City of Smoke by Jennie Hart

Tropodo: photo supplied by Jennie Hart

Black smoke billows from towering chimneys; the smell of burning plastic fills the air. Patches of black ash litter the ground. Tropodo is only a village but it is known as ‘The City of Smoke.’

Annisa lives here. Her name means lovely or beautiful, but it is difficult for her to feel lovely when she is choked by fumes. Java lies along the equator and is drenched by rainfall all year round creating a perfect climate for tropical trees and exotic flowers to thrive but Annisa rarely sees them. Sometimes she leaves the kampung and wanders off alone but can never escape the acrid smoke which seems to chase her, even through the lush vegetation. Amongst the dripping leaves and tangled vines, she can at least, while she is there, clear her lungs and breathe deeply.

Bayu, her father and her mother, Kirana, both work all day long among the fumes. They came from poor families who couldn’t afford to send them to school in Mojokerto, but they want a better education for Annisa. Unlike their neighbours in the village they have only one child. Bayu and Kirana work in the tofu factory, the only way of improving their way of life but it is soul-destroying. The hours are long and tiring and the atmosphere toxic humid in the confined factory space. The tofu factory burns plastic to power the machines. Tall chimneys churn out smoke and fumes which consume the village. Sometimes Annisa works there too, to aid the family income. She doesn’t like it but has no choice. Her parents want her to leave the village school and get a better education in the city and that’s what she wants too. She longs to leave and learn to be a teacher. She may even become an air hostess and travel to other countries.

Annisa tosses and turns in the suffocating humidity of these summer nights. She has closed her windows and her door, but soon her room fills with an acrid smell, like rubber being burnt. She coughs and her lungs tighten. Sometimes she gets rashes on her stomach. Tonight she is also disturbed by her mother’s continual coughing and often, she hears her crying in the night. She knows in the morning, Kirana will look drawn and pale. Her father’s job is very physical and he will be exhausted too; the heat and fumes affect his health but he is a heavy sleeper and is rarely woken.

Annisa knows life is not like this all over the world; she saved money from her work at the factory and bought her own mobile phone. She can watch western movies with her friend Reza but she can only receive a signal in the street outside the mayor’s office. Many local people gather there for the same reason. Today, she and Reza talk about the problems in their village and the way it is making their parents ill. Reza’s parents also work in a tofu factory at the edge of the settlement, a different one from Kirana and Bayu. There are many more in the area; a new one, it seems, opens every week.

 Sometimes, Annisa can connect to world news and she sees images of London and Scotland. She reads of the clean air in the city of London and how polluting buses are not allowed in the central streets of the English capital. Annisa would love to go there, walk through the streets with their lovely trees and fresh pure atmosphere. Scotland looks unimaginably beautiful with its high mountains and rushing rivers. It looks misty in some images but friendly and welcoming, not at all like Tropodo. She has heard there are unspoilt places in Java, but except for her one memorable visit to the rain forest she has never seen them.

Last year, the school took her class to see the stretch of the rain forest nearest to her home but far enough away to escape the obnoxious fumes. They saw orchids and exotic plants with colourful gigantic flowers and stamens. Huge speckled moths hovered and settled on the beautiful flower centres, devouring the nectar and spreading the pollen as they moved from flower to flower.

‘The village of Tropodo is so choked by the smoke from burning plastic that our nearby countryside looks ravaged,’ she thought. ‘That is the way my parents look too. The burning is destroying my family’s life and I know it is going to destroy mine.’

Reza and Annisa talk about it. Both have a chance of further education in the city of Mojokerto but neither want their life chances to be improved by their parents death. It is too big a price to pay. Their parents work for their children’s future and the tofu factories are the only source of employment for uneducated people in the village. Annisa has been to Bangun, a village nearby where lorries tip tons of plastic every day which is distributed to feed the tofu factories’ ovens. She knows it comes from America and Australia and even England. It is not surprising, she thinks, that the streets of London are clean and fresh when they can send their dirty plastic here.

‘Surely there are better ways of burning the plastic so that it doesn’t pour smoke and dust into our village air. Even our hens cough and choke. The people of London would not allow this to happen in their city.’

Annisa takes her phone and sits on the mayor’s wall again. She wants to find out how other countries make the big machines in their factories operate; she wants to find out why they send their dirty waste to Java; she wants to find out if the factory owners of Tropodo are burning the rubbish in the best way. Why can they not burn the plastic and prevent the smoky fumes escaping? She puts the name of her village into the ‘search’ on her phone, and immediately, a number of entries appear related to Tropodo. She is surprised that her village is so well known. She is shocked that one entry calls it The City of Smoke.

‘I do not want to live in Smoke City,’ she cries to Reza, ‘What can we do?’

‘Do you remember the girl who sat outside her school every day to get people to take notice of the dangers to our Earth?’ says Reza, ‘She’s famous now and goes all over the world talking to important people. Our teacher, you know, the one who cares about these things, Mister Ismawati, says this girl was invited to a big meeting about the climate and asked world leaders to try to save our planet.’

‘Of course, I know who you mean; it’s Greta Thunberg. She is my heroine; she stands up for what she believes in. We can do that. What do you think?’

‘My parents will be very mad if I do. The only job for them is the tofu factory. If that closes down they will have no work.’

‘It’s the same for my parents but if we don’t do something, we won’t have any parents. We may not even live very long ourselves. Runi, our dog, died this week and I am sure it was the smoke that caused it; his eyes were running and inflamed and he couldn’t get his breath. I didn’t want him to die.’

‘I am very sad for you,’ said Reza, ‘But I am too afraid to join you. My father has a big temper and he may hit me and my mother if I disobey. I am very sorry.’

Annisa decide she must be brave on her own, like Greta. She likes to draw and has a big sketch book. She takes two of the clean pages and with sticky tape, fastens them together. With one of her thick drawing pens in clear large letters she writes

PLEASE SAVE OUR LIVES

  STOP THE POLLUTION

 IT IS KILLING US

NO MORE BURNING

She makes her poster into a scroll by fixing a length of stout sugar cane at each side. She doesn’t tell her parents but in the morning when they leave for work she goes to school early and props it by the wall. Some villagers on their way to work, stop and read it. They know what she means but they ask her what can be done. She says she doesn’t know but says we have got to find a way. Some agree but others shrug and walk on. Once it is school time, she rolls up her poster and hides it in nearby undergrowth and attends class as normal. After school, she sets up her poster again and stays till dusk. Some passers by tell her to go home and stop meddling but others say she is quite right to want the fumes to stop,

’They are suffocating us all’, they say.

 Her parents come home as evening begins and she helps prepare the meal of the day. They may be angry that nothing is ready but they are too worn out to notice, She quickly prepares vegetables and her mother fries tofu and chili peppers.

That night Annisa can’t sleep. It isn’t only the oppressive fumes, it is her mind that is on fire. She wants to find a way for the villagers to take notice. What can she do? She must, she decides, like Greta Thunberg, miss school and display her poster all day and appeal to more villagers. After three days, the head teacher Mister Tay is angry and calls her to his office. Her parents will complain he says, that he is not providing a good education. Annisa will return to class he says, but she pleads with Mister Tay for help in cleaning the village air. Mister Tay does not live in Tropodo so does not suffer the oppressive nights, but he is aware how the village children are affected. He knows they often fall asleep in the classroom.

‘I will consider what can be done but it is a much bigger problem than you or I can solve.’

The next day, Annisa returns to displaying her poster before school starts and this time, she has another visitor. It is her teacher Mister Ismawati.

‘You are a brave girl Annisa’, says Mister Ismawati, ‘And I am going to make it known to the school that you are protesting about a very serious matter.  I will speak to Tropodo News who I know will be on your side. It is the profiteers in Bangun  who are accepting the plastic from America and England who are to blame and it is also the owners of the tofu factories who are making a fat profit. They are lining their pockets and do not have to live close to the factories like you. Even I, who live in the hills above Tropodo, have fumes invading my kampung and spoiling the air.’

Mister Ismawati was the Head of the curriculum and had the authority to gather the school together. He spoke to the children of the bravery of Annisa and that she was drawing attention to an extremely serious problem that had to be dealt with. Mister Tay at first, refused to attend, but as he listened in the doorway, he grudgingly agreed to Mister Ismawati’s reasoning. He was a lesser man than Mister Ismawati, selfish and interested only in self preservation. He had no conscience about the plight of his pupils and their families.

Mister Ismawati organised a protest. He sent a message to the parents that with their  permission, the children were going to march to the Mayoral and Council offices in Tropodo, to protest about the Bangun plastic dealers who welcomed waste that other countries did not want. He prepared an impressive letter pointing out the skulduggery of the dealers and the immoral, thoughtless way the tofu factory owners burnt plastic’

‘For short term gain,’ he wrote, ‘Our children and families are becoming ill in a way that they will never recover from. How can we allow this to happen when there are other ways of providing power to drive our machines?’

Mister Ismawati too searched the internet and found information on ways of burning plastic so that the toxic fumes did not pollute the atmosphere. It would cost money, but the local council must appeal to the government for money to be invested in new ways of creating fuel. Mister Ismawati also discovered that many highly poisonous chemicals like dioxins, were released into the atmosphere with the smoke and fumes. These settled on the land where the villagers grew their vegetables and where their hens fed.

photo supplied by Jennie Hart

The hens’ eggs were highly contaminated with dioxins and because of this, they and their children were eating poison.

Mister Ismawati included all this information in his long carefully worded letter. He printed it on special quality vellum to impress the Council officials and marched at the head of the procession of children to present it. Annisa and Reza  marched at the very front holding Annisa’s placard. Mister Ismawati felt satisfied he had done as much as he could to support Annisa but he knew there would be much more to do..

Mister Ismawati and Annisa handed over the letter to the head man of the council and await a reply. That was a year ago and they are still waiting. Annisa still sits by her poster each day before and after school. Her parents’ commitment to the tofu factory means she is soon to go to the high school in Mojokerto Her parents will pay the cost of her staying there during the week. Her mother Kirana struggles with breathing problems but still drags herself to work. Annisa has decided she wants to be a scientist and learn of ways to help the planet. Mister Ismawati is a good friend to her family and he and Annisa, have written another letter. This time they have sent it to President Jo Biden of the United States and to Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom.

Annisa and Mister Ismawati await a reply.