Belated reports on Indonesia impressions

One of the strongest impressions from Jakarta was the poverty. The China town, which was one of our stops on a city tour on Saturday, came as a shock, especially after the luxury of Ritz-Carlton. Our tour guide would tell us that the begging was an "industry" of its own, and that the beggars were earning quite a bit in the street, but that did not make these people look any healthier.

The local wetmarket was a shuttering blow even to my very temperate higiene tolerance. Without any cooling facilities, it emitted the stench of fish and chicken spoiling in the ruthless heat. It took quite a bit of adjustment to start noticing some very exotic foods sold here: from live moving snails and skinned frogs to fermented soya, bags of krupuk crackers, unrecognizable to me fruit and veggies, all sorts of pickles and dozens of banana varieties.

My time in Jakarta helped me see through a different prism one peculiarity of the local economy that used to shock me. I remember when once we asked our Indonesian colleague on an assignment in Krakow about local cuisine: "So, what do you normally cook after work?" - "Well, my cook would make..." We later found out that it was a norm to have a family driver, a cook, a nanny, a gardener. It is not uncommon to have two drivers, two nannies, etc. Obviously, the disparity in income is striking for those of us used to a much more balanced income distribution, but come think of it: this way, an affluent family of what we find to be average income in Europe ends up feeding several families! It first comes as a shock, but aren't those several families better off being fed through domestic help jobs than none at all?! In a country where over 50% of the population leaves below the poverty level, household staff jobs must be a blessing.

At the end of the day, ability to drive through Jakarta does require concentration and dedication that only a full-time driver could develop. Traffic jams here are tougher than anything I'd seen before. Stopping at a traffic light, you'd discover that a two-lane road fits 4 cars plus a few dozen scooters. And in the middle of all that traffic there would be street vendors walking confidently and fearlessly between the vehicles, offering all sorts of items for sale: inflatable pool chairs, useless plastic statouettes, plush toys and the like.