“Oh, God almighty! It’s morning already but my son is still sleeping. Tong! Wake up, tong! Don’t you want to go to school?” a 50-year-old participant, Siti Mariam, said on stage. Tong, short for entong, is an endearing term for one’s son.

“If you study hard you can be an engineer or a doctor or a president, a man of dignity and live in a proper house. Don’t be like us, your parents, living in a cramped room where it’s hard to even move,” said Siti, who works as a television extra.

Something was missing, however, from her performance and those of the 39 other participants; there were no expletives, which should have been part of the act. The organizers told them to keep it clean. That is probably the reason some of the jokes fell flat and drew little or no laughter from the audience.

Each participant had five minutes to nag and impress the discerning audience of fellow Jakartans on topics such as education, the environment and women and children’s protection.

While the Betawi nag much like everyone else, their style has some quirks. It mixes grievances with a generous dose of humor and sarcasm. Culture experts say one reason for this is that the Betawi, whose city was at the center of three centuries of Dutch colonialism, suffered the longest period of colonial oppression of any group in Indonesia.

In addition, their long exposure to international trade has allowed their culture to absorb Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese and Dutch influences. The Betawi continue to be marginalized as people from all over the archipelago descend upon the mega-city of Jakarta and push the Betawi to its outskirts. Kampung Melayu is one of the few remaining Betawi villages in the city.

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