A Glimpse Into Life in a Jakartan Rubbish Dump

A short photo essay: Bantar Gebung

On the outskirts of Jakarta is a tip, called Bantar Gebung. It is a sprawling waste heap, one of several beasts this megacity keeps afloat. It is home to four villages and a bustling economy. Pristine white tiles line houses on stilts to lift them out of the refuse below. There is a school, and children pretend to concentrate as the tractors and compactors pass them by.

I watch a young mother nurse her child, brushing the flies away from her breast. But just as every fibre of your being is filled with compassion and sentimentality, a local will whip out a shiny new camera phone and ask to take your photo. It is a stark reminder that life is very different here. Wealth and poverty co-exist, not just suburb by suburb, street by street, but as powerful threads in the same person.

In Bantar Gebung, men scale the shifting mountains of refuse, scrabbling in the wake of tractors to find anything recyclable – anything that can be resold. Plastic is gold.

Broken thongs are carefully collected – they are used, in their millions, to shore up the sinking pathways of mud between villages. It is dangerous work. Many fall into the paths of bulldozers or slip into landslides of refuse.

Political posters are nailed to barbed wire and plastered on walls. The smiling faces of parliamentary hopefuls shine out among the rubbish, promising a bright future for Indonesia. It is an odd juxtaposition.

This life is unimaginable to me, and I was filled with a mixture of distaste and compassion as I wandered from house to house, picking my way through diseased chickens and treacherous sinkholes of debris. But to the men, women and children in this town, this is their home. Rubbish is their livelihood. And there is a pride in the life they have built for themselves here. 

Jennifer Blake (Words and Photos)