Stray children, parents reunite at Ragunan

Agnes Winarti ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 10/09/2008 10:32 AM  |  City

"What's your name, dear? Don't worry, your mummy will come soon," several officials at the Ragunan Zoo information center console a three-year-old boy, who manages to blurt out "Rahel" between sobs.

Attendants then switch on the public address system and immediately announce the boy's predicament through the loudspeaker.

Minutes later Rahel runs toward an approaching man and hugs him tightly, tears still running down his cheeks.

"There, there," soothes his relieved father Hendry.

For more than 25 years, 46-year-old Naman, the information center coordinator at South Jakarta's Ragunan Zoo has witnessed various scenes of family drama whenever children and their parents have lost each other within the 145 hectares of park.

Poignant, odd, irritating scenes -- Naman has seen it all. His job sometimes requires he muster babysitting skills.

"I've blown noses, changed diapers, the works," Naman told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Naman is a sentimental man. Despite years of encounters with stray children, he is still moved.

"I still get teary when I see a child and a mother cry when they find each other again.

"What really annoys me is when a parent gets mad, even slaps their kid, for going missing," the father of four and grandfather of one said.

"Whenever I see that coming, I ask the parents to wait a minute before taking their children away and I get them to calm down a bit.

"They shouldn't be blamed for being children. Their curiosity makes them wander off.

It's the parents' job to keep an eye on their kids."

Naman has a host of stories. "Once, I saw a mother dash up to her daughter who was waiting with us, only to make sure the jewelry her daughter wore was still intact. That was odd," he said.

A maintenance worker at the zoo's bird quarantine section, Ade Irma, often helps out at the information center. He said, "We have to be really patient both with the child and the parent because they tend to get panicky and emotional when they're separated."

"In some cases, the children resist our efforts to help them, they start kicking and shouting," said 27-year-old Ade, which made it hard for zoo workers to extract basic information, like the child's and the parents' names.

Naman said sometimes children did not even know their own names, not to mention their parents'.

"They are used to their nicknames, like dede (younger child) and aa (older child)."

During the Lebaran holiday season this year, Ragunan Zoo was packed with visitors, accommodating 150,876 visitors on the peak day last Sunday. As visitors crammed the zoo, more children wound up split off from their parents.

Naman's office handled 32 lost-and-found children in all Sunday.

"Five elderly people were also lost and found that same day," Naman said, adding separations occurred more often on rainy days because children and elderly would split off from their families to look for shelter from cloudbursts.

Only two permanent officials are in charge at the information office.

"During Lebaran this year, we add four or five more employees to help out," the zoo's public relations officer Wahyudi Bambang told the Post on Tuesday.

Bambang said for the holidays 55 security guards in all, divided into several shifts, patrolled the zoo every hour. Some 300 police officers were deployed to assist them during the holidays.

There are currently 35 loudspeakers mounted throughout the park: near animal cages, the walkways and other high-traffic areas inside the zoo. Naman said the loudspeaker network only covered some 75 hectares, about half the zoo's terrain.

"We still need more speakers and power for our existing ones so that they can cover a wider area."

Nevertheless, Naman said, "up to this point we've never had an instance where a child went missing for good".

"They always turn up and get reunited with their families," he said. In one memorable case in 2002, a seven-year-old boy was brought back to the zoo after a stranger had taken him away for three days.

For serious cases like that, he said, the zoo has cooperated with the nearest police station, announcing the missing case through the local radio station Elshinta. They even relied on psychics to discover that boy's whereabouts.

"Fortunately, these days parents are more alert and protect their children in crowded public places," he said.

Naman said fewer children were misplaced this holiday period compared to last year's, when up to 50 children a day wandered off from their parents.

"Before 2000, sometimes even more than 100 children got lost in a day," he said.

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