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By The Way: Unnatural selection in the concrete jungle
Jakarta, I've only been here three months and already you've etched your heart in me forever
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Jakarta, I've only been here three months and already you've etched your heart in me forever.
Quite literally, you've seared into my skin a jagged wound that is going to leave a very permanent scar. If I squint hard enough it's shaped like a heart -- and so I've chosen to draw powerful symbolism from the pus-filled chasm in my foot.
It all started when I had the audacity to walk along a footpath in Jakarta not wearing steel-capped mountain boots, clearly the only appropriate footwear for this city.
FYI: Along a sidewalk in Menteng, a 15-centimeter-high steel pole, delicately topped with shards of rusted metal, sticks strategically out of the ground. Walking along innocently, I tripped over it as one of the rusted pointy bits lodged into my foot and ripped a teaspoon scoop of meat out of it.
In the ensuing three weeks after my "accident", lying in bed feverish from foot infections, swallowing a colorful assortment of antibiotics, painkillers and vitamins, I had something of an epiphany.
Events connected like a spider's web, weaving a conspiracy in place -- the unfilled potholes,the collapsing buildings, the sinking land, the rising floods -- it finally made sense.
Now imagine: a city administration faced with the prospect of a growing population epidemic in one of most overcrowded cities in the world. A sleepless policy maker, searching for solutions in the dead of night. On a dusty library shelf sits an old school textbook: Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species. He flicks open randomly to chapter four. "Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest". An answer, at last.
The perils of this city are a test, the product of genius. And to think, all this time you had put it down to mere political incompetence. No, my friends. No! It is all part of the ultimate selection strategy, to decide who will make the cull for the new super-breed of Jakartans, who can live in sustainable numbers in the city.
The governor's promise to fix Jakarta's problems in 100 days? A cunning trick! Lulling you into a false sense of security, separating the super-breeds from the unevolved, seeing who would remain alert for the dangers we were always going to continue facing.
Back in my hometown of Sydney, Australia, an injury not unlike the one I sustained would have been welcomed with great rejoicing. I would have been able to sue the pants off the city government over there. Pay for a tour of footpaths around the world. And establish a trust fund so that my children and my children's children could take the same pilgrimage. But not here. Jakarta, you have tested me, and you have seen I'm no whiny litigationist. My loyalty is clear. My heart (now located in my foot) will, as they say, "go on".
On the road to recovery, I've begun wearing Rp 4,000 sandals from the pasar again. Yeah, we super-Jakartans walk on the wild side. The officers from the Operation Charles Darwin Citizen Selection Program -- "Buah Dari Pohon Pak Charles Darwin Yang Besar" (ABDPPCDYB) are still watching, deciding who will make the cut. I did. Will you?
-- Rhiannon Zepol
