Hello,
For this week’s blogpost, I want to take you back to the past. Way back. Consider this a Throwback Tuesday.
The very first thing I put out on the Internet wasn’t some essay or a video or a blogpost. No, it was actually a photo album on Flickr.
But let me start from the beginning…
When I was in High School in the United States, I had to take at least one art course. Unfortunately, arts and crafts weren’t my thing at all. I can’t do origami to save my life, ditto drawing, and I have little confidence in my musical skills. Thankfully, the school offered photography, and I took that class. I did well, not that I remember my exact grade.
It was at this point, that I began to fall in love with photography.
About a year later, my parents decided to move back to Indonesia (again). And they enrolled me at an International School; I was in 10th grade when I started going to this school. That year, I was given a ‘Personal Project’. To put simply, it was a project in which I could do whatever I want as long as it was approved by a teacher who would become my supervisor.
For some reason, landfills and garbage dumps really fascinate me back then; I don’t remember why. In any case, I decided to make a photography project of Bantar Gebang, the landfill that serves as Jakarta’s main garbage dump.
If you search “Bantar Gebang” on Google or Brave Search, you will see various articles talking about the mountains of garbage (literally) and people’s lives there. I was able to find some big names like Business Insider, New York Times, and The Guardian. But I have yet to notice anything that’s older than 2008 (granted, I didn’t look very deeply).
Not to toot my horn here, but I feel like a trailblazer for this.
Anyways, I can’t help but wonder what my parents must have thought when they heard me saying that I wanted to go to that place. Sure it’s for a school project, but I could have gone somewhere else, done something else, anything other than going to a literal dump.
Thankfully, my parents were understanding enough. Not only did my dad agree to drive me there, but my aunt and my grandmother also tagged along in this little field trip.
As an aside, this was before smartphones were a thing, so I used a Sony digital camera to take these pictures.
When I arrived at Bantar Gebang. I was greeted by this sign:
But more striking to me was the smell. Unfortunately, I couldn’t capture smell on camera. Here’s how I would describe the experience, more or less:
Oh, and speaking of SpongeBob…
I came from a well-off family, so all this was new to me. I have seen my fair share of poor people in Indonesia, but I have never seen an entire neighborhood made out of garbage. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it since.
But I don’t want to make this a patronizing, “oh poor them” kind of article. Their lives were hard, to be sure. But I’m more interested in how friendly they were. There was this guy who was surprised to see us because they don’t get visitors very often. And he proceeded to inform us of his work. I didn’t even mean for that to happen. He just happened to notice us while I was taking a picture.
Speaking of the locals. Remember when I said that my aunt and my grandma tagged along with me? Well, they’re not just here to see me taking pictures. Below is my grandmother taking part in charity work, giving out milk and other foodstuffs…
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbe47d1b8-c958-43e0-abc9-74e720559f64_800x600.jpeg)
As for me, I had some fun beyond taking pictures. Enjoy this picture of me sixteen years younger.
Even so, this place was kinda gross (probably still is). Just take a look at this tub where the trash were being washed. I hope you’re not eating while reading this. I really do.
So far, I have shown Bantar Gebang to be a place where everything is made out of junk. But that’s not really true. Take a gander at this plant. This is where the “trash water” is (was?) being treated so they can be returned to the river.
I want to end on this picture below. What was once trash mountain, once fully buried, will be left alone. And it will be as if that dump was never there to begin with. In time, the things of this world shall pass: people, nations, empires, cities, and thankfully… trash.
This is just a showcase of the album. So if you want to look at the whole thing, feel free to do so on Flickr. At the moment, readers can find the link to the album on the sidebar of Indonesian and American’s homepage. Keep in mind that the whole thing was made in 2008 and English is not my first language, so the grammar may leave much to be desired. Also, the captions were written by 15-year old me… and let’s just say it’s not how I would have written them now.
Until next time, Michael P. Marpaung