Me and two employees visited the village Bandarharjo and met one of the key people of the Bandarharjo women community. Pandarharjo is the village with the highest statistics of domestic and sexual violence as well as HIV in Central Java. The village is located next to the harbor and I heard that the people living there are quite poor.
The purpose of the visit was to plan the activity of the Pandarharjo’s women community. The key person is not the leader of the community but she is the active group member with a lot of knowledge – the one who gets things done. The key person participates the support group SEKARTAJI which has enabled her to gain the information that she also needs in her own community.
While strolling the streets of Bandarharjo the employee of KJHAM told me that insests are severe problem in the village. She asked me to look around and we noticed that the houses are rather small. Still many people, even several families, live in the same house which may effect to insests. The employee also showed me the river side in where there are lot of prostitutes and available alcohol during the night time.
Despite the problems I found the village and especially the villagers really warm-welcoming and friendly. As I am not a muslim I was not fasting, but they still made sure that I had opportunity to drink and eat. We visited the garden of the key person and there we were able greet to the goats. For a souvenir we got fresh water jambus fresh-picked from the tree.