I arrive at the intersection where I have been told that street children hang out.  It�s only five minutes before I see her. She is sitting by herself in a small park that divides the massive six-lane road. She has a bag made from an empty juice carton and a piece of string, around her neck, a dusty red dress on and bare feet. I guess her age at seven or eight. After several minutes she gets up, crosses the three lanes and walks toward a group of waiting buses, and boards one.

By the time I get on the bus she has already selected a passenger and is standing in the isle next to him. As she taps out a tune on her self-made Tambourine, a collection of bottle tops and wood, she is watched by some passengers, while others stare out the window or continue their conversations. The bus moves off and she starts to sing. After a minute or two she stops and puts forward a hand to the passenger she has been serenading. Getting no response she moves down the bus squeezing her way through the passengers standing in the aisle. Several passengers give her coins or small notes. I lose sight of her behind other passengers before realizing she has jumped off the still moving bus as it slowed down to a walking pace. I quickly get off attempting to find her amongst the mess of cars, motorcycles, and people moving chaotically in the street. But I am too slow and she�s gone, probably onto another bus in search of a new audience.

The street children of Jakarta number in their thousands. There are several reasons why the children can be seen roaming the polluted streets of Jakarta. Some have parents, with whom they share makeshift cardboard homes, living under motorway bypasses and bridges spending their days working or begging on the streets to support their family. After the 1997-98 Asian economic crises many families were left without either parent having a job, and now the family is homeless.  Other children will spend up to 12 hours on the street a day and then return home to their parents, who are often very poor and unemployed, the reason they have sent their children out to work. But a lot of the children have no family to look out for them and no regular place to sleep.

For many of these children, physical and or sexual abuse had simply made life at home intolerable.  The choice to live on the streets was the lesser of two evils. For others, there is simply no love and attention from parents.  More than 80% of street children come from broken homes. Sometimes parents have remarried, have a new child now and the older child receives much less attention.

Hardest to comprehend are the few small children who have lost their way after playing far from home and are unable to find their way back. Two brothers now living at Griya Asih, a local home for street children, did just that. Just 4 and 6 years old when they got lost one day they are now 11 and 13 and still have no idea who or where their parents are.  Unfortunately this is not an isolated story and police and social services seem ill equipped to deal with situations such as these.

Just like in Oliver Twist, many of Jakarta�s street children are under the control of premen or thugs that �own� a number of children and expect the lions share of whatever money the children can beg, borrow or steal.

Nowadays the police pick up children that are alone on the streets and take them to a women�s prison. If they are not picked up by one of the children�s foundations then they will be sent to the courts who decide their future, probably being sent to one of the many les-than-homely homes for children in Jakarta. 

Younger children not controlled by premen will often find or become attached to a Mamma-Ann.  A Mamma-Ann will also live on the streets and may have children of her own. She�ll take 'custody� of the children and expects these children to bring her money every day.  She will probably intervene if the police try to catch any of 'her' children and tell the police they are hers.

The children suffer a lot of abuse on the streets, including sexual abuse. Often the abuse comes from Mamma-Ann, Pappa-Ann or Kakka-Ann (street brother). Previously the security guards at a central railway station made children they caught clean the floor with their tongues but this isn't so common now.

Lucky children find their way to Griya Asih, a foundation set up by Ibu Pandaya. When the floods submerged Jakarta in 1996, Ibu Pandaya invited a number of street children to her house to ride out the rains.  After a year and a half they were still there and she decided to create Griya Asih.  Seven years on Griya Asih has two houses, and is home to 60 boys and 10 girls ranging from 11 to 22 years old.

 The foundation also holds classes outdoors for those children who aren�t ready to come in off the streets.  Surprisingly, it is a slow process getting the children to come and live permanently at Griya Asih. To start with usually they come only for a day or two at a time, returning to live on the street. It is hard for them to accept the rules, although there are not very many at Griya Asih and structure of life compared to the street.  Often adults have only meant abuse or lies and the children are slow to trust again.

 It is Griya Asih�s aim to create a family environment for the children replacing the one they have lost, or never know after a life of living on the streets. Ibu Pandaya believes this is essential to the success of any foundation supporting street children.  Without this she knows that the children will return to the streets having been fed and received some education, but still missing the skills and confidence to turn their lives around.

Words; copyright Myles Green 2003