acknowledgment
The sound tracks, originally produced by Juliani Wahjana for the Radio Nederland Wereldomroep series Suara Perempuan, were edited by Uli Sembiring with the kind permission of Radio Nederland Wereldomroep.
A preliminary version of this text was produced in cooperation with Decire D. Wagiu, Marike Ivone Onsu, Retty Timboeleng, and Selfi Pondaag. during the 2003 Intensive Advanced In-Country Program of the Consortium for the Teaching of Indonesian and Malay (COTIM) at Sam Ratulangi University,
Manado. A more elaborated version was produced in 2004 by Dr. Uli Sembiring with contributions by Amelia Liwe and with the assistance of Dwina Herdiasti who supplied the transcript of the audio recordings. The materials subsequently underwent three revisions, first by Ninik Purnama in 2005, a major revision by Stephen Tschudi and Hong Sing Tjoa in 2007, and a final revision by Uli Sembiring in 2009.
Honolulu, October 2009,
Uli Sembiring
introduction
Suara Perempuan, the title of a series broadcast by the Indonesian language service of Radio Netherlands (also known as Radio Nederland Seksi Indonesia [Ranesi]) and hosted by Juliani Wahjana, began in August 2001 with the following mission:
“Suara Perempuan berisi wawancara dengan berbagai pakar dalam bidangnya serta berita-berita sekitar perempuan yang luput dari sorotan media. Semua topik pembahasan dibungkus dalam kerangka pemberdayaan perempuan. Acara ini tidak hanya ditujukan kepada perempuan saja, tapi juga kepada semua pihak yang ingin mewujudkan tatanan yang lebih adil dalam hubungan antar manusia.”
The documentary Aku Anak Siapa? Potret Anak Jalanan Yogyakarta was the second program in the Suara Perempuan series. In the documentary, Juliani Wahjana narrates and also conducts interviews with street children, former street children, representatives of NGOs (lembaga swadaya masyarakat, or LSM) providing shelters for street children, and with people living in the neighborhood of these shelters. The interviews provide an excellent insight into the multi-faceted world of street children in Indonesian cities, and focus on the determining factors that cause children to choose to live on the street rather than with their families. Juliani identifies two sets of factors: the faktor penarik or “pulling factor” and the faktor pendorong or “pushing factor.”
According to Juliani, although many children are pushed into the streets by poverty, domestic violence, or the breakdown of their families, there are at least as many street children who deliberately choose to live in the streets where they can live their own life “free,” without parental restrictions.
As broadcast, the documentary consists of seven parts of about 30 minutes each. Not all interviews are equally suitable for upper intermediate and low advanced level students, and I have only included interviews where students can at least understand the gist of what is going on. A glossary of some critical, perhaps hard-to-comprehend, vocabulary items is provided; however, students should be encouraged to listen to the soundtracks first without looking at the vocabulary list, and to try to understand as much they can by relying on their guessing skills. In most cases students will be able to understand the contents of the narrative from the context even if there are unknown vocabulary items and expressions.
Each soundtrack comes with a set of exercises intended to train listening comprehension. Sound tracks containing complex speech patterns, accent, use of slang words, etc., are accompanied by questions that elicit either specific or very general information in the text, and sound tracks that are comparatively easier to understand are normally accompanied with more in-depth questions demanding a higher degree of comprehension of the text.
As narrator, Juliani Wahjana provides general background to the interviews that she conducts with eight street children of different backgrounds, as well as with Anastasia (also pronounced Atanasia) Diansanti, Director of LSM Indrianati; Indrianati’s two co-workers Tuti and Juliawati, who look after street children in their “Community for Street Children,” in Yogyakarta; Rini, a former street child who works as a volunteer in the community; and Mr. Suhardomulyo Hadiutomo, a local community leader in the area where the community has erected its shelter for street children.
The language used in the interviews can be characterised as colloquial urban Indonesian in that it is fairly representative of what is spoken in the larger towns and cities throughout the Indonesian archipelago. As is typical, a few words from Betawi Malay, Javanese, and the occasional odd Dutch-English neologism such as counter prestasi appear. Occasionally the language is somewhat slangy, especially in the interviews with the street children; whereas the interviews with the other participants are conducted in a relaxed, slightly more formal tone.