Can you imagine how a chicken soup vendor can generate Rp 10m a month?

I hope you would be inspired from this story.

Ow, by the way, I only publish pieces I wrote or I wrote with a friend or more (I would have told you, if it was not my piece). Because otherwise, it would make me not genuine anymore.

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Vendor making chicken soup solely for money
Friday, November 17, 2006
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta



The roads are a constant cacophony of horns and hollering. People bustle by as the street vendors at Blok M bus terminal in South Jakarta beckon to them to buy their wares.

Nanik Hindaryati, 39, had just finished setting her pushcart on the pavement at the side of the terminal entrance. Inside the small food stall sheltered under a sheet of blue plastic, she was preparing her mainstay menu, chicken soup.

After almost 20 years in the capital, Nanik, born in Probolinggo, East Java, is doing well to survive life on the city's dog-eat-dog streets.

"As long as you're not lazy, you can survive in Jakarta," said Nanik, who came to Jakarta in 1978 with her husband and three-month-old daughter.

Day in, day out, she wakes up at 2 a.m., after only three hours of sleep, to prepare ingredients and get together her things for work.

"I don't feel tired when I thank God for his blessing. On the other hand, too much complaining wears me out."

She opens her stall from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day. At dusk, her husband, Haryono, who works for an insurance firm, usually comes to replace her.

Currently, Nanik owns three stalls with six workers, selling chicken soup, fried rice and fried noodles in separate places in the city.

"I earn approximately Rp 10 million (US$1,096) in gross income a month from the stalls," she said.

Nanik, a successful businesswoman, is only one of hundreds of street vendors here. The huge number of street vendors who can be found in virtually every corner of the city have become something of a problem for the city administration.

Earlier this year the local government started a pilot project to accommodate vendors in Blok S, South Jakarta. The program has been successful and the administration plans to replicate it in 24 other locations.

An illegal vendor, Nanik, said she had no problem with the authorities as she paid Rp 15,000 ($1.65) weekly as a "security fee" to the local security and order officers (Tramtib). "I don't have any problem with the officers, as long as we do as we're are told. We will even be warned by one of the officers the day before, when the administration plans raids against street vendors."

She also gets along well with the terminal hooligans. As she put it, "It's not that I'm intimidated by them, I'd just prefer to placate them, rather than get them off side."

She added that most of the thugs she met never did her any harm. "I never give them money, even if they are asking for only Rp 1,000 (11 US cents). However, I'll give them food, if they ask me politely.

"I am here to make money, not to give them money," she added firmly.

Nanik, who has two daughters and a son, paid for "the not-so-cheap education" of her two older daughters who go to Trisakti University. She spends at least Rp 7 million ($767.71) every semester for each of them.

According to Nanik, she does not allow them to help her at the food stalls, preferring them to be serious in their studies.

As the educational achievement of the oldest daughter has impressed her father's employer, her parents are in hopes of having their daughter continue her education with a master's degree program overseas.

Over the years, Nanik has changed her business several times. Initially she sold cendol (iced drink) with start-up capital of only Rp 25,000 ($2.74). Within two years, she was able to expand her business from one cendol pushcart to 10.

However, she then left that business and turned to selling fruit. "I get bored so easily," she said.

Not long after, she turned to selling vegetables and managed to make enough to buy a 50-square-meter plot of land where she built a home for her whole family. They have been living there since 1996.

Then, seeking more profit, she shifted gears and started up a bird and birdseed business. In May 1998 -- during the rioting that ended the New Order regime -- Nanik lost her kiosk making her Rp 5 million ($548.4) poorer.

She has switched her business to food vendor since then.

She brushed aside the notion that she was successful, saying: "Success for me will be when all of my children finish their degrees and have proper jobs."

Moreover, Nanik and her husband have bought three hectares of land with 1,300 teak trees on it in Ngawi, East Java, for their children's future.

"I don't want my children to live the kind of life I have. They have to exceed me," said Nanik while stirring some fried rice in the noonday heat.

Rocket to Block S to find any delicacy of cuisine

Hey...it's another article I wrote. This time, it's about Blok S area where you can find a diversity of cuisine. When vendors are a headache to Jakarta administration, or it may be too in other cities in the nation, an alternative solution was addressed which is to fascilitate vendors in an area with cozy shelters. Well, it is a successful story the administration has done so far.

Trust me, you won't get your guts and feelings harmed whenever you look something to eat in the area. It's all gonna make you drool.

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Public comfortable with reorganized Blok S Wednesday
November 15, 2006
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta


The city administration's pilot project targeting unlicensed hawkers in Blok S, South Jakarta, has proven popular with the public, judging by the quick pace of the food stalls and the crowds.

An eclectic mix of foods, ranging from kerak telor (traditional Betawi omelette) to sirloin steak, can be found in the orange shelters of the 360-square-meter area that accommodates 74 food traders working in shifts, day and night.

The muted sounds of car engines, footsteps and laughter and the cries of traders greet passersby out for a late-night snack or an early morning breakfast.

"It's more comfortable this way," said one of three young women dining on chicken noodle soup at one of the stalls.

Ateng, 40, a meatball soup vendor, said, "It's more comfortable because the place is good and we're legal, so there's no risk of being evicted by the local authorities."

He said that despite the improvements the project had brought, he earned less money, since he had to set aside Rp 40,000 (US$4.39) a day for operational costs and compete with more vendors.

But Kartini Gunawan, who has been selling steak in the area since 1993, said her profit had increased by 50 percent since the project began earlier this year.

According to Syukri Bey, the head of the city's (small- and medium-scale enterprises) management agency, the Rp 850 million (US$93,200) pilot project -- which is financed by the State Ministry for State Enterprises -- will be used as a model for 24 other locations, five in each municipality.

Syukri said Monday the traders were more independent now and could together generate about Rp 40 million ($4,390) a day.

Besides the traders who have been accommodated in the project, the administration has reserved space for the dozens of other food hawkers who operate at Blok S.

Urban expert Yayat Supriatna said Monday that after six months of monitoring developments -- including customer numbers and traders' profits -- the project was declared a success.

"It must be noted, however, that if the vendors are not involved in the project, they will become dependent on the city administration for capital," Yayat told The Jakarta Post.

He said the administration should involve the traders and the local community in the 24 areas where the project will be replicated as they were the most aware of their needs. Otherwise, he said, the vendors might not enjoy good business and move to another place.

"This is a good plan and we should support it. Vendors create their own work and contribute to the city economy. But they need to be accommodated and acknowledged by the government."

Yayat estimated that the number of street vendors might reach hundreds of thousands, far above the figure presented by the University of Indonesia's SME center, which puts the number at more than 141,000. According to the SME center, the figure grows by at least five percent every year, with an average contribution of 40 percent to the overall city economy.

Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta) head Azas Tigor Nainggolan also hailed the project, "Reorganizing the area into a city-regulated hawker permitted place has evidently been a good thing. It's an alternative solution to the problems caused by street vendors, who have encroached on every inch of space causing traffic jams in many parts of the city, especially since the monetary crisis hit the country."

Human Trafficking

This is an article I wrote as a reporter of The Jakarta Post.

For some reasons, few details were eliminated from the news.

Sadly to know that these girls were so naive of not knowing that they were being, which I assumed, deceived. And the man who was herding was an absolute dumb as a donkey.


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Activists warn of post-Idul Fitri human trafficking
Thursday, November 09, 2006
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The post-Idul Fitri influx of migrants to Jakarta may create opportunities for internal human trafficking from rural to urban areas, experts say.

Indonesia Against Child Trafficking coordinator Emmy Lucy Smith and Arist Merdeka Sirait, the secretary-general of the National Commission for Child Protection, said poor people could be trafficked into the city in the wake of the holiday period.

With a groundbreaking bill on human trafficking still pending at the House of Representatives, desperate jobseekers continue to trickle into Jakarta to try their luck.

Fourteen young women and girls with haggard faces lugged their travel bags to a bench at the Kalideres intercity bus terminal in West Jakarta over the weekend, hoping to put the long bus ride behind them.

"I'm a newcomer here. The man escorting us promised us work. But I don't know where I'll be working, or who my boss will be. I don't even know how much I'll get paid," said one of them, a teenager who asked not to be named.

She had been recruited and transported to Jakarta by a man from her village in Lampung, along with 13 other girls ranging in ages from 13 to 20.

Another woman, Siti Rahmah, 20, said, "My family is poor, so I decided to come to Jakarta when that man offered me the chance to become a maid, even though the salary is not clear." Her 17-year-old sister also made the trip in hope of a job.

More than one quarter of the Indonesian population of 220 million lives in poverty, earning less than US$1 (Rp 9,100) a day, according to government statistics.

Saefudin, 25, the man who was herding the girls through the terminal, said they had come to Jakarta to work as domestic staff in private households.

Responding to a report on this group of young women coming in through Kalideres, Emmy said Sunday: "This is a case of human trafficking because it displays the three elements that define human trafficking: the process, the method and the purpose. And the post-holiday period is the perfect opportunity.

"Even though the women concerned have come voluntarily and are not being deceived in relation to the nature of their future occupations, if they are under 18, they are being trafficked."

According to the United Nations, trafficking in persons is the recruitment, transportation, or receipt of persons, with threat or use of coercion, abduction, deception, the abuse of power, or the giving and receiving of benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another, for the purpose of exploitation.

The figures for human trafficking have been gradually increasing each year, according to the National Commission for Child Protection. This organization estimated that in 2004 as many as 75,000 to 95,000 people were transported in the country and smuggled overseas, up over five percent from the figures for 2002.

Sirait, the secretary-general of the commission, said Monday that the bill on human trafficking was still being deliberated at the House.

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If you would like to know what the details eliminated were, here they are:
1. The man said he would send these girls to his boss' house in Jl. Duri Selatan III/16
2. He said he worked at a store selling automotive accumulators in Palmerah market, West Jakarta and his boss' name was Waw, the same boss who gave Saefudin an instruction to bring the girls.

Happy family reunion

(From right to left: My younger sister Aini, my cousin Fika, My cousin Sovie, me)
We were sitting by the pool in Fika's house.