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man on a bicycle with two big bags on its sides and a basket on its handlebars, all full of books, pulled up to a traffic light near Citra Mall Klender in East Jakarta.

Children swarmed around the man as he parked, seemingly curious about the bags’ contents. Some picked up books and started leafing through their pages.

The man on the bicycle, Rian Hamzah, a 36-year-old father of two, has been running an ersatz mobile library since 2005 in the hopes that he could make a difference in the lives of children on the street.

Rian himself lives on the street and makes his living as a theater performer in a troupe with friends, going from one bus to another, he said.

“It all began with my hobbies of bicycle riding and reading books and magazines,” Rian said.

After he started collecting books, many of his friends gave him their used books. He now has over 300 books and magazines, from children’s books to serious political works.

“I use to travel around Jatinegara [East Jakarta], Megaria and the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle [both in Central Jakarta], especially on the weekends,” said Rian, who was previously a member of a theater club under veteran artist Ratna Sarumpaet.

He typically parks his bike in one spot for about five hours while bringing books to the street children, he said.

“Children are free to choose whatever books they want — as long as they can finish by the time I return to the place where I left my bicycle,” Rian said.

He hopes he can stimulate the children to read and in the end encourage them to return to school, but despite his efforts, most of the children are not enthusiastic, he said.

“Most of the children only look at the pictures inside the books for a while and then just put them back in their bags,” he said.

When some children asked Rian to gamble with them by playing a game of marbles, he agreed but changed the stakes: If the children lost they had to read books from his library and if Rian was the one who lost, he would have to let them borrow his bicycle.

He said that since he was introducing something new, he had to find a way to make it familiar to the street children.

“The spirit of learning is not something that can be forced. It is something that must come from the inside,” he said.

“I found out that school was not my cup of tea even though I liked reading — that’s why I only finished vocational high school in agriculture in Sumedang, West Java,” he said.

Aside from performing in street theater and running his bicycle library, Rian also has several odd
jobs, including acting in some television soap operas (sinetron), such as Cinta Fitri.

“I was hired several times to act as a criminal. What other role is suited for a man like me, who has long hair and a beard?” he said laughing.