Child Labor

 About 10 years ago, I had a chance to visit a friend in Indonesia on my way back home from Australia. And her family was kind enough to lodge me at their home and show me around places in Surabaya during my stay. Thanks to my friend and her family, I could have precious experiences in life. It is, in general, said that overseas Chinese merchants are minority in Indonesia and dominate the economy of Indonesia. My friend’s family was one of them and their house was a mansion built in a district where rich people reside with gates and walls around it. In a morning, I had a cup of coffee with my friend’s younger brother after the breakfast. And this boy called a made to bring some sugar to enjoy his tea. But when the maid brought him the sugar, he said, “I changed my mind, I don’t need sugar.” And when the maid brought it back to kitchen, he called her again for sugar. Surprisingly enough, when the maid came to him with the sugar again, he shouted, “I don’t need sugar.” He repeated this stupid “going and returning” a couple of times. He was teasing the maid. This was how he “enjoyed tea with sugar”. The face of the maid was filled with deep resentment.

 According to a book, slave owners must have educated their children to teach distance and difference between them in their childhood because “conscience” toward slave will destroy the wealth of family, and “insensibility” is a protection for slave owner and family. I'm not writing to criticize either this boy or this family, but I’m merely explaining my experience in Indonesia. There is one excuse for the family that they pay some money to their “servants” who are satisfied with it, even if it is far less than the legal minimum wage. The problem was that how the family treated their “employees”. Obviously they rather ordered slave than talked to human in my impression, and I witnessed that when we had a lunch at a restaurant, the driver wasn’t allowed to sit at the same table and he was sleeping outside on a corner of verandah at night. I had thought that slavery had died out but in reality it does die hard. I could witness slavery alive and well unexpectedly then.

 When I came to my school in Savelugu, I’ve encountered with the same sort of aloofness and cruelness on the faces of colleagues. And what’s worse, the former headmistress was like the head of the aloofness. During my home stay program, I happened to have a chance to experience a harvest of maize. All students were working on it and after the harvest and some of them continued to dry maize for weeks. I asked the headmistress who would enjoy the harvest and the head replied “Children”. From her face, I felt: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Namely I perceived a “lie” behind her words. The school has a land for farming but the land is divided and assigned to teachers. Although there is a small portion for school, it turned out later that most of the land is for teachers. Students cultivate the soil, sow the seeds, harvest the crops, and dry ingredients; what teachers do is to order students, to enjoy the harvest, even to sell the crops. Namely without working, you can get money, what a nice business! What you need is only aloofness and cruelness.

 Last year, the school invited a group of people for a talk on “human rights” and all students were called in the dinning hall for it. Human rights!? In my school!? I couldn’t help laughing at it. It was completely hypocrisy for the headmistress and some teachers to “educate children” on human rights. They treat children as tools or labors and on the other hand they talk about human rights of the same children. As long as children are tools for adults, Country won’t be developed. For children are the most useful tool for adults: obedient, no complaint, and free of charge. It’s domestic exploitation.