Earning money the hard way

Some people are faced with dire poverty in Indonesia.

At the bus station in Denpasar, we watched with sadness a small 80-year-old woman rummage through garbage bins to find plastic bottles. She was carrying a large garbage bag full of plastic bottles. I told Johny it was quite sad to see the elderly struggle at such an old age, an unthinkable occurrence in Canada. What struck me the most is that Johny told me that for one kilo of plastic bottles, the old lady gets about 1000 rupiah.

I was in shock. 1000 rupyiah is about 15 cents Canadian. I quickly asked Jean-Philippe, a guy from Quebec who had also tagged along for the trip, to give me whatever coins he had in his pocket. I put his money together with mine and quickly walked over to the old lady. I handed over the money, which was about 4000 rupiah. As I put the money into her hand, her small eyes lit up in amazement. Without saying a word she nodded and walked away from the bus station.

I gave her about 50 cents Canadian, which was more than enough for her to take the day off, maybe the whole week.

Where there is poverty there is prostitution. Cheap prostitution. When we were in Yogyakarta in a restaurant and noticed that a beautiful girl was sitting next to a Western guy. The couple had obviously “met” recently and didn’t seem to have a lot to talk about. Johny explained that Yogyakarta is an “easy” city where an extra 25 000 rupiah is all one needs to spend the night with a young lady. 25 000 rupiah is about 3.20$. How unfortunate.

A final event to our story. We were on a ferry to Java. We were on the top level of the ferry enjoying the beautiful sight. A group of young boys were sitting on the ledge of the ferry. One of them looked at me and said “Mister, I jump!” I took this as a joke. It turned out that this was no joke. Three boys jumped into the ocean and started a game the locals seem to know. Basically, the kids in the water are playing a “catch the coin” game. Some of the locals started throwing 200, 400 rupiahs in the water. Of course the coins will sink quickly so the boys have to swim and dive under water to retrieve the coins before they are lost in the ocean. What’s truly sad is that the boys are trying to catch these coins in the foul, oily water of a polluted port.

These boys were risking their health for a few coins.

Cruel world.