Mataram. West Nusa Tenggara has been aggressively promoting its tourism industry with one mega-construction project after another, including an international airport.
But one does not need to travel far from Mataram, the provincial capital, to see there is still a long way to go.
Ampenan, an aging port city that runs together with Mataram, is home to some of Indonesia’s poorest neighborhoods. There, makeshift homes are constructed from used bamboo poles and covered in ragged cardboard and holed plastic sheets.
Residents of the Dayen Peken slum wage a daily battle against the nighttime cold and must deal with the putrid stench of the garbage that almost completely surrounds the area.
“The most important thing is to stay alive,” 55-year-old Rahmah said. “We live in a city, but we are suffering.”
It has been 30 years since Ramah moved to Mataram from Bima, her hometown located on neighboring Sumbawa island. When her husband died, she was forced to move into the slums.
With a rent of just Rp 100,000 ($11) per month, she is entitled to a two- by two and a half-meter dwelling. She shares the space with her three children and a grandson.
According to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), more than 894,000 of the 4.4 million people in the province live below the poverty line.
That is an improvement, at least, from last year, when more than one million people in West Nusa Tenggara were mired in poverty.
Roughly half of the province’s poor live in urban areas like Mataram. At Dayen Peken, there are a number of families who live in extreme poverty.
Each time the rainy season comes, they grow nervous that their weathered bamboo structures will not be able to support the weight of rainwater or withstand strong winds.
Fifty-year-old Idris and his wife Salamah, 48, know all too well about that fear, having moved from one makeshift hut to another for the last 35 years.
Seven people occupy their five-square-meter space: the couple, their two widowed daughters and their three grandchildren. They sleep on plywood sheets covered in plastic mats.
Their home was tilted to one side and seemed on the brink of collapse.
A place to call home
Governor Zainul Majdi said his administration was working to refurbish makeshift houses that were structurally unsafe.
About 23.6 percent of urban residents in the province are poor, while among the rural population that number is 16.9 percent.
Zainul said that since last year, his province had put into effect a program to build proper homes for people living in conditions of extreme poverty.
Last year, 400 homes were built in Mataram and Bima. This year, Zainul said, the government is building 4,000 houses in 10 urban areas, and it plans a similar output for next year.
“Of course we will be very selective,” he said. “We have a limited budget.”
Zainal said he hoped the program could be supported by Ministry of Public Housing or the Ministry for Development of Disadvantaged Regions.
Poor man’s meal
Like many in her neighborhood, Rahmah has to rely on a monthly ration of low-quality rice, or raskin, which literality translates to “rice for the poor.” But during the past five months, she said, the quality of the raskin had worsened.
“The rice is yellowish in color, and it smells funny, too,” she said. “But we had to take it. Normal rice can retail for Rp 8,000 to Rp 8,500 per kilo, so we have to eat [raskin]. What else can we do?”
Rahmah said that each family was only allowed to buy 2.5 kilograms of raskin at a price of Rp 5,000 per kilo, although the government earlier said 10 kilograms of raskin would be provided to each poor family in the province.
Each month, state procurement agency Bulog distributes 8,300 tons of raskin to West Nusa Tenggara residents living below the poverty line.
But Zarkasi, chief of the Orak Desa slum, said it wasn’t enough to feed the poor there.
Of the 400 families listed as raskin recipients, Zarkasi said, 260 of them are marked as living in extreme poverty.
Zarkasi said that each month the community received only six sacks of raskin, or 980 kilograms, to be divided among its poor.
“We have reported the condition to the urban ward office, but so far there has been no response,” he said.
According to Zarkasi, the quality of the raskin has been getting worse for months.
“Sometime the color is black and reddish, other times it is yellow,” he said. “Bugs are often found in the sacks, and sometimes there is dirt.
Despite the intensity of her poverty, however, Rahmah is better off than Salamah, who works as a part-time domestic helper. Her family has had to rely on donations in order to eat.
When visited by the Jakarta Globe, Salamah and her grandchildren were busy preparing aking rice.
“I often go to my neighbors to see if they have leftover cooked rice,” she said. “I dry it in the sun and cook it again.”
Aking is what pets and livestock often eat. It looks brownish and tastes like rice that has gone a little stale.
There are dozens of families in the neighborhood that rely on aking to supplement their diets of raskin. On their plates there are no vegetables, let alone meat.
Instead, they couple the cast-off rice with salt and grated coconut to help ease the peculiar taste and smell.
“We don’t have any other choices but to eat like this,” Salamah said. “I wish the mayor would come here and see how we live. We want to get out of this poverty.”
Bik Muli, another resident, said she hoped the government would increase the raskin ration.
“I wish we could get 10 kilograms,” she said. “But I understand there is little raskin to feed so many poor people.”