The Jakarta Globe, Titania Veda, March 4, 2009
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Carriage driver Sain brushes down Imron, a horse he bought for only
Rp 3 million ($249) because of its badly emaciated condition. (Photo:
Titania Veda, JG)
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The pungent
odor of horses and rotting garbage pervades the air behind the Golkar head
office in Kemanggisan, West Jakarta. Across a waste-filled tributary that runs
into the Grogol River is the site of a village slum. Piles of horse dung a few
meters high line the stream’s bank where a man sits on a broken and tattered
sofa, smoking a cigarette.
Horse
carts, adorned with shiny embellishments, are parked along a narrow dirt road
leading to a row of wooden hovels that serve as makeshift stables for the steeds
that pull andong Betawi , or horse-drawn carriages.
The dark
horses are barely discernible in the shadows of the battered wooden shacks. A
lone horse stands tied to a tree, rib bones clearly visible under the noon sun
and its head caked with sores and blemishes. Patches of gray are visible on its
dull brown coat, where its hair has been rubbed away by the carriage traces,
and not grown back.
Floppy-haired
and wearing red shorts, Sain begins to rub down the horse’s flanks with a steel
brush. The horse, called Imron, belongs to him. Flies land on the horse’s face,
alighting in the corner of its eyes.
Sain has
been a carriage driver at the Kemanggisan stables for three years, and has
owned Imron for about a year.
“I have
changed horses maybe 10 times. If they are not strong, I change them,” he says.
Femke den
Haas, founder of the Jakarta Animal Aid Network, tromps in rubber boots across
the dung-carpeted, marshy dirt road in front of the stables. Her slender frame
moves from one horse stall to the next, as she talks with the carriage drivers
about the health of their animals. JAAN began working to improve the treatment
and condition of andong Betawi horses in February 2009.
Carefully
cleaning sludge from a horse’s hoof in a nearby stall is Pita van Deurzen, a
JAAN volunteer. Bending beside the horse, Pita says: “If you look at the
hooves, they are all soft, practically rotting away. They stand in their own
shit and mud and it isn’t cleaned out.” The 23-year old is visiting from the
Netherlands, where she works as a seasonal keeper at Apenheul Primate Park.
“The owners
use homemade horseshoes and nails, so they don’t fit properly,” Pita says as
she continues to dig out the mud and dirt from the horse’s hooves. “And that
can hurt a horse. It can cripple a horse if infected. If the shoe doesn’t fit
right, the outside of the hoof may also crack.”
A cloud of
midges and stable flies rises and scatters as a man shovels slushy horse
droppings from a stall to the heap beside the stream. Nodding toward a group of
schoolboys in white uniforms as they passed along the dirt road, stable
coordinator M. Yani says: “No one used to walk through here before there were
stables because it was really unsafe. There were lots of robberies.”
The
carriage drivers do not own the land they occupy, however. So far this year,
Yani has received three eviction notices from the government. He explains that
Femke is trying to help them to get their presence on the land legitimized.
“It is a
dying tradition but it will still be around for many years,” Femke says. “I
hope the government will accept the fact that the andong Betawi is still
tradition and maybe legalize this land.”
Yani acts
as spokesman for the drivers and is also the founder of the Association in the
Fight for Betawi Horse-Drawn Carriages, or Persatuan Perjuangan Delman Betawi.
The group seeks to stop the closing of the andong Betawi stables and is
fighting for the right to drive the carriages at Monas. Since 2007, the Central
Jakarta Municipality has banned the carriages from operating inside the
National Monument park, deeming them to be disorderly and in an attempt to
prevent animal waste polluting the area. Up to 50 carriages can be found by the
outskirts of the national monument on weekends, but public order officials
still try to make the drivers leave.
“The andong
betawi is a unique Betawi vehicle,” Yani says. “So I am upset that the Betawi
heritage is being condemned.”
“Because no
one cares,” Budhy says. “If not us, who will help?
“We are
worried for the welfare of the horses if they are always at places where they
can be evicted any day,” Femke says. “For the horses it is horrible. During the
last eviction, in a clash with the police, a horse broke its leg. But it is
horrible also for the people. Some have been doing this for 30 years. It is
their income.”
Mondays are
a day of respite for the animals, weekends being their heaviest working days.
According
to Kadan, an old-timer who has been an carriage driver for 35 years, drivers
earn Rp 100,000 ($8.30) at most working a Sunday at Monas, charging Rp 15,000
for each 50-minute ride. During the week, the drivers head to villages, where
they take children for rides at Rp 1,000 per person. That rakes in less —
around Rp 30,000 a day, Yani says.
Kadan’s two
horses are in the villages today, being driven by his helpers. Kadan, 51,
rarely drives carts himself these days as he says he is too tired to do so.
He speaks
proudly about his horses. “One of my horses is new. It is healthy and fat.” If
his animals fall ill, he tries his best to care for them. But when veterinary
bills cannot be covered, a horse’s last ride is to a butcher’s, where it will
be slaughtered and its flesh sold as meat.
“You can
get about Rp 1.5 [million] to 2 million for selling a sick horse,” Kadan says.
The cost of a healthy horse is closer to Rp 6 million. He points to Sain’s
malnourished horse and says it looked better than when bought from Hasan, a
horse trader. “Before, he was really skinny.” Kadan explains that the horse
only cost Rp 3 million because it was so emaciated. Once the horse is nursed
back to health, it can fetch a price of Rp 5 million.
“I bought
two horses for Rp 7 million. They were in good condition,” Kadan says.
A few
stalls down, Hasan is brushing down his own horse, a mahogany called Pelor.
Hasan has been driving carriages since the 1970s, learning his business from
his parents. Like many of the other carriage drivers, the 45-year-old only had
an elementary school education, which limits his work options.
Femke goes
into Pelor’s stall and cradles his neck, checking the horse’s body for sores.
There is a gaping red wound on its back, caused by the carriage tracings, Pita
says. Femke gently drips antiseptic from a syringe onto the wound.
After
tending the horse, Femke gives Hasan a card.
Horse
owners are asked to provide details of themselves and their horses, one of the
few guidelines put in place by Femke in exchange for the free medication and
regular checkups provided by JAAN.
“Before,
people used traditional methods, like sticking a rope through the horse’s chest
to release the bad air,” Yani says.
“They
believe it lets the air and disease out,” Pita explains.
She says
that puncturing the chest is also a common remedy for horse’s with leg
ailments. “The owners move the pain to another location, so the horse doesn’t
limp anymore.”
At another
stall, Femke points out a horse with a torn mouth and a split tongue, both
caused by the bridle’s bit, she says.
Elsewhere,
Pita firmly lifts another horse’s leg to clean its hoof. Behind the horse’s
hind legs was a pile of dung, bristling with flies.
“It is
actually no use for me to clean the hoof if the owners don’t clean up the
[stable],” Pita says. “So I just get the horses used to being touched in a
normal way. They tend to get hit all the time.”
JAAN
offered to train carriage drivers to re-shoe their horses, but the offer was
rejected. “They apologized for not being able to come because they said a day
not working is a day not eating,” Pita says.
A man digs
through the horse manure and mud beside Sain, scavenging for crickets and
earthworms, and dumping the writhing insects into a plastic container. A fish
trader who works at Slipi Market, Kartawijaya says he would use the insects as
bait. Toward the end of the cul-de-sac, another man carries a bundle of fresh
grass to a stall.
In the
early afternoon, Femke and Pita are joined by two veterinarians who lecture at
the Bogor Agricultural University. Budhy Jasa Widyananta and Fitri Dewi
Fathiyah are a young husband-and-wife team who have a practice in Bogor dealing
with sports horses, used in racing, polo and equestrian events. This is their
second visit to the Kemanggisan stables, where, like JAAN, they are working to
boost conditions for the carriage horses.
“Because no
one cares,” Budhy says. “If not us, who will help?
“Our aim is
the well-being of the horses. If the horses look well, people will ride them.
If people see the poor condition they are in, they will take pity on the horses
and will not ride them.”
The JAAN
team is trying to instill this philosophy into the carriage drivers. Budhy says
that most carriage owners treat horses as mere tools, not living entities.
“If they
are sick, they just change them,” he says. “I want the drivers to care for the
horses because they depend on each other.”
Imron rears
his head and edges backward when Budhy approaches him with a stethoscope.
Holding tight to Imron’s reins, Sain manages to keep the horse still.
“His lungs
sound good,” Budhy says. He moves toward Imron’s head and tells Femke that the
caked skin and sores on the horse’s nose are due to infection from being
constantly wet. Fitri, a petite woman in gumboots, pulls at the horse’s skin
and as it remains pinched, says: “He also has dry coat. He is dehydrated.”
Two boys
from the nearby village stand inside a stall, looking at the vets performing
their check-up. One of them touches Imron’s snout. “He’s crying!” he says.
Femke replies, “Yes, he is in pain,” as she gently wipes the horse’s eye.
As dusk
falls, three boys linger by a corner stall, watching as Sain gingerly rubs hair
growth salve on the bare parts of Imron’s flanks. Fading light streams through
the beams. One of the boys points to a grey patch on the horse’s side and says,
“You missed this one.”
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