Bali Advertiser
65
01 June - 15 June, 2011
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Irfan Kortschak:
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Writer, Translator and Editor Irfan Kortschak was born in Melbourne, Australia. As a boy, he loved reading the National Geographic and camping in the Australian bush, knowing one day that he would travel and live abroad. Irfan s t u d i e d a t government high schools in Melbourne before earning an undergraduate degree at the University of Melbourne in 1988 in Indonesia Area Studies and Anthropology. After university, he won an Indonesian government scholarship to study the Javanese language in Solo, Central Java. Indonesia has been his base ever since. In 2010, Irfan completed a two-year book project with the publication of Invisible People which focuses on the lives of Indonesia’s marginal social groups. What are your interests? I like reading “pop anthropology,” books written in an easy style about different cultures and current affairs. I like traveling around Indonesia and Southeast Asia. I enjoy cooking Indonesian food. I’m interested in mythology and obscure, regional languages.
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break from the way in which development funds were allocated and managed under the New Order regime. How did you decide on the subject matter for the book? It was decided that despite the success of the program, many people from marginal groups, such as sex workers, transvestites, homosexuals, poor Chinese, people with HIV and other diseases or handicaps, were still missing out on the village development process. The book was commissioned to raise awareness of the specific problems of these people and to support grass-roots civil society organizations that work with – and often consist of – members of marginal groups. How did you go about finding subjects for your interviews? Mainly by asking journalists, activists, and NGO workers in Jakarta or elsewhere to introduce me to smaller, grass roots organizations in the more remote locations. There are problems with that approach. Are the people really “invisible”? Or are they already relatively well connected and served? That’s the trouble with invisible people. They are hard to see and hard to find. Were there many more candidates than the ones you finally decided on?
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Selection was often difficult and contentious. There was an editorial review board that had to approve the particular communities chosen for coverage. But the board was very receptive and open. At first, we intended the focus to be on people with physical disabilities. But we soon expanded the focus to include people marginalized by social, ethnic, and other factors, including the moral judgments of mainstream society. In any case, there is always an interplay between these factors. Why were people so receptive to being interviewed and photographed? I was amazed at people’s willingness to talk without expectation of reward. We only gave some subjects the equivalent of several days’ local wages to compensate them for spending time with us. When the book was launched, selected individuals amongst the subjects were invited to Jakarta for face to face meetings with the Deputy Coordinating Minister for the People’s Welfare, Sujana Royat, to discuss their issues in person. Some people have received direct benefits as a result of these meetings. Santi, the woman with the horrific scarring and disabilities resulting from her husband’s violence, attracted the attention of donors who paid for extensive reconstructive surgery. But no-one had any reason to expect such benefits when they were first interviewed. Rather, I always specifically warned them that they shouldn’t expect any such rewards.
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Which interview for you was the most heart-rending and emotionally taxing?
What writers and photographers have influenced you? I love Sir James Fraser’s “Golden Bough,” a brilliant history of magic and religion. I also admire Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian explorer, swordsman, linguist and adventurer, one of the first non-Muslims to visit Mecca, in disguise. He also visited Harar in Ethiopia, some of the pre-colonial West African slave kingdoms, and a number of other dangerous places. But I also read thrillers, modern literary novels, travel books, whatever I find lying around. Amongst photographers, I particularly like Sebastian Salgado for his images of workers around the world, James Nachtwey for his stark photographs of conflicts, and Henri Cartier-Bresson just for the sheer compositional beauty of his work.
I found dealing with people severely affected by leprosy personally difficult at first. I remember one subject testing me by offering his disfigured stump of a hand to shake. I shook it and the interview proceeded smoothly. Leprosy is very difficult to catch and cannot be caught by a handshake. Which interviewee made the most lasting impression on you? I was most moved by the story of Erni Bajo, the young woman from a Southeast Sulawesi fishing community and the first woman in that community to complete high school. She overcame domestic violence and what would seem like insurmountable obstacles to achieve her goal. I found tears rolling down my cheeks as a I was writing her story.
What types of work have you been doing in Indonesia? I’ve worked as an English teacher, a travel writer, a corporate copy writer and the managing editor of the Garuda Inflight Magazine. Most recently, I’ve worked on writing, editing and translating documents for organizations in the development sector.
What did you learn from the experience of working on this book? That poor, marginal Indonesians are far more worthy of admiration and respect than pity. They certainly don’t sit around waiting for charity. They work as hard or harder than anyone else in the community.
Have you traveled extensively in Indonesia? Where can the book be purchased? I’m lucky that my work takes me to all sorts of remote places, from the proverbial Sabang to Merauke. But you could spend a whole life exploring Indonesia and still find new, exciting places with communities and people with interesting and inspiring stories. Who thought up the idea of Invisible People? It was a commissioned assignment from the PNPM Support Facility which supports the Indonesian government’s nation wide community empowerment program, the PNPM Mandiri program. It is a highly successful program that makes a huge
English and Indonesian editions of the book are available wherever Lontar books are sold. It can also be downloaded free as a pdf file from http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3366106/ Invisible_People_English_Lontar_110610.pdf For anyone interested in being considered for Siapa, please contact: <dariskm@gmail.com> Copyright © 2011 Al Hickey You can read all past articles of Siapa at www.BaliAdvertiser.biz C/Ns/G-30 June 10