Sea Level ?!

A4 – While New York and other North American cities was bitten hard by sub-zero Vortex ice assault, the other part of ‘time zones’ also shares the same invasion by mother nature, including Jakarta.

Well… Jakarta is well famous as one of controversial capital in the world. This vast urban jungle concrete megapolitan Southeast Asian city is well familiar not only because its traffic jam ‘disorder’ which last longer than any TV shows broadcasted, but also on its own annual ‘sick’ ritual, which is called… “Banjir”.

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“Banjir” is a word in Bahasa for “flood”. December or January are probably put out as the top ‘red alert’ for the majority of Jakarta’s resident.

While leaving behind all the new year’s eve celebration off the streets, ‘the real deal’ finally came as rainfall ‘strikes back’ hard by pounding tons of waters on top of Jakarta. The ‘wet party’ was joined by waters which flowing throughout Jakarta’s major river from the surrounding cities, such as Bogor.

Secretly -or clearly-, the weather has set us a free example on how to invade this country effectively, simply by flooding its capital!

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How did majority of resident deal with this matter? While normally, victims whom surpassed the disaster would likely suffer from deep trauma, some ‘outsider’ did find it as an interesting annual yearly ‘event’.

Instead of set off their ass to a safer place, some people just playing a ‘tarzan’ by approaching the floods area, and have their own sudden tourism activity.

On the other hand, victims does suffer enough from the flood, but lately, they’ve probably became adapted of it simply by naturally forced to ‘adjusting’ it in many various ways.

Jakarta’s resident is ‘separated’ by various social class level which often marked by their separated residential area. Sadly, the weather nor the waters didn’t choose their ‘landing’ zone ‘wisely’, although few spot on the map became a regular ‘loadout’ of this annual disasters as years gone by.

New Thing?

Floods already became an ‘predicted’ event in Jakarta’s yearly calendar. The lack (or late) of government’s city master plan made Jakarta grown even larger than any Indonesian cities without promising top of basic needs of its people, which is ‘safety’.

Indeed, people did made their own ‘adjustment’ oh how to deal with floods at its best as waters finally storms their place. Likely, they’ve became an expert on how to ‘tame’ the floods, even in the hardest way.

While mostly people did scream out aloud after became a victim of such disaster, some simply don’t re-learn the basic rules of being a human, which is one part of the giant mother mature that demanding them to be ‘tolerate’.

Jakarta slum area. Being the victims or the ’cause’ itself…?

Garbage has became a common views throughout the streets or even on top of rivers, from the ‘top’ district into a slum area. Mostly, some just find it easily to thrown away their garbages, since it was the simplest thing which running inside their head.

New building keeps arise, surrounding all the environment where money will mostly come, denied fact that it was eventually crushing more green sights in the much already crowded Jakarta. The big city is now simply doesn’t even gave the waterways its ‘basic’ rights to naturally blend with grounds.

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Indeed! As the breaking news announced… Jakarta is not alone this year… Another horrible floods also hit Manado and some Indonesia’s major cities. This simultaneous ‘charge’ directly from the mother nature finally catch the attention of presidential palace’s ‘main man’, aside from his own personal book launching… Oops… 🙂

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New Hope?

Back in 2013, Political changes throughout the capital’s administrator rising a new hope for the Jakartans. The new mayor, Joko Widodo who gain his governmental seat by the majority of the voices, determined to bring a fast substantial effort to cope with this traditional problem, which is traffic jam and floods.

Jokowi leads the Jakartans to cope the flood (Photo by Tempo)

The low profile governor and his ‘kung fu’ vice governor, Ahok, finally hit the brick hard by tearing down all the bureaucracy level down, and soon put a breakthrough on dealing with the mess up capital.

Since in ‘normal’ political perspective, the term of 100 percent full support is out of question, there’s always a ‘drawback’, which unfortunately comes from the ‘opposite’ direction, doubting the new governor effort.

But then, the quite popular governor along with his ‘supporters’ will probably yet facing his hardest challenge, which is not only to bring all new infrastructure soon to overcome the matter… but also in changing his citizen ways of thinking on behaving the right manner through living together in a much positive way along with the mother nature…

Good luck, Sir…!

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destyan@gmail.com

#Jakarta #Indonesia