiting for his master, hardly earns half the amount in one month.

After a round of golf, it is customary to go for a relaxing massage in one of the many massage parlours in Mayestik or Wijaya Center. A typical masseur is paid five rupiah per customer. She gets around 3 customers a day. Of course they work for tips which could range from 20,000 rupiah 200,000 rupiah per customer, depending on the "quality" of service provided.

This is life in Jakarta. The poor and the rich have a symbiotic relationship. It is tempting to think that the poor are virtuous and the rich greedy and arrogant. Sometimes this could be true. But I see both as pitiable creatures: many of the rich cannot transcend beyond the mediocrity of their upperclass pretensions and the poor are forever condemned by their instinctive nature to be easily satisfied with what they have.

Sometimes in Jakarta, it is difficult for me to distinguish the rich from the poor. In many ways, we are all poor.