Gado-gado Vendor

The Jakarta Post, January 31, 1999
"Gado-gado" vendor strives to survive economic crisis
By Santo Koesoebjono *
"Since the economic recession my daily gross earnings have dropped by
almost 60 percent," related Soekardjo, a 79-year-old seller of gado-gado,
the popular dish of vegetables in a peanut sauce. He and his wife live in a
tiny wooden house in the Poncol area, a stone's throw from the glitters of
Senen plaza. They share their house with their two youngest sons from their
six children. His roadside stall is located in a posh area of Kebayoran
Baru, South Jakarta. Customers vary from schoolchildren and policemen to
the wealthy, who order gado-gado while they wait in their car or send their
servant to purchase it to go. But the monetary crisis has eaten away at
business. "We are happy we can make ends meet but we cannot save money for
emergencies," said Soekardjo.
He employs four family members. An additional burden to his ever increasing
spending is expensive medication for his heart problem. Soekardjo is a
third generation gado-gado seller. The business was started by his
grandfather and continued by his father. With strong support from his wife,
he took up the enterprise in 1963 after trying his luck at various odd
jobs. He developed his own recipe.
"I started it in Jl. Lembang, Central Jakarta. At the time the price of my
gado-gado was about Rp. 35 per portion." In early 1970s he moved to
different places in Kebayoran Baru before settling at Jl. Panglima Polim,
opposite the Wijaya Centre, beginning in the mid 1970s. The location suits
him well as cars can park nearby. His stall usually opens at 10 a.m. Before
the crisis, clients would have to queue up and Soekardjo and his eldest son
worked nonstop until they closed the stall at about 3 p.m. Things have
changed. Although he has met customers'requests to open at 8 a.m., few
people come. With falling customer numbers and orders from businesses, he
is now forced to close at about 1 p.m.
Due to his poor health, his business is experiencing drastic changes.
Following doctors' advice, he has to restrict himself only to taking
orders, checking the quality of the gado-gado and supervising his
assistants, cleanliness of the stall and its surroundings. After more than
35 years of hard work, he now has to hand over the preparation of the dish
to his eldest son, who is assisted by a younger brother. Soekardjo is happy
to give work to his children, and in return the children take care of him.
Soekardjo has long passed retirement age, but still has to work for his
living. Still, he looks very young for his age.
Four people have to live from the food sales. Another member of the team is
his wife. She helps Soekardjo do the shopping and cooking, and gets paid
for her contribution. His poor health forces him to take a taxi from Senen
to the location of his stall in Kebayoran Baru, which costs him around Rp.
15,000 per trip. He goes home by bus. In the past he was strong enough to
go to and from work by bus. He is grateful that someone living in the
neighborhood of his stall is willing to keep his cart at night and to
provide him with clean water every day.
Mrs. Soekardjo buys vegetables in Pasar Nangka in the evening and them. At
about 5 a.m. she buys the tofu and lontong (rice cooked in banana leaves).
Then she goes out again to buy ingredients for the sauce. Her husband
insists on buying the ingredients form particular shops because he trusts
the quality of the goods. "But the prices of these basic materials have
skyrocketed now", sighed Mrs. Soekardjo. She normally paid Rp. 3,500 for
one kilogram of sauce but it now costs Rp. 8,500. The same goes for prices
of other ingredients for the gado-gado due to the more than 77% inflation
rate in the past year. Her complaint is understandable considering the
drastic decline in their daily income. Nowadays, fewer schoolchildren buy
gado-gado for their lunch. "Some of my customers apologized and said that
now bring their lunch from home," she said.
Despite the price increases Soekardjo has not raised his gado-gado price.
It should in fact be raised from Rp. 3,500 to Rp. 4,500 rupiah per portion,
which is still lower than the price of gado-gado in a restaurant. "Prices
keep rising and I do not know how high it will become when we start
business again after Idul Fitri," she said. Soekardjo closes his stall
during the Ramadhan fasting although other people open food stalls in the
second week of this fasting period, especially in the afternoon and at
night, when people go out to buy sweets and food to break the fast.
Soekardjo and his wife were born in Kuningan, West Java, but had lived in
the Poncol area even before they married 47 years ago. They live in a
wooden house with a door and two windows. It has two rooms measuring two
meters by three meters each and a space of about 1 square meter used as a
kitchen. The youngest of their two sons attends a technical high school.
Mrs. Soekardjo said heavy rain causes the black smelly water from the
gutter running along the lane to enter their house. Then retreat to the
small loft upstairs where they stack their belongings. Family members sit
on a mat on the floor with their only luxuries being a fan and a television
set. "We have to bathe and wash our clothes in the public bathing area next
to the house," she said. Drinking water is brought in a tank from public
water tap in Poncol, which is notorious for crime.
"You know, although there are many thieves and crooks living in this area,
we feel safe. We need not to lock our door at night. It is safe to walk in
our quarter even at night," said Soekardjo. In the shadow of gleaming plaza
and modern shops in the Senen area, the Soekardjos'neigborhood cannot be
called modest. It is much poorer than that.
People's income here is just sufficient to keep their heads above water.
The physical environment confronts them daily with piles of waste, a small
creek without running water and open gutter, regularly flooded with
polluted water.
Asked whether the number of roadside vendors is declining as a result of
the economic crisis, Soekardjo said people tried to keep their stalls
running despite the drop in earnings. Others have even joined the business
by setting up stalls selling food and other goods because it is their last
resort. It is their only safety net because they are ineligible for the
government's social safety net program.
Testimony to the fact that even the wealthy are watching their food
expenses is the mushrooming of a large number of sidewalk restaurants,
sometimes called cafes, in and around Jakarta parks, each selling different
foods and drinks. Many of the tents are run by celebrities and other people
new to the business. However their presence ups the competition for regular
street vendors. The competition is actually unfair. The new cafes attract
customers, many of whom want to meet their favorite celebrities, whereas
the street vendors who sell food as their sole means of income are losing
their clients. For these real vendors, life means an endless fight to just
get by.
* The writer is an economist-demographer based in the Netherlands.
All contents copyright (c) of The Jakarta Post.
Pak Soekardjo in 2003
Since my first interview with Pak Soekardjo in 1998 I always visit him and
have long talk at his stall every time I come to Jakarta. In early 2003, I
also visited him at home in Poncol, Senen area.
The stall is still similar, clean and well maintained, located at the same
place in Kebayoran Baru. The surrounding of the stall is swept clean. There
are some stools and benches for the clients, a container filled with tap
water to wash the dishes and a cooler to keep the soft drinks.
I ate my gado gado dish sitting on one of the stools, watching numerous
clients came taking away their orders. Others ate their gado gado in their
air conditioned cars with the exhaust blowing just a few meters from where
other clients sitting on the bench and Soekardjo and his sons working.
Soekardjo said that public figures and officials prefer to eat in the car
as they do not want to be recognized.
The persistent economic crisis since 1997 has reduced the purchasing power
of many clients. At the same time the rising price of basic food has forced
Soekardjo to increase the price of his gado gado, from Rp. 4,500 to Rp
5,000. This is a modest raise as compared to the price hikes in other
restaurants and hawker places. He hopes that by raising the price modestly
he could keep his clients. A client who wants a spicy gado gado with some
20 or more chillis pays the same price as those who do not take chilli,
although chillis are expensive. This man tries to keep his gado gado tasty.
It is his pride to keep such a high standard.
During 2003 the number of clients has further dropped. Soekardjo now sells
around 100 dishes (instead of 250 to 300) each day. Even then he has to
work for longer hours, until 4 to 5 p.m. instead of 2 p.m., to have his
gado gado sold out. Otherwise he has to throw away the vegetables and rice
as they are no longer fresh. He is now making long hours for a smaller
income. But, with twinkling eyes he says the good days are the "red days".
These are the public holidays that are marked red in the calendar. In the
month of the Ramadhan when almost everybody is fasting, he closes his
business.
Another bad luck was the interruption of the business. His children wanted
Soekardjo to stop working and therefore his business considering his age
and problems with his heart. During this period another gado gado vendor
settled at the location of Soekardjo's stall and told to clients that he
has moved to another place. This resulted in the drop of the number of
clients.
Fate is not favouring Soekardjo. A son who has been trained and prepared to
succeed Soekardjo's business stopped working at the gado gado stall
preferring to sell mobile phones that gives irregular income. This
succession would have allowed Soekardjo to reduce his activity to only
providing assistance when necessary. The departure of this son has forced
Soekardjo to be active again in the business. Because the youngest son is
not yet ready to take over the business Soekardjo has to hire a person, a
skilled gado gado maker. This means that from the meager daily income some
Rp 70,000 to 90,000 is taken out to pay this man. His son-in-law also helps
making four persons to run the business. Next to that they have to pay the
transportation costs. In the morning Soekardjo and his sons take a taxi
because of the heavy ingredients for gado gado. They go home by bus and
then by two bajaj's (pedicab). The daily transportation cost amounts to
some Rp 40,000 or equals to 8 portions of gado gado.
Another dilemma facing Soekardjo in handing over the preparation of gado
gado to his son is the preference of the clients to have the gado gado
prepared by the master himself. A friend explicitly said that Soekardjo has
to prepare the gado gado himself when ordering a dish for himself and for
me. Soekardjo is hesitant to tell the customers that the son's gado gado is
as good as his.
Soekardjo's heart is still in the same condition but the reduction of his
workload makes him feel better and look good. Everyday he takes pills and
once a month he visits the doctor. Whether his situation will remain stable
is big question mark, because he now has to work harder. He was once
approached by a customer, working at the Yayasan Jantung Sehat, an
organization helping low income people with heart diseases. Soekardjo was
advised to visit the organization, but was afraid that he would not be able
to pay the costs.
In the past year the family experienced sad losses. His eldest son who
actually would become his successor, died in 2001. Not long after his wife
passed away. His life companion for almost 50 years had stimulated him to
start his own business back in the 1960s. She supported him by buying daily
the vegetables and other materials and preparing the gado gado peanut
sauce.
Soekardjo and his family still live in Poncol area packed with new small
dwellings, with no space between each dwelling. The new houses are mostly
built by the people for their children after they are married. I could not
recognize the small lane where Soekardjo lives when I visited him again.
The environment has become dirtier and less healthy with piles of garbage
spread along the small lane bordered by open smelling gutter where the
water does not flow and is full of waste. During the big floods in early
2002 the water entered Soekardjo's small dwelling reaching up to one half
meter. The trace of the disaster is still visible on the walls. In the
course of time the floor of his house has been heightened by some 40
centimeter and his youngest son's head can reach the ceiling. Floods still
come every year during the rainy season. Soekardjo did not remember this
happening during the Dutch period.
Comparing this situation with five years ago Soekardjo's business and
living environment have not improved. On the contrary, it has become more
precarious. He experiences the impact of the economic situation not only in
terms of income but also in severed business competition, a competition
that does not shun dirty tricks. The environment where he lives with his
youngest son is not healthy considering the increased density, worsening
sanitation and lack of basic facilities. Nevertheless he continues smiling
and be thankful that he can still go on with this family business and
support his family. Despite his hard life Soekardjo remains social. Every
Friday he goes to the Mosque to meet and see people and once every two
weeks he goes to Cianjur to bring things to an orphanage, a trip of four
hours by bus one way.
Santo Koesoebjono
November 2003
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