- Eastern Indonesia Prostitution, as seen from the other end Dated Added: Tue Nov 23 1999 Submitted by: Roger
Prostitution, as seen from the other end ~~
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Disclaimer: ~~
Believe me, I'm not a moral apostle. The next few lines are as close to the reality as my old brain permits, although names an some characteristic facts have been altered to protect the personal sphere of the actors. This story shall be regarded as an unique, singular, local case. There is no reason to conclude that similar situations might be found elsewhere, nor that any general deductions would hold. ~~
What the foreign guest sees:~~
As every year, this summer I returned to this large city in eastern Indonesia. In fact, it's rather a very large village, because the main characteristics of a western city are missing. It has become my second homeland. All these friendly people... with all their social problems. The all-Asian economic crisis increased the gap between rich and poor tremendously. The acceptance limit of human dignity decreased proportionally.
In that location, there is no special red light district. Girls are available in most bars, karaokes and billiard rooms. There are also some tolerated brothels. These are closed periodically by the sanitary department, but they reopen soon again. The one we talk about is on a main street. Nothing indicates that those small, dirty buildings could shelter a brothel, except the many waiting becaks (three wheel bicycle taxis) in front of the five feet high enclosure made of split bamboo sticks. It's open 24 hours a day. White skinned customers are very rare. If, as such, you get across the small, wooden bridge over the sewage drain, you will immediately be surrounded by all non-occupied girls. They will do their best to get your favors. Should your particular girl be sleeping, she will be awaked. They will ask you for some 50'000 RpI (U$ 8.35) if you stay there, 75'000 (U$ 12.50 if you take her to your hotel for a night. Most of the girls are pretty, clean and friendly. They all pretend to be over eighteen. Some others are closer to the thirties.~~
The barracks are in a piteous state. After some attempts to demolish them, the ruins have been "restored" with mats made of banana leafs and machine container parts. As the soil is of uncovered earth, you better watch where you go, especially after a rain shower. Lots of children are playing and running around.
Somewhere, there is a well with yellowish water. The buckets are common propriety and fixed to the rope. That's why most often the girls shower in their sarong, in the next vicinity of this well.
The "rooms" look like small horse boxes. They have been chalked light blue, last time right after WW2. With their six by eight feet, there is no much space left, except for a bed like working place, made of a dirty mattress. If the mains supply is working, the single 15 Watt bulb hanging from the ceiling will spend some light, but often the electric power company cuts the supply as long as nobody pays the bill. A candle replaces then the missing light source.
Some girls have condoms for sale. Their use is quite unpopular. Local models are anyhow too small for westerners. So you will have to relay on your own stock. For nine US$ you may stay as long as you want.
The girls don't like each other. Everybody is everyone's concurrent. Sometimes they have words, which may end up in tearing hair, hitting and spitting. In midst of their colleagues, they feel lonely. There is no friendship or collective feeling. They have nobody to talk with in confidence, to tell about their daily vexations or extraordinary situations.
Exceptionally, there may be two who try to appear as a team, arguing "my friend is good on....." This allows to pass the menses without significant losses, the girl being "palang merah" (red cross) specializing on massages for a few days.
How the indigenous client does. Most often, he is well known to the girls. He periodically shows up here. He wants to be serviced like in a barber's saloon. The girls refer to him by a nickname. ("the bald one", "Lenny's predator", "Catchman", "Ambon blacky"....) He has his clan of favorites. If he is married, he will justify his presence with his wife's menses..
He uses to play a role game, most often: Rape. This includes some mechanical treatment of his victim and may leave some blue spots and hurting body regions. The girls are supposed to be integral part of his game, that is: unwilling to consent, and dry. He abhors the use of condoms. His argument : "I pay for having my pleasure". Concerning AIDS: "I pray five times a day, how could I get AIDS?"
Although the official tariff is 15'000 RpI (U$ 2.50), due to the Asian crisis, during weekdays the business is in regress. So he may bargain a price between 5000 and 7000 RpI (U$ 0.85 to 1.15). ~~
Sometimes thereafter he sleeps an hour or so. Then, he leaves in calm, with a barely noticeable smile of satisfaction on his face.
Fally
She is 22, five and a halve feet tall, looks like those Aerobic teachers on the TV, comes from a town in the north likes horse riding, and is not very communicative. She has no friends at all, uses to sit apart, holding her chin with the right hand. I never saw her smile. Fally is the only Christian girl I met, (wearing a necklace with a golden cross). Until recently she worked at a call girl office, where she earned up to 100'000 RpI (U$ 16.65) per night. She has been fired after a customer's complaint about these two, spreading blue spots she developed on the inner side of both of her lower legs. It's from the horse, she says. Her two brothers had to abandon their study at one of the great universities of Yogyakarta. The elder one is lorry driver, now.
Mira~~
Her family lived in a single room hut of a suburb village. The year before, her elder brother sought his luck in Kalimantan and since gave no sign of life anymore. Her father used to unload lorries at the market place. He died in a silly accident, six months ago. Having no resources anymore, in April, her mother sent her to town to find a job as house maid. But with only two years of school education she had no great chance to get hired. She was eighteen, had a pretty face with a sad smile, but she was too slim with her five feet (151 cm) for 38 kg. A job at the market was physically impossible. Her low math knowledge even excluded work as sales woman. After several days of job searching, she finally ended up in this brothel. There was a free room. The previous girl had "left for her village" due to "blood cough", a very expedite disease. She then still was a virgin and had no great idea about her future duty. As the room rental had to be paid in advance, she borrowed some money from her future job mates at the usual interest rate of 50% per month. Having only the clothes on her body, she washed her underwear every late evening, hoping that they would dry during sleep.
Quickly, she caught a very benign sickness, the kind of fungus you may get between your toes in public swimming pools. But she had it on her belly. After a week you could see the shape of her panties in dark red on her body. The clients refused her. She had no money, neither for a doctor nor for food, even less to pay back her dues to the harassing colleagues. She interpreted her misfortune as a punishment of the Great Lord, for having given into such a sinful job. So she locked herself into her small box and prepared to die. Drinking only water for two weeks, she lost three more kg of her body weight while the fungus managed two openings trough her already very thin belly skin. It also developed a white, foam like transformation of the skin, the whole plea itching awfully. Insignificant causes - great effects! This also applies to the remedy. (One single injection, some vitamins and internal medicine, and the fungus disappeared within three days. To heal the openings in the skin, it took six weeks.)
Hava~~
She is a funny girl, nineteen years old, has two sons, aged seven and three, and is pregnant again. Hereafter you may read her sayings:
"No, it's not a good job. None of the girls like it. In the daily life, everybody despises you. Before the crisis, at least you could earn some money, now even the better guys are broke. No tips anymore, only bargaining. During weekdays you may have one client, sometimes two, but on Saturday evening you have a dozen or so, until everything hurts (gesture, smile). Well, if you are clever enough, you still may earn good money. After the boss has taken his half and the you paid all the bribes, some months there are still some 200'000 RpI (U$ 33) left. (She nods and smiles proudly.) ~~
My sons? Well, I want them. You know, in this business, with twenty five you are old. The customers want young ones. I will have to retreat. My eldest will then be thirteen and already able to earn some money. Did you meet him? That's a clever guy! Some clients give him a red one (100 RpI = U$ 0.015) just to make him leave the room.
I am the eldest girl of eleven children. Yes, I started the business a bit early. I had neither breasts nor menses. I lost my virginity for 1000 RpI. (then about U$ 0.50). This was a lot of money and we were very poor. Some other girls went to school, but with 10 years, (proud smile), I already contributed the main part of our family income. My parents? No, we never spoke about how I got the money. Well, I don't know when they realized. May be, only when I got pregnant. No, they did not comment. My mother sold fishes at the market, while my next sister looked after the remaining brothers and sisters. Mother used to come home only after the market closed.
My father was becak driver. He seldom was at home. He used to sleep in his becak. He drunk a good part of his wage. When I was thirteen, he started to bring home friends and customers.. (slowly nodding twice). He died last year.
With sixteen, I got some troubles with the sanitary dept. I was two weeks "on stage". Finally I got this place. I have one of the best rooms. (smile) You saw it?
We all like white skinned men. Sure, we raise the prizes for them, but they never complain. They don't bargain. They pay. If they are satisfied, you may even get tips or a drink (soft, of course!). They don't strike you. Some times they even ask if you feel well.
Once, we had a team of three Australian technicians. They hired one girl each for their whole stay of two weeks. We lived in their hotel and ate together in the restaurant. We even have been out to cinema. During their work hours, we could order food and drinks as often as we wanted. Whow, that was a life! Each of us got one million! (U$ 166) (her eyes rise to the sky). But Australians are seldom, and tourists use the girls provided by their hotels. You know, these are much more expensive, but not better!
I have a bank account. Whenever there is some money left, after I've paid the contribution to my mother, the brothers and sisters, I save it for later and in case of STD. Yes, here sometime you get some diseases, but we have a good doc. He gives us the injections for 15'000 RpI each. (U$ 2.50. Remark: I never met this doctor, but according to gossips, he has a western sponsor, providing for free all the VD medicine he needs for the girls.)
Marriage? Nobody wants to marry girls like us! They want virgins! No, I never considered marriage as a possible issue. I did not want to imitate my good mother. My next sister is eighteen, has two children and has recently been divorced. Is she better off? Earlier or later, she will have to join this business too!"
Alyoun~~
She was the star of the gang. Looking very young with her slightly tanned skin, her glossy eyes, her beautiful, white teeth together with her two feet long, straight black hair, she had an attitude of dignity. Only the rose, tattooed on her left upper arm disclosed any possible relationship with a middle class family. Five feet two high, she was about eighteen, but two years ago she already pretended to be nineteen. Obviously the economic crisis had increased her age as quick as the market prices. She was booked out every evening. Clients used to drink at the small kiosque while waiting for their turn. So I never had the opportunity to exchange more than a few words.
She came from a far remote place, a small village in the east.
One evening, there were no clients waiting. Those wanting to meet her were told to have another one. I heard her moaning in her room. Hava asked me to have a look at her. After some insisting palaver, she finally opened the door. Her tears had smeared all her make-up. After repeating some twenty times that she was fed up, punctuating every time by hitting with her fist the soap box which served as table, she finally started to look at me. "He, you, please give me some money." She wanted 2'000 RpI (U$ 0.15) for a ticket back home. "For the remainder, I shall pay the driver "in nature".
The reason of her despair? As every month, she had prepared her money to be sent to her family at the village. But this time, all the money had disappeared.... "They are 23 people there. How will they eat next month?"~~
Ngna~~
Twenty four, rather ugly with her harelip, looking like mentally deficient, she has her special clan of fans. These usually come back in a perplexed mood. At the kiosque, they tell the assistance that she is "really good", leaving the mystery entire, without explanation. When I asked Ngna, she just said that she was a girl of Madura (an island near Bali, see elsewhere on the net) and that some of those girls had special facilities. Although she knew that I never engage in physical relations, she invited me, "just to show you, for free". My refusal of her invitation ended up with a public demonstration of moving her panty forth and back by one inch, without moving any other part of her body. She pays for the scholarship of her brother, at the academy of applied computer science.
Handy~~
It's a past tense case. She died in May. Of flu.... She was said to be twenty. A splendid girl, although the local beauty rules don't include steel wool hair. Tall, of standard European body shape (her colleagues rather said: fat), she had been the only one with an useful level of English knowledge. She used to translate the transactions with foreigners. She wanted to marry with an Australian guy and leave for a better life, for her and her family back home. And this robust girl died of flu, within three weeks......
And there are 39 other ones.....
Post script:~~
All Indonesia has officially less than six hundred AIDS cases. With 228 million inhabitants, it is therefore one of the most sterile countries in the world.
According to a local religious spokesman, this is s due to the high level of morality. It's also the admitted reason, why officially no significant preventive action is taken in this region. "We have much more lethal cases with slammed doors than with AIDS", a local health officer told me recently, "and we don't take any action against doors."~~
In this region, sexual education takes place only at the junior high school level, disclosing most youngsters from any access to this basic knowledge. There is no knowledge transfer in sexual matters between generations, due to taboos, 'moral' and shyness. So comes that even between these 'professionals' there are many who don't even know about their own sexual organs. STDs are only known from the practical side. Here, I better skip my comments about their knowledge about pregnancy and its causes... Several of these girls are completely excised (ablation of the protruding part of the clitoris).
I never met one single girl who liked this job, who wanted to work as "WTS". This is the Indonesian shortening for 'girl without moral'. In my mind it's a misnomer. ~~~~ (Review # 845)
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