Car jockey of a different sort

Every now and then, whenever I make a trip to the wet market in West Jakarta, it is common to see lines of people standing by the roadside, signing "1" with their index fingers. You get to see a lot of these folks especially on roads heading into the CBD area. These are the car jockeys of Jakarta.

In its effort to reduce the number of cars traveling into the CBD area during early morning and after-office rush hours, the local council has come up with this rule that each car needs to have 3 person per car, including the driver. Hence, a new business opportunity sprung up for the ever-entrepreneurial poor Indonesians trying to eke a living in this city.

I've heard about and seen the folks lining up the streets to make a living this way, but have never personally engaged the service of one. Until probably about few weeks ago, when I had to go into the CBD, just me and driver in the evening. Traffic was bad after we dropped Hubs off at Pacific Place, and it was drizzling fast. My driver told me that he needed to pick somebody up because of the rule. And there were hardly any jockeys in sight. I reckoned my driver must be thinking "Should he risk breaking the rule?" until we came upon this boy of probably the age of 11-12 years old.

My driver gestured to the boy to get his attention. And he saw us. We stopped the car and the boy hopped in quickly. And then we continued our journey into the CBD.  Just before we turned off into Plaza Grand Indonesia, my driver stopped the car, paid and dropped the boy off. I asked how much did that cost. My driver paid him Rp 20,000 (roughly RM 6).

I kinda felt sorry for the boy, for I hoped that it was enough for him to get back home. Or maybe he already had more than enough for his young age that day. One will never know.