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May 18, 2012

Jakarta's Umbrella Children

The picture below was taken at the taxi stand at Ambassador Mall in Jakarta. When you look at the picture below, it may appear like a normal picture where a bunch of children are holding umbrellas while it is raining.

(Picture taken with my iPhone4)

Actually the story has a slight variation. As you may have already known, traffic in Jakarta moves at excruciatingly slow pace. Some times it takes more than 30 minutes to travel 500 meters. While it rains, the traffic moves even slower and takes a long time to get a taxi.

During these times, kids wait with umbrellas to escort the shoppers who come out of the mall to the road where they safely make their 'passengers' get into a taxi. For providing this service the kids take tips of  small sums of 3,000 to 5,000 Indonesian Rupiah, which is equivalent to 50 to 70 cents Singapore Dollar (20 to 30 rupees).

Sounds interesting, innovative and enterprising right? That's Jakarta for you.



18 comments:

  1. Great Observation power I must say! I was truly amazed to know this. :)

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    1. Thank you. It is question of survival for these street kids. Instead of begging they want to help and be rewarded..

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  2. Lovely capture.
    I am curious to know whether they do not have child labour laws?

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  3. Replies
    1. Oh...thank you so much for your kind words. Much delighted.

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  4. Did not know before. Very interesting piece of information.

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    1. There are so many such interesting things in most of these countries in South East Asia...

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  5. That's a really interesting tidbit about Jakarta. Now I wonder if this happens in the neighbouring islands as well.

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    1. Few years ago when I went first to Jakarta, I quite liked the idea. This time around I captured it as a picture and shared it here.

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  6. that's a really interesting piece of information and this makes your photograph even more interesting.
    www.rajnishonline.blogspot.com

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    1. Thanks Rajnish. Much appreciated. Please review my blog on Alexa, please. Thanks.

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  7. Wow...this is amazing. To do this instead of begging is really enterprising! Thanks for the post.

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    1. Thanks for your comments. There are many such small things which can be emulated in any nation.

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  8. Quite enterprising, these kids... nice post!

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