A young girl sweeps a broom in a narrow alley in the trashy Jakarta Kota

Girl sweeping a broom in an alley — Girl in the alley

As I stepped off the railroad tracks and onto a narrow street, I wandered into a residential area. There was a narrow alleyway that cars could not pass through, and low-rise houses lined both sides. There were motorbikes and kaki lima (mobile food stall) parked at the edge of the alley, making it look quite dense. I had entered a densely populated residential area beside the railroad tracks.

As I made my way through the motorbikes and kaki lima, I saw a girl standing at the end of the alley wearing ill-fitting sandals. The girl was holding a broom in her hand. The girl was sweeping the alley with the broom in her hand as if her parents had told her to do.

There was a lot of trash around the tracks, but not so much in this narrow alley. Perhaps it was because the locals were cleaning up the area as often as this girl was doing. Many people think that even if a public place is dirty, it should be cleaned by someone other than themselves, while many people think that they should be the ones to clean the places that are in contact with their personal space, like this alley.

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