International Desk?

Writing for my blog using the office computer is kinda funny. I feel like I'm using office's property for my needs. I would be condemned be this a communist country (therefore the office would be government owned).

Well, it's been almost a week since I started writing international issues for a national newspaper, Media Indonesia. Well, I didn't exactly report things. All I did was interpret some news agencies' works and rewrite my own piece. When I lacked ideas, or the deadline was too tight, I would just translate the thing and let my editor do the rest of the work.

I feel less journalist-like though, reporting all day from the office. I barely left my computer all the working time this week. I only had to interview one person, one time, and it was by phone. I have a press con in my schedule tomorrow and it will be the only time I have to leave office. Not cool, e? Not exactly what I had in mind of what a journalist would do.

But I'll learn. I'll learn that some of us do have to stay in the office, reporting what other reporters had written. Because eventually, journalists are just messengers. We telll people what happened, what they need to know, and what they want to know.

I'll have different issues to cover after three months here. So I better gain something out of this now. :D

Children of The Dump

How does it feel waking up everyday to the stink of shits and trashes of the whole city? Ask them, the children of Bantar Gebang, the ones living everyday amongst the dump from all over Jakarta. They'll tell you how it feels to run barefoot on the trashes and how smelly it gets when it rains. No, they're not sorry they're there, living in the landfill, instead of you. Nor are they grateful for it off course. But they smile, laugh, cry, play, and learn to except everything with grace.









I went there several times in 2008, took some pictures, with some of my friends, activists from the church. But you won't find these homes if you look for it now, they no longer live there in the heap of dump. The government moved them just outside the landfill. I found the new place less smelly and nicer (and probably so did the government). But the parents of these children liked the first place better, for it was closer to their working place, plus the new place had problems with clean water. In 2009, my friends built them some nice public baths and toilets. I haven't been there since then, I don't know how life is there now.

And posting this, I feel kinda ashamed with myself, looking at the children and the trashes. When will we have zero waste so that no one has to look for our shits?