The only difference between 22-year-old Lisa and other young woman of today is that she and her family, as well as the community she is a part of, are not allowed to call any place home.

For Teluk Gong resident Lisa, whose full name is Lisa Melisa, who looks and behaves more like a vivacious 16-year-old, the two most important things on her mind are her social media accounts and her appearance — boys come in a close third, but can be easily replaced by any number of issues. She is always attached to her smartphone, checking on her friends and browsing Youtube for anything interesting to watch, all in an effort to ignore the eviction looming over her and the rest of her community.

“We don’t like to think about it.” Lisa said. “If that’s all I ever think about, how can I be happy?”

The community Lisa is a part of, consists of people that have been driven out of their original homes by government bodies; the land they left behind now developed by powerful corporations into apartments and shopping centers.

Currently, Lisa lives with her mother and father in a shanty made of wooden slats, and sheets of metal, held together with re-used nails and carpeted by salvaged advertisement posters.

Their home, like many of the other shacks nestled under the Teluk Gong overpass, consists of only one room that serves as everything from parlor, living room, and kitchen to bedroom. Surprisingly, pottable water, drinking water, a small stove and all the other comforts of any house, such as an electric fan, multiple power plugs and even a television with local cable are all readily available within the limited space.

Occasionally, Lisa’s niece, Siska, comes over, bringing nails and other tools they can use to either repair the shack, or rebuild it in case they are evicted again.

When she is not in the makeshift house, but is too tired to venture out very far, Lisa often wanders the park just outside the collection of shanty houses. This is not just a recreational nature spot for the many morning and afternoon joggers. It is the site of Lisa’s original childhood home; before her family and their neighbors were forcefully evicted and their houses destroyed. Now, the children of the shanties play in the Penjaringan City Forest Park that was their former home.

Lisa’s father and mother both have worked to cover expenses — including electricity and water — for longer than they can both remember. Supporting Lisa and her five siblings, two brothers and three sisters, in their small home meant crowded family evenings and many mouths to feed when the children were growing up.

Nano, Lisa’s father, wakes up at approximately 4:30 am every day to walk to the other half of what is known as the Teluk Gong kolongan (underneath) due to its position under the flyover bridge that runs along the side of the city forest park. Once there, he collects his rucksack and gerobak (cart) and pulls it all the way to the complex of industrial storage warehouses across the polluted canal that skirts the side of their shanty town, where fishes blackened by filth, lurk in large numbers. In order to support Lisa and her siblings, he has spent his entire married life rummaging through garbage and sewage to collect plastic bottles, cardboard boxes and aluminum cans for sale to recyclers.

“I used to also collect glass bottles, but they don’t sell for very much; only about Rp 1,000 [7 US cents] per kilo the last time I tried to sell and they are heavy. I can sell the plastic for Rp 3,000 for every kilogram and it is light. Cardboard is about Rp 3,500 if I remember correctly […] aluminum cans earn me the most, Rp 6,000 for every kilo. But it’s hard to find them because people usually buy plastic bottled drinks.” Nano said.

Lisa recalls how hard her father has worked and continues to work to help support Lisa and her sister, a mother of one; his two remaining house-bound children.

Lisa currently works at an outlet that sells swallow nests, a Chinese delicacy. “Usually dad is already gone when I wake up to go to work. He is always gone very early in the morning.” Compared to her two parents, Lisa wears very nice and clean clothes, evidence of how much both her parents are willing to give to their children.

Due to her parents being busy with work to support their family, Lisa and her siblings were often left to their own devices after informal schooling, leaving it to the rest of the community to keep the children safe as they played. According to community elder Karyono, before their eviction, there used to be a forum where the community gathered to write and sings songs and play games.

Now, Lisa spends her late afternoons and evenings after work dressing up and going out to look for places to have fun with her friends, Aziza, 25, mother of one, and Inah, 22. The three often gossip about boys, while watching the latest drama on television in Siska’s makeshift home and eating fried snacks.

Some Sundays, Lisa and her friends make their way to Fatahilah market, and Fridays are often spent staying up late to go to the evening market that opens up in the field nearby.

Although these mundane activities provide transient distraction, the thought of being evicted from their current homes is always in the back of their minds.

“It’s labelled state land, so we’re not allowed to use it.” Lisa said, describing the soccer field-sized plot. She mused about how it was “funny” because despite this status as public property, the people of their community are not allowed to use it despite having been born in the country.

To the outside world, Lisa and the rest of the Teluk Gong residents may appear uneducated to outsiders, and they certain are easily labelled as illegal residents due to lack of proper documentation, despite having occupied the area for many generations.

Karyono, another member of the Teluk Gong community, recalls having been forced to vacate his homes and watch entire villages demolished in the area spanning from under the flyover bridge to across the park up to 29 times in his lifetime.

“There was one occasion where a young pregnant girl was about to give birth and they had locked the gate leading out of the village. We all tried to chase down chased the officer who had the key from morning to night,” Karyono said. Thankfully, the baby was safely delivered.

The Teluk Gong community received yet another letter of eviction earlier this year, an occurrence that Karyono, as well as the other residents have learned to laugh about.

“If they demolish our houses then we’ll just build back up again.” 20-year-old Soli, Lisa’s neighbor, who resides in one of the lowest parts of the flyover, where the bottom of the bridge is the literal roof over his head, said.

The future of this community seems as murky as the water that often floods the shacks they live in. Maming, the Neighborhood Unit (RT) head, who has been watching over the residents of Teluk Gong since 1997, said that there were 500 families that held Family IDs (Kartu Keluarga), in the community under the bridge before they were evicted the first time. Now, there are only 100 families who have the Ids, which identify them as official citizens of Indonesia.

He says that it is difficult for the people without documents to register because some of them were forced out of their homes outside of the Teluk Gong area. About 0.62% of the 165 residents driven out of villages along the coastline of North Jakarta now live in the in Teluk Gong community, according to both Maming and Karyono. An event which, according to Karyono’s recollection, occurred in 2001.

Residents cannot register for Family IDs without leaving their current homes and livelihoods and there is no guarantee that there would be a place for them to reside if they return to where they were originally. Karyono said that if he had a choice, he would prefer to live under the bridge than to be forced to live in a community apartment dwelling provided by the government.

“It is easier to live here, even if it is under a bridge. There’s a market, the school is nearby, we pay for our water and electricity. I am old, I don’t want to have to climb the stairs.” Karyono said. “There is no elevator there.”

For Lisa, being evicted from her home has been a sobering part of her life growing up. It has been a struggle for her and the community to stay positive and not become jaded by the experience.

“If they evict us, then they evict us.” Lisa said. “As long as I can go to work, I think we should be fine. Hopefully.”

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Live-In Experience is part of the two-month tutorial and on-the-job-training sessions provided for young journalists of The Jakarta Post as part of its recruitment and training program. Participants are attached with selected families of the less fortunate in order to provide them with the direct experience of living with the frequently forgotten segment of Indonesian society. Ana Cecilia Regalado and Rizki Fachriansyah Aziz spent their two nights and three days living with two different families in slum areas in Teluk Gong, West Jakarta.

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