Escaping Poverty, One Cow at a Time

George Miller

Finis Doki is a young man of 27 years who lives on the Island of Semau off the coast of Timor. Semau is easily visible from the Kupang. Finis was forced to leave school when he was twelve, just after commencing junior high school, because his parents could not pay the school fees. He is now married and has two girls, the eldest of whom is 5 years. He owns and farms about 3 ha. of land.

Semau is a generally arid island largely made up of uplifted coral. Much is infertile and covered with low scrub. There is a long dry season and life is generally very hard.

During the past twenty years residents have gradually been discovering new ways to generate disposable income. Those fortunate enough to possess arable land have been growing tomatoes and chillis for the Kupang market, 40 minutes travelling time from Hansisi, the main landing stage on Semau. Another new enterprise recently established through cooperative groups is that of seaweed cultivation. The seaweed is sold to dealers who come to the island from Kupang and is shipped overseas to Denmark and Korea to be used in the manufacture of cosmetics and other products..

For Finis the way to achieve a gradual improvement in his standard of living has been through fattening and dealing in cattle. He has done this through the establishment of a small group cooperative or kelompok with the help of a local NGO (YPMPS Yayasan Pembangunan Masyarakat Pulau Semau) and the Canberra-based aid organization, the NTA East Indonesia Aid.

While other members of the kelompok received small amounts of capital in the form of rotating credit to assist with seaweed production, Finis in 2004 decided to concentrate on cattle. In that year he received a loan of Rp.500,000 (about $70), which he eventually had to pay back to the kelompok to be used by other members. By adding this to his own savings he was able to purchase a young, one-year-old beast of the “Bali cattle” breed, the type most prevalent in Eastern Indonesia.

He fed the cow intensively during the wet season and while feed lasted, on the prevailing fodder crop, Lamtoro. This he did for six months, paying also for regular injections to stimulate the beast’s appetite and a one-off vaccination against disease. In this way he was able to fatten the cow and sell it for a profit of about $150. Gradually, Finis was able to build-up his own capital.

During the dry seasons when Finis does not have enough green feed to fatten a cow himself, he acts as a middleman between other farmers and the dealer who ships the cattle to the Kupang market. He will buy an animal from a farmer, bring it to his house to hold for a day or two until a boat is ready to take a shipment to market. He leads the animal the kilometre or so from his house to the boat and sees it loaded safely on board. The boat usually sails overnight twice a week from Bokonusan to the Kupang saleyards.

Acting as a mini “stock agent” in this way Finis makes between $15 and $25 per week. This is not much, but the regular income and the capital available from his own profit and that which continues to circulate in his kelompok does give Finis enough confidence to embark on further micro-sized enterprises and to dream that he will be able to repair his house and provide sufficiently for his children to attend school in future years.

His kelompok in Indonesian, is called Dalek Esa in the local Helot language, or “One Heart”, and consists of six members. It began with a grant of about $430, which was divided equally amongst the members. Other members invested in lines and floats for their seaweed crops.

Each kelompok has to prove it is viable by having a formal structure and being capable of basic bookkeeping. It also has to send a representative to an annual musyawarah of representatives from all existing kelompoks which is held to share ideas and introduce new members to the benefits and responsibilities of participating in the YPMPS-NTA program. Finis attended for his group in his position as Chairman.

Participating in the program and making progress in his business has given Finis a new enthusiasm to improve his lot in life and that of his family. Though the improvements have been small, they have already been beneficial in terms of better food, including fish and vegetables, (staples are corn and root vegetables) and better clothing.

His next goal is to make improvements to his house. He is attempting to increase his savings to the extent that he can begin buying materials to renovate it. He feels he needs to accumulate at least $700 before he can make a start. His plan is to do this in 2008 or 2009.

To some extent the date for the improvements will depend on how healthy he remains during the intervening months. Malaria is endemic on Semau and Finis goes down with it at least once a year. When that happens, he is incapacitated for at least several days, and building up one’s strength again may take some time.

People have only traditional methods of preventing and fighting Malaria. Finis believes that working hard, raising a sweat by cutting feed for his cows and carting drinking water for them helps prevent the disease. When Malaria does attack, eating the leaves of paw-paw trees and sweet-potato plants can assist in recovery.

One important improvement that Finis would like to see on his house is the purchase of a water tank. This would cut down on the time and effort spent on carting water from the village well some eight hundred metres from his home. But this improvement will be quite expensive for him. His land is not suitable for a cement tank because of its unstable nature. He will require a fibreglass tank, and they are more expensive. In the meantime, he and his wife will continue to transport water from the village well in the hand-pulled cart which they have to do every second day. The children will begin assisting with this chore when they reach the age of six years.

The progress that Finis has already made in lifting himself out of poverty has given him the confidence to take up his latest challenge. He has made a down-payment on a motorcyle. Daily advertisements in the newspaper Pos Kupang invite buyers to purchase a bike with a deposit of as little as $75. Judging by the volume of motorbike traffic in Kupang, many are taking up the offer! Monthly instalment payments can be as small as $85. Finis intends to obtain income by providing an ojek service, a common form of transport in Indonesia with which all Australian visitors to Bali will be familiar. (Fares start from as low as 30cents, but are always negotiated).

If his ojek enterprise and his cattle raising blossom, for Finis the road ahead may just be a little brighter. There are hundreds of thousands of people in Finis’s situation in Eastern Indonesia; small injections of capital through their cooperatives can provide them with just the stimulation and the financial assistance they need to improve their lot in the harsh geographic and climatic environment in which they live.