Practice of space sharing in high-density Kampung Cikini

Practice of space sharing in high-density Kampung Cikini 3/5
Evawani Ellisa (Universitas Indonesia)

With the spread of Covid-19 infection, does the sharing culture or characteristic remained the same?
It changed completely. At first, it had been known that a merchant from the traditional market Cikini had infected by Covid-19. Since then, the local government enacted random Covid-19 tests to the kampung inhabitants. It revealed that more than 70 people had been tested positive. As quite a lot of people infected, Kampung Cikini officially labelled as the red zone of pandemic and should be locally locked down. Kampung leaders and youth organizations promptly set up temporary hand washrooms and prohibit gathering. Before the pandemic, Kampung Cikini was easily accessible from many gates, but since then, they closed some gates and only set up four gates [13] to take countermeasures and put very strict control. Those who were symptomatic were taken to health facilities. The majority who were asymptomatic, being quarantined at their own homes. However, knowing that their neighbors were positive of Covid-19 had quickly aroused the anxiety among kampung inhabitants. As a result, negative stigma had been labelled to those who tested positive. Tension and suspicion circulated among the people in the neighborhood, asking those who infected to be quarantined outside kampung, that kampung leaders should work hard to calm down the the uninfected community members. Eventually, the community realized that they should support those who were being infected, and the women association kindly help the quarantine households by providing emergency food assistance.

You talked about sharing in the sense that one space is used in various ways depending on the time and case, but sharing a space has another meaning. Like a socalled share house or shared office, one space is shared by multiple people.
In the form of the latter kind of sharing, speaking of high-density kampung, it would be MCK (communal water place, washing, bathing, toilet). Cikini is a kampung where about 5,000 people live, but only 29 MCKs available [14]. The government developed MCK as part of Kampung improvement project to improve health and hygiene. Although many houses have private toilets, they cannot cover the cleaning facilities for the whole population. There is only one MCK per 170 people, which is not enough. The problem is that the government does not carry out maintenance after installation, and some MCK are neglected and in poor condition. In terms of sharing sanitation, this is a big problem since they do not have any system and control management to maintain the sharing MCK.