Struggling to survive and facing poverty, a family from Karanganyar regency, Central Java, has decided to live in a tree house in a jati (teakwood) forest in Plesungan village, Gondangrejo.

Tri Budiyanto has lived in the tree house with his wife Marmi and their two children, Risma Ayu Soraya and Redi Gebi Hidayat for the past year.

“It’s very difficult to fulfil our basic needs, let alone get a house. This [tree] house was built by our neighbors. We are just using it,” said Budiyanto on Sunday.

Every day, Budiyanto and Marmi work as scavengers. Both their children have dropped out of school as their parents cannot afford to pay the tuition fees.

In the 7.5 square-meter tree house that is 4 meters in height, they can rest at night despite the cramped conditions. They live without a bathroom and only have an oil lamp, locally known as teplok, to illuminate their house. The house is around 1 kilometer from the nearest settlement.

Before moving to the tree house around one year ago, the family stayed with one of their relatives in Wirun village, Plesungan. However, Budiyanto and their two children decided to leave and later stayed in the forest. Marmi joined them six months later.

“My husband felt ashamed of his inability to send our children to school. Moreover, my relative once told him to take our children to the forest because they could not go to school,” said Marmi.

Budiyanto said in the first three days after leaving their relative’s house, he and his two children had to sleep in the middle of a forest area belonging to timber company PT Samijaya.

He said he always used plastic sheets to protect his children from the cold and mosquitoes at night. After hearing of their plight, local people built them a tree house.

“I feel comfortable living here. Our only problem is that there are many mosquitoes, centipedes and scorpions here. We just need to keep them away,” Budiyanto said.

Plesungan village secretary Yulianto said village officials and residents had persuaded the Budiyanto family to return to their relative’s home in Wirun village, however, Budiyanto had always rejected the idea.

“We have repeatedly visited their house to persuade Budiyanto not to live in the forest. He’s quite stubborn, however,” said Yulianto.

Meanwhile, the Plesungan village administration’s prosperity divison head Supardi said he was still looking for a solution to move Budiyanto and his family from the forest while at the same time lifting them out of poverty.

However, it was difficult for the Plesungan administration to give them social assistance because they do not have identity cards to prove that they were Plesungan residents, he added.

Supardi said he was waiting for directives from the district and regency administrations.

“Administratively, they are residents of Kragan village, around 100 km from Plesungan. This is why Plesungan cannot yet give them assistance,” he said.

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