Monday, May 16, 2016

Momma Jockeys


I've talked of traffic lots.  Jakarta traffic jams are the worst in the world, based on the number of times drivers apply the brakes over a given distance.


The whole of traffic allows for a good look at economics. I'm sure there must be some theory that can be applied. But, here's how I see it.  


Jakarta has a burgeoning middle class. It's growing by leaps and bounds. There are millions of newly moneyed and they all want. Want. Want. Cars are a big status symbol.  It's what they see on tv and in the movies, so they aspire to having a car, or three or four.  Cars are also a way to get around in a place with chaotically poor mass transit.


If you can't  have a car, you still need to get around, so many families opt for a motor bike. 2900 new motorbikes hit the roads here each day. The government, in an effort to keep the economy turning makes low interest rate loans available to consumers so they can buy cars and motor bikes.  It also subsidizes fuel for all.  


In addition to the lack of mass transport, there is an abysmal lack of good roads.  There are only a few main thoroughfares and access on or off them is a choke point issue.


So despite subsidizing an auto culture, the government admits there are too many cars on the roads. 10 years or so, it put in place laws to promote carpooling. It required 3 passengers in a car during 7 of the busiest hours of the day. The fines were pretty substantial for the everyday Indonesian,  perhaps 50 dollars or so.  


It's left to the police to enforce the laws. Law enforcement though is not a well paying job if you rely on your salary alone. So it seems the police used carpool violations as a means to make money. Pulling over cars and checking for passengers.  You can either pay the full fine downtown, or pay the lower “fine” right there on the spot and go about your business. What happens? People pay the lower fine and drive wherever they want.


Enter the 3-in-1 jockeys. These entrepreneurial Indonesians, sensing a money making opportunity stepped in and organically grew a system whereby people rent themselves out as passengers so drivers can skirt the rules and get where they want.  Jockeys sometimes earn 15 bucks a day just sitting in other people's cars for a while.  They've got regular clientele and everything.


Once every so often the police sense some encroachment on their fines and so move into clear the streets of the jockeys who scatter into the slums.  Some who are caught are put in detention for a few days, but they're back at it soon after promising not to do it again.  


The rule is 3 people per car, so if you're driving alone you have to pick up two strangers.  Jakarta mothers found a further advantage.  If they rode along with their toddlers, the drivers got 2 people in the car for around the price of one.  


So, every morning and afternoon, you see moms with toddlers strapped to their waists hustling for a ride. The kids, though, are always sleeping, slumped over on moms shoulders. All very docile.  No one, it seems, wants a noisy kid sitting in traffic, so moms are alleged to drug the kids, so they stay quiet during rush hour.  


Now some mothers struggle.  It's hard to run a household while sitting in traffic earning a living. So, they've got a drugged kid and a house to keep, why not just rent out the kid and let someone else sit.  


This is apparently where the line is drawn.  It was found out that this was going on and then confirmed that these kids were being sedated and possibly put in danger. The whole thing racket has fallen apart.


The government, now seeing that it's future citizens are at risk, decided to do something. Not by removing children from moms who rent them out, not by restricting the sales of narcotics, but by ceasing the carpool laws.


Police are up in arms because they worry the roads can't handle the traffic.  Everyone thinks what they're really worried about is the loss of their revenue stream. There is worry that they may tie up traffic just to prove a point


The jockeys lament the reduction of income. Many of them have nothing else to do that can earn 15 dollars in a day.


We all lament the potential increase in traffic.

The children, though, should come out ahead. They may wake up and be able to experience the world. Perhaps they'll learn to read or think or play or scheme up some new ways to make the money.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

On the Rock

I'm back in Papua New Guinea, the other end of the island. Not much has changed in Port Moresby. Major road construction projects are winding up and it's easier to get around it seems.


One such project is an overpass built expressly for a big regional political meeting coming up in two years time. This overpass will swish dignitaries directly from the airport to the meeting site and
by-pass all the traffic and potential carjacking points and scenes of poverty. These meetings are great to expose these countries to world leaders, but I wonder about resources better spent on things like food and water and health care. But maybe there's some bigger plan.


The Australians have contracted with the Papuans to put a refugee camp here.  The Aussies  have taken a hard line against people coming to their shore by boat.  It may not make the news back home, but they intercept folks coming by boat and put them in camps where conditions are considered pretty bleak. On the island of Nauru, distressed refugees are immolating themselves to protest conditions. Recently the Supreme Court in PNG ruled that these camps in Papua New Guinea violated the constitution and they should be closed.


Coincidentally, on Papua, some refugees have been let out of the camps to live in the community as regular citizens.  A number of them, though have asked to move back into the camps citing safety reasons.


I just finished reading “Savage Harvest” by Carl Hoffman. He goes back and investigates the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller way back in 1961.  The grandson of John D  Rockefeller was off collecting primitively art in western Papua when he disappeared while boating off the coast. Despite an extensive search his body was never found. It was thought he was swept out to sea or was even by sharks, but was also rumored he swam ashore and was eaten by cannibals. I leave it to you to read more, but the book is fascinating look at some of the ageless spirituality that infuses the people of this region.


On my way to the airport, the driver told me an interesting story.


We passed by a rock, a huge boulder of granite. He told me that back in 1990 as they were building the road to the airport they had to carve a pass over a mountain.  They carved down through the mountain and hauled all the rock down to the harbor and dumped it there. They packed it all down and have started building on it as reclaimed land.


But, he pointed to the big boulder that had been fenced off by the side of the road, and said that they hauled that particular rock down to the shore 5 or 6 times, but every time they did they found it moved back to its original site up the hill.  After a few times, they decided they needed to talk to the rock to see what the problem may be.  


They found landowners who had some rights to the land and they asked them to come talk to the rock. They did, but the rock didn't listen until finally, they found an ancestor of some of the original people of the Port Moresby area. They had been displaced to up into the hills when the city was built. These people came and they talked to the rock and the rock talked back and they were able to reach a compromise where the rock would agree to be moved to the side of the road, but didn't have to go down to the beach.


So there it sits. Some 5 tons of stone. They've even built a little wall around it. Whether that's to keep the rock in or people out is not known.


He proceeded to tell me about a sacred spring that is inhabited by a snake spirit.  No one is allowed to swim there or fish there.  But, a the end of the dry season, when everyone is hungry and tired of the dust and the heat, they send someone up into the hills to splash about and make noise and soon after a flood comes and usually kills some people or destroys things.  

The loss is a payment to the gods, but at least they have rain.  

“Yeah, we've got a lot of stories about spirits and ghosts. It all goes way, way back.”  All that from a cab ride.  Well worth the fare.