I blatantly ripped this off of a post by fellow expat, Indcoup, but found it disturbingly true.

She is thirty-two years old. Her real name is Darmasiah. She has five children and is a widow – or to be more accurate she used to be a widow. A year ago she married a builder’s laborer called Asmawi. They lived in a shack and their only possessions were a bedsheet and a rack for storing crockery. Four of the five children had been sent to live with relatives, but they tried to care for the youngest child themselves.

But the household could not support three people. Often they did not eat for a whole day. They could not afford rice, let alone anything to go with it. Iyut wanted to work, but her laborer husband would not permit her. Finally she gave up hope and went to sell the bedsheet.

Iyut managed to get 20,000 rupiah for the sheet. She went from the place where she sold the sheet to another place where she bought a tin of baygon household poison, and then went home and drank it. She wanted to leave this world – or at least she wanted to leave the world that she had known.

But she failed. Unconscious and near death, she was found, taken to the local hospital, and revived. She stayed on a few days in hospital even though she was allowed to go home. The reason: she didn’t have enough money to pay the treatment.

Her husband, Asmawi, came to visit her a few times in hospital. He needed money to do this. And so he was forced to sell their only other possession, the dish rack…

Written by Goenawan Mohamad (translation by Jennifer Lindsay)

Within a one mile radius of my home are multi-million dollar homes, some of Southeast Asia’s largest malls, an army of Mercedes, Beamers, Audis, and conversely, slums that would absolutely blow the mind of most Westerners. This ties in well with one of my photo essays on Utata.org.