Thursday, December 18, 2008

Neneng, Just a Place to Rest

I just read a book about women in prison. It really touch me. Here is one of the story about a woman that stays in prison. Just for a simple reason, she needs a place to rest.
You want to know my life story, Ma? There isn't much to tell. I can still remember leaving my village for the city with my old granny. I was just a baby when the drought came and the crops failed. My Mum and Dad both die of hunger. I don't really remember them well. But Granny and I survived and she always told me that no matter how little food there was, Mum and Dad always gave their own to share with me.
Granny and I first moved to a small town near the sugar factory in the area where I'm from. There's a train line there, and we used to run and beg for food. when a train went by. One day my little brother, Ujang, got crushed to death in an accident outside the loading station. Granny cried and cried but, in a way, it was a relief too. It was just too hard for her to look after two children alone.
I remember her hugging me and telling me that if we didn't go to the city, we'd starve to death. The next day, she took my hand and, without saying a word, set off. All of our belongings - just a bag of ragged clothes is all - she gripped under her other arm.
Most of the time we walked. We weren't the only ones on the road. There were lots of others in the same situation. None of us knew what to do; we just knew that if we stayed where we were we'd die of hunger. We walked and walked; sometimes we stopped and slept under a tree. If we passed a market, by the side of the road, we'd stop and looked for scraps of food to eat, but usually we got by in nothing. Some how we finally made it to Jakarta.
The city seemed huge and so full of people. The building were all so big and tall. But Granny and I were so worn out we could barely stand up. We sprawled down next to some other people, in front of a shop. In the middle of the night, we were shaken awake by cries of, "Raid! Hey, a raid!" I didn't even know the meaning of the word but everyone there scrammed, running down the alleyways to get as far away as possible from the shops on the main street. Those who weren't fast enough were thrown into trucks. A man was shouting at the people they picked up and calling them filthy animals. I guess you weren't allowed to sleep outside the shops on the main street.
Granny and I hid deep inside a drainpipe next to a river. The smell was enough to make you gag, but we were save from the men in trucks. I heard people outside talking about "anti-vagrancy-operation." The men with trucks were rounding up everyone who didn't have an identity card. I couldn't understand what we'd done wrong. It wasn't our fault that we didn't have anywhere to sleep. I just didn't understand.
We had to work hard to survive. We scrounged through rubbish bins, looking for anything we could find: scraps for rice, paper and old bottles, Granny told me to look for cigarettes butts. In a few days, I became an expert. There were people in the street who bought the cigarettes butts for the tobacco in them. I learnt to survive by watching  what the other kids did. We went to the market a lot. There were always scraps there, and sometimes we made money by carrying ladies shopping bags.
And that was how I live. By day, I scrounged for food. At night I slept with Granny, wherever we could find a place, wherever we'd be left alone. When Granny got sick, we stayed for a little while underneath a bridge. Luckily the water didn't come up too high, and Granny could beg from the people going past under the bridge.
One night, after Granny began to get better and was well enough to the help the forage through the rubbish bins, we found a place to sleep in a shop-front doorway. There was another raid, and this time we got caught. There was lot of us and we were beaten and pushed into a truck. I looked around and everyone looked scared. We didn't know where we were being taken, of what the man driving the trucks were going to do to us.
We were just ordinary country people trying to survive. All we wanted was something to eat and a place to rest. Where were we supposed to go? I didn't know, and neither did granny. It didn't seem we could do anything right.
We were taken to a large building and herder inside. We were thrown into a long room, and the door slammed shut behind us. I heard a key turing in the lock. Someone said something about being processed in the morning.
That night I heard kids sobbing and crying in the dark. I felt so tired, but at least the floor was clean and I could rest until the next day. Here, in this place, I don't have to worry that somebody is suddenly going to wake us up, and that we're going to have to run and hide again. At least that's good.