Editor’s Note:
This article is a personal opinion piece written by Aida Greenbury. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Living in Indonesia editorial team. The article is presented as a commentary intended to encourage discussion about personal responsibility, life choices, and social issues. Some viewpoints may be controversial and readers may hold different perspectives.
Dina stepped out to the back porch of the huge house. Crystal clear water in the swimming pool rippled silently by the stream flowing from a round jug – held by a naked porcelain statue of a woman at the end of the pool. The neatly trimmed bamboo trees around the statue shifted against the wind – making the tiny lamps that were attached to the bamboo branches dance like a group of fireflies.
A typical expatriate house with a six-figure package, she thought.
The partygoers inside were still roaring with laughter. Dina was tired of being a social butterfly entertaining the usual chauvinist male guests with their Indonesian girlfriends whose conversations were limited to talking about the coolest nightclubs and the most effective slimming tea. She wanted some fresh air.
Then a woman came to her asking for a light. Dina lit her cigarette and started talking with the stranger.
“So, what do you do?” asked Dina. That was always the safest way to start an innocent conversation.
“Gua – gua merek aje! (Me? I’m a prostitute!),” replied the other woman with a thick Jakarta accent, then she continued. “Usually I hang out at a club in Blok M. What about you? What do you do?”
“Can you believe it? She was dead serious! I actually had seen her a couple of times before that night – with different white guys at different parties, but how could you have guessed?” Dina told me a few days later.
How could I have guessed? Well, I suspect that she was one heck of a woman. At least she was honest. She admitted that she chose to be a prostitute and seemed to be proud of it, I might add.
And please – don’t give me that argument about economic reasons. Or about circumstances that may have pushed her into becoming a sex worker. Aren’t you all tired of the cliché that “she had no other choice”?
Let me tell you a story about choices.
Once upon a time, during the Indonesian War of Independence more than fifty years ago, there was a poor boy living in Kemayoran, Jakarta. He lived in a small house with his father. His father had divorced his mother after discovering that one man wasn’t enough for her.
One day, Japanese planes flew overhead. Suddenly they began dropping bombs. The father and son escaped only minutes before their house was destroyed. They lost everything they owned.
The boy and his father moved to Yogyakarta, where his father found work as a nurse in a small military hospital. His salary was barely enough to survive, yet he still sent his son to school.
The boy studied hard. He didn’t fully understand why, but he knew he wanted to become somebody different. Somebody who could make a contribution to the world, however small.
His father could only afford to buy him one notebook. The boy filled every page with notes from school. When he reached the last page, he carefully erased the writing from the first page and started again. He repeated this process over and over because he wanted to keep learning.
Years later, he earned a scholarship to the United States to complete both his master’s degree and doctorate. Today, he is a respected expert whose knowledge has benefited both Indonesian and multinational companies.
I know this story in detail because the boy is my father.
He became who he is because of the choices he made. As a child, he could have chosen a different path. He could have become a street kid, drifted through life, or given up entirely. But he didn’t.
My friends often tell me I’m overly sentimental. Different aspects of life affect me very deeply.
I can cry watching an elderly man pulling a garbage cart.
I cried when I saw someone on a passing bus snatch a piece of melon from the hand of an elderly rujak (fruit salad) seller by the roadside.
I cry because I realize that those poor people could have been me.
They could have been my father.
They could have been my uncles.
During a family dinner at home, we were surrounded by what most people would consider luxurious food. A bowl of sautéed scallops with mustard cream sauce, potato salad, and honey-glazed chicken fillet. It was still cheaper than eating at a restaurant.
The television showed a report about malnourished children in Africa. Their faces were covered with flies as they waited with wooden bowls to receive thin porridge from aid workers.
“Good gracious. Bon appétit,” I thought.
“We should be thankful we weren’t born into those circumstances,” I said to my husband. “We could have been those children.”
“Perhaps,” he replied. “But don’t you think that if we had been born into those circumstances, we might still have ended up where we are today?”
His answer stopped me in the middle of chewing a piece of scallop.
We all begin life the same way.
We are born with nothing.
No expensive shoes.
No piles of money.
No status.
No power.
What lies ahead are millions of choices, opportunities, and possibilities.
What ultimately guides us are our values, our conscience, our determination, and our ability to distinguish between right and wrong.
So who are the people who make the right choices?
Are they somehow stronger than those who make poor decisions?
Or are life and circumstance more complicated than that?
Which brings me back to the woman Dina met at the party.
Did she simply make a wrong turn?
Or, as the old saying suggests, aren’t we all selling a part of ourselves in one way or another?
by Aida Greenbury
