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From crime to reading time: how a gang of robbers became a literary-promoting collective
Karang Tembok village has one of Surabaya’s highest crime rates but a community called Mr. Day hopes to offer some light.
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Fun time: A session run by Mr. Day at the Keledai Dungu library (Ivan Darski). (JP/Ivan Darski)
K
arang Tembok village has one of Surabaya’s highest crime rates, but a library called Keledai Dungu (Stupid Donkey) hopes to offer some light through its reading program.
As the evening call to prayer sounded, little children huddled themselves together on a red mat laid on the asphalt. Happiness emanated from their eyes. Usually this would be the start of a night-long session watching films on a projected screen. Alas, today’s session had been canceled because of heavy rain.
Gatra Nugraha, 30, one of their administrators, hastily cleared away the screen and projector that had been set up. It was Saturday, Nov. 21 when The Jakarta Post met him. Having braved the rain, his body was soaking wet. As he sprinted toward the projector, he squeaked "We haven’t even paid the installments off,". His remarks were greeted with laughter by the other members of Keledai Dungu.
Gatra is the cofounder of Mr. Day, an art collective whose agenda is to provide free education for the poor in Karang Tembok, Surabaya, East Java, where the majority of school-age children and adults are school dropouts. To do this, Mr. Day has set up a library known as Keledai Dungu (Stupid Donkey), located in a modest shelter made of bamboo by the banks of the village’s river.
Mr. Day, however, did not start off with such positive goals. First formed in the 1990s, it was initially a criminal gang made up of men from the village.
Gatra, a construction worker, felt that the limitations of living an uneducated life drove him to crime.
"I myself only graduated elementary school. My sister, she’s only a junior high school graduate. For the children here, being able to go to high school is a luxury. With that, going to university seems like an impossible dream, right?” he said.
