wonder 404

Christmas 1990 was approaching and I had shopping to do.

Mo, my middle aged driver, wasn’t smiling. I could tell, as I could see a tense little mouth in my vehicle’s front mirror. It was the late afternoon rush-hour and I had asked him to stop on a very busy street called Jalan Katedral, a street which has Jakarta’s main mosque on one side and its cathedral on the other. I had spotted something strange. Seated at the roadside with his rough featured, peasanty mum, and a plump baby, was a boy aged about six. The boy had no hair and no shoes. Even worse, he had no trousers and one of his hands was missing.

I don’t think Mo liked the look of the trio but I got out of the Mitsubishi and crossed the road to speak to them.


"Hello!" I said. "Do you live here?"

The mother pointed behind her at the broken fence and the patch of waste land behind.

"Has the boy got no trousers?" I asked. The boy had the sort of innocent look worn by little African children in Oxfam pictures; he had sores on his legs and bare bottom. And one of his front teeth was missing.

"We haven’t any money," said the mother. She had the face of a big tough Red Indian who had fallen on hard times.

"The boy has only one hand?"

"He lost his hand. His name is One Hand."

"And his tooth?" I asked.

She held up her fist, seemingly to indicate that someone had punched the six-year-old. Perhaps she had punched him.

I handed the woman some money, whereupon she got up and swiftly disappeared round the corner, with the baby, heading in the direction of the nearby market, called Pasar Baru.

One Hand clutched my leg and rubbed his head against it. Then he picked up a piece of grass and began to play with it, with one hand.

I walked round the corner to see where the mother had gone, but there was no sign of her. One Hand followed me. We crossed the road to Jalan Antara where several of the homeless slept. Mo, my driver, brought the vehicle over and acted as my translator as I spoke to one of the families. A ragged woman, with a thin but pretty face, told us that One Hand’s father no longer lived with them. At this point, One Hand wandered off, out of sight.

"Where will the mother be?" I asked the ragged woman.

"She’ll be back later," she replied with a cheery grin.



Having done some shopping, I returned to Jalan Antara. The sky had been darkened by black rain clouds and the air was warm and damp. One Hand’s mother, carrying her baby, emerged from the shadows. The lady appeared to be wearing a new dress and new earings. Where was One Hand? Round the corner he came, head down, still wearing only a shirt.

"One Hand still has no trousers," I said to the lady.

As I spoke, the baby produced some yellow diarrhoea.

"Is the baby OK?" I inquired. "Do you want to see a doctor?"

One Hand’s mother nodded approval.

Mo, my driver, was looking even less happy as I ushered One Hand, his mother and the baby into my van. It was a short journey to the huge and ancient Dipo Hospital. This was a place of dim lights, high ceilings and malodorous stains.

The doctor could see the baby was fat and smiling. "Not much wrong," he said, as he wrote out a prescription.

Outside the hospital I asked the mother, "Would you like some clothes and shoes for the boy?"

"Yes."

So we did some shopping in the traffic free streets of Pasar Baru, buying a shirt, a pair of shorts and some sandals. I felt like a happy Santa Claus dispensing gifts. I felt Christmassy.

"I’ll come back tomorrow at six o’clock to the spot where I met you," I explained. "Will you be there?"

"Yes."

I left them seated on the dark wet pavement watching the luxury cars go by.

~~

6. ONE HAND AND HIS MOTHER

As the weeks went by I made lots of weekend trips to the countryside.

One sunny October day I discovered a particularly magical realm on the outskirts of Bogor. Along a bosky country lane I found myself taking photographs of buffalo, fields of tapioca, dark wooden shacks among tall trees, and smiling children carrying huge baskets of mangoes and bananas. There was an aroma of burning wood and goat manure. Some of the houses along the lane were simply grubby slums, full of naked babies and toddlers, but some had decent brick walls, concrete floors, peach-coloured tile roofs and glass windows. The occasional house even had a car parked in the front yard and one mansion, belonging no doubt to a government official, had five cars. Some of the children wore clean, red and white school uniforms while others wore ragged shirts, skirts and shorts, but all of them, at least on the surface, looked fairly healthy.

Not quite all of them. There was a clearly unhealthy child crouched outside a windowless, wooden hut and he cried miserably when I pointed the camera in his direction. He had the head of a five year old but the body looked younger. Although his stomach was enormous, his limbs were rickety and withered as in pictures of starving children in Africa. He was too weak to stand up. For the first time I had met one of the waifs and strays that I was anxious to help, but unfortunately it was a rather an extreme case.

The four year old boy was named Budi. I spoke to his hollow-cheeked mother and gave her money so she could take the child to a doctor. The father, who looked tired and unwell, told me he worked in the mornings as a farm labourer, earning about 60 pence per day for his family of six. One litre of milk cost about 60 pence.

I had encountered the Third World and, naively, thought I had achieved something useful.

3. THE HILL TOWN OF BOGOR
Budi
Doctor
Carmen
Brother John
The Third World