The Mercy Corps Blog

Blog Post Posted August 25, 2009, 6:54 pm by Roger Burks

Shaking off the numbness

Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Yesterday, a colleague in Indonesia told me that one of the slum areas we had visited while I was in Jakarta had been reduced to smoldering wreckage.

As a so-called illegal settlement situated on a public right-of-way — in this case, under a section of bridge owned by a toll road company — the neighborhood was always in danger. Most likely, residents were warned up to a week before the destruction took place. But, when you’re already living under a bridge amidst open sewers and piles of refuse in the middle of one of the world’s largest cities, where else do you go?

Local authorities came to evict individuals and families with children from their makeshift dwellings. Dismantled, confiscated and burned what couldn’t be carried away immediately. Destroyed what had been a community, cobbled together by unlikely neighbors over months, within the space of a day.

Much of my day here in the western United States was spent in line at the office of a local cable company with whom I’m having a dispute — a longstanding argument over television equipment. I rode to the air-conditioned office from my air-conditioned house in my air-conditioned car and was annoyed at having to wait in line at all. I spoke in an agitated way to the folks whose job it is to tell me as little as possible yet keep my business. After too much time spent poring over amassed pieces of evidence — both theirs and mine — I left with some unsatisfying semblance of a resolution.

My frustration was over television, a non-necessity. And yet, while I was at the cable company’s office, I was far from alone in my discontent: a line of people with similar looks on their faces stretched almost out the door.

Passing them all, with their armloads of paperwork and machinery, I felt numb. Did I just spend that much time arguing over television? Only two days back from possibly the most amazing journey of my life, did I let something that doesn’t even matter raise my ire and get the best of me?

Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

I grew numb. I remained numb.

Because, not that long ago, I walked under that bridge in that now-gone Jakarta slum and kicked a tiny soccer ball with children who lived in boxes. I made spirited conversation with young men and old ladies, even though I didn’t know a single word of Bahasa Indonesia at the time. I turned down offers of clove cigarettes, yet accepted an invitation by a group of transvestites to sit and spend some time amidst their hovels under that bridge, blessedly out from the burning heat of the Jakarta sun.

I experienced hospitality and joy in a place that no longer exists. Where did it go? Where are those who made their homes beneath the bridge sleeping tonight?

And why the hell did I get so upset when my house is still standing, my life mostly intact?

The television is off. My shame is raging. My conscience is on.

I am back under the bridge.