The Fight to Save Bali’s Street Kids Just Got Personal

I’ve delayed writing this post because I really didn’t have anything good to say. I’ve been in Bali for 4 days now, I feel like I have achieved nothing. I realise that everything in Bali happens in “Bali Time” but for the most part any progress has been in the wrong direction.

Let me try to explain. As with a lot of places, in Bali it’s not so much what you know, but who you know. In Bali that principal is magnified several thousand times. You need to rely almost completely on the knowledge of the locals. Open and free information is not something that is readily available. And, of course, the locals will only tell you what they want you to know.

It’s not to say that the Balinese people aren’t nice – quite the opposite – they are lovely. But the survival instinct in this country is so strong, from so many generations of children going hungry; everyone here is trying to look after themselves. It’s not a selfish act as it would be in most parts of Australia, its pure unadulterated survival, and you can’t fault them for that.

So when you ask anyone here to show you the poorest part of Bali, where the poverty is stifling, they will show you their own village. Bali is made up of a range of regions, and thousands of “villages”. These aren’t villages as we know them – isolated small townships in the country – villages seem to be mostly all joined together, one after the next. In fact, during our travels so far we have travelled right up to the far north of Bali, and most of the way around the east coast and the entire area is populated, one village after the next.

Some villages (or “pillages” as my interpreters say LOL) are desperately poor and others are poor, but not as poor as others. The tradition here is that you belong to the village in which you’re born. If you leave the village you were born in you will still always be attached to it, and you would be expected to return for ceremonies. Because of the strong Hindu traditions here ceremonies are common, and held for a number of reasons – that’s a-whole-nother blog of its own!

I Made Jingga & His Family outside their home

So the first day I went to the Tabanan region, and visited Baturiti village.

The village has 332 people. The children in this village go to school if they can afford to only until the end of elementary school which is approximately age 12. When they finish elementary school they start to work.

I met with a number of families, but the one that stood out the most was a man called I Made Jingga. I asked him how old he was. He had to think about it for a while. He said he thinks he is 42 and his wife is about the same. His children are 20 and 12. Mr Jingga works in the rice fields he is paid 500RP a day, if he works. Sometimes he doesn’t work because there is nothing for him. 500RP is 6 Australian cents.

The village people built his house for him, it is a very poor construction, made from mud. One small room which the whole family sleeps in. There is much mold growing inside the house. It has a kitchen outside but the only food they have is rice. He said the children cry from hunger often.

Mr jingga smiles all the time we are talking to him, but you can see the sadness in his eyes. He says he worries every night, sometimes crying because he doesn’t know what to do. He says his life could be helped if he had some land.

I asked his 20 yo son what he job he wanted to do. He said he doesn’t want to dream because there is no opportunity. Mr Jingga is still dreaming that he will get a better job, but he has no skills so he isn’t very hopeful. His daughter who is 12 wants to be a doctor, she smiles briefly but then it goes away. She seems very sad.

Inside Mr Jingga's family home. The TV is "just for decoration"

I asked him if he had seen foreign countries on the TV he laughed and said the TV doesn’t work, it’s broken. It’s just there for decoration. Beyond that he said he doesn’t know how people live in other countries, he’s not aware at all.

I asked him about the political posters on his wall. He put them there so the children have something to read. He showed me which party won the election. I asked him if he voted. He said yes, because he was paid to.

At election time in the poor villages, political parties go and pay the people there to vote for them.

I Made Jingga shook my hand and smiled at me. I got the impression maybe he had never shook hands with a woman before. Maybe my visit gave them some small hope that someone will help them.

I desperately want to help Mr Jingga but it’s not what I came here to do.

We had dinner with a taxi driver  Alet He told us of some of the terrible things that Australians do to him. For example. Many times in Bali people will ask a Taxi to drive them somewhere and wait for them to return so they can take them back. For a taxi driver this is good, sometimes they can leave the meter running but not use any petrol. He picked up an Australian tourist and took him to where he wanted to go. The man asked him if he would wait. He said yes, how long will you be. He said an hour maybe two. Alet told him that was fine, he would wait. He asked the man, what about the meter. The man told him to leave it running. So he did. 1.5 hours later the man had not returned and the meter was still running Alec rang his depot to ask what to do, they told him that was his problem. The man never returned. Alet now had 200,000 rupiah on his meter. As far as his boss is concerned, that is how much money he made. Alet needs to pay the taxi company 70% of whatever is on his meter, so if he doesn’t get paid. He needs to pay that money out of his own pocket.

On a good day, Alet might have 360,000 RP on the meter at the end of the day. 240,000 goes to the taxi company, he gets 140 and he has to pay his petrol cost out of that, which is 50,000 so he takes home 90,000 rupiah for that day.($11.35AU)

He told us about a family he picked up from Australia they were staying in Seminyak – they asked him how much to get to Seminyak, he said he wasn’t sure it would be whatever the meter said. They said “no meter, you give me a price” So he tried to calculate in his head. He took a gamble on the traffic and told them 35,000 they said OK gave him the money and got into the Taxi. Because Alec is an honest man, he ran the meter anyway to be honest to his company and make sure they got their cut. I imagine many people would just put that money in their pocket and not tell. He took them to their hotel. He was very lucky with the traffic and when they arrived at the hotel the meter showed 26,000 rupiah. The father of the family went off at him for over charging them and demanded the 9,000 RP difference back. He asked the man if the meter was over 35,000 would he have paid him more. He said “no, that’s your problem”. Alec gave him his money back. This argument was over $AU1.13 To an Australian 1.13 is annoying change. To a Balinese taxi driver it’s feeding his children.

The next day we went to Singarajah. We met some poor families with children who don’t go to school but would like to. I want to help them also, but it’s not what I came here to do.

Our new friend Alet, told me about the children on the street and where they came from. He is a kind, kind man and worries deeply about the children on the street. He tells me he often talks to them to find out where they have come from. Nearly all of them come from a village called Munti in the east. The village is on the side of an active volcano which last erupted in 1967. There are 5,000 people in the village over a very wide area. The head of the village is quite a young man, he lives towards the base of the volcano. Many houses stretch way up to the summit of the volcano. There are no roads, the only way to access them is by foot.

We went to ask him why the village was sending their children away to Kuta and Denpasar. He told us about the village and the lack of work there, farming and agriculture on a grand scale was almost futile due to the extreme lack of water for 6 months of the year. The parents there had very little work, if any. He said many people had come to visit the village before to see what the situation was, but nothing is done to help them.

The children are sent away at a very young age to work in the streets, begging or selling bracelets. They are managed by a boss in Denpasar, an adult who may or may not be related to them. Many children share a room for rent and pay excessive rent to their boss, who they also pay to transport them from the home to where-ever they need to work. They pay a premium for this service also. The money they earn, is then sent back to the village. The parents say that they send their children because if they go themselves no one will feel sorry for them and give them money.

When we returned later that night we met two of these girls aged 9 & 10 who shared the same story. I asked them if they have ever been to school. They said no. I asked them if they would like to go to school if they could, they smiled and said yes. They were skinny, dirty and wore no shoes.

It’s clear to me that the problems here are so systemic that the solution is something that will clearly take more than 15 days in Bali to address. These are the children that most need my help. Whether they understand it or not. What they are forced to do is reprehensible but they know nothing else.

It is apparent to me, that we can’t just take these children off the streets without addressing some of the bigger issues. A) we need their parents consent. Without the consent we can’t help them. B) the parents are unlikely to give us consent unless they can be guaranteed that their family income will not be taken away if they do and C) if we can find an alternate way to make the income for the families, which is sustainable long term, and the families consent to their children staying in Denpasar to go to school and be well cared for, there’s a very nasty boss who “owns” these children currently, and he’s not going to be happy.

After returning from a much needed visit to Gloria Jeans last night we stood on the roadside by our hotel. Apparently there was a game of soccer on – much cheering was being done. We met another child, this time a 10yo boy. He was in a bad way, I assume possibly drugged or had been inhaling. We asked him where he was from. Again, from Munti.

We spoke to him for a while, the whole time he shook his bracelets at us. The desperation and exasperation in this child was overwhelming. Eventually, Bev gave him some money and he moved on. He chased another woman down the street desperately trying to sell her a plaited leather bracelet.

Bev and I said goodnight and headed in separate directions, I walked up the lane way alone to where I was staying. Suddenly from behind me a man rushed me. I’m fortunate that, while I’m not as nimble as I used to be, I am still very aware of my surroundings due to my security background. I managed to move slightly to the right and in front of an oncoming motorbike which fortunately managed to swerve around me. His right shoulder still managed to barge the back of my left, which threw me off balance but didn’t knock me down which was his desired outcome. He ran past me and turned around yelling something at me in Bahasa. He continued up the street and jumped onto a motorbike – he grabbed the small boy we had been talking to and threw him on the back and sped up the lane. The boy turned around and looked at me and smiled.

Suddenly, the fight to save Bali’s street kids just got very, very personal.

PS….I’m ok, and sorry for the typos, no time to proof read. Blessings, Cate…xxx