Behind the shadows: Wati (not her real name) stands at the door to her house in Bongas, Indramayu, Dec. 12, 2009. Wati returned to Indramayu five years ago after working as a sex worker in Jakarta as a teenager. JP/Prodita Sabarini
Wati (not her real name), sat in her living room tucked behind her little store in Bongas, Indramayu.
On her lap, Wati cradled her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
Asked what she wanted her daughter to be, Wati quickly answered that her daughter should not work the way she did. The 32-year-old mother of two is a former sex worker. She was trafficked to work in a brothel in Mangga Besar, Central Jakarta when she was a teenager.
In Indramayu, trafficking of teenage girls to Jakarta, Batam and overseas was rampant.
The people of several districts in Indramayu regency do not view prostitution as taboo. They also hold a view that children should contribute to the family’s economy.
As Wati tells her story of being a child sex worker, she talked with ease, recounting her experiences with a sense of normalcy.
“Of course I would have liked to continue going to school. But I couldn’t. There was no free schools back then and my parents needed money,” she said.
The government does not provide free education at the elementary school level.
When Wati finished elementary school, there were 32 elementary schools and one junior high school in Bongas.
JP/Irma
Currently, in Bongas, there are 28 elementary schools, eight junior high schools and two senior high schools.
Wati said she was married within a couple of years of graduating elementary school and was divorced two months later. She found a trafficker to take her to Jakarta to work.
“I was the one who wanted to go,” she said.
Her parents did nothing to stop her from going.
Being the eldest child, Wati said she wanted to help her parents pay their Rp 20 million bank debt, which they had accrued after a failed harvest.
“Back then Rp 20 million was a lot and we could have lost our house,” she said.
She was also attracted by the promise of wealth after seeing other girls who worked in Jakarta and earned a lot of money.
Was she scared? No, she said. Having been married for two months, she already had sexual experience and she knew what she was up to.
“But a lot of other girls were scared,” she said. Virgins, as young as 13 and 14 years old, were being prepared for customers who sought for them.
“They were told by Mami what to do,” she said. Mami was the woman who looks after the girls in the brothel.
Wati said that in Jakarta, she lived around Mangga Besar, one of Jakarta’s red light districts that was filled with karaoke bars, massage parlors and brothels.
She shared a door-less room with 10 to 15 other girls, sleeping on mattresses on the floor.
The brothel that she worked at was professionally run, she said. A doctor came each week.
They were told to wear condoms. However, sometimes customers would refuse, she said.
She said that she never had a violent customer.
“But I did have some annoying customers who would get drunk and wouldn’t leave the room after an hour.”
When that happens, security would remove the customer, she said.
Working from four to 12 at night, Wati earned from Rp 1 million to 2 million every month. She sent most of the money she earned to her parents in Indramayu.
“If I made Rp 1 million, I would keep Rp 100,000 for myself. If I made Rp 2 million, I would keep Rp 200,000,” she said.
Wati said she didn’t think much of her job.
“I did it without emotions, or else I would be tired,” she said.
After around 10 years of working and all of her parents’ debt paid, Wati decided to retire.
She met her current husband back home in Indramayu.
She said her husband did not mind that she once worked as a prostitute. Coming from Indramayu, her husband is from a family who had relatives that were also employed as sex workers.
His sister, Wati said, died of AIDS last year at the age of 16.
Wati’s own sister also worked in the same line of job as hers. She used to work as a drinking companion in Japan before returning to Indonesia.
Wati now runs a small store in front of her house, while her husband works as a farmer.
Her family bought her some land and built her the house that she lives in as a wedding gift.
Wati however said she liked Jakarta more than Indramayu.
“It’s more lively.”
She said she would not want her daughter to follow in her footsteps.
“I want her to go to school. She shouldn’t work like I did. [And then] maybe work overseas [as a migrant worker] or hopefully find a rich husband,” she said.
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