The Rainbow Troops Read Online Free PDF

extracurricular budget, and her former students who were now successful in Jakarta.
    The PN School was Belitong's most discriminating club. That school only accepted children of the Staff who lived in the Estate. There was an official rule that regulated which rank of employees could enroll their children at the PN School. And of course, on the gate hung that warning not to enter unless you had the right.
    This meant that the children of fishermen, pipe carriers, daily paid laborers or hard laborers sifting tin, like our parents, and especially native children of Belitong, didn't have the least opportunity to receive a good education. If they wanted to go to school, they were forced to join the Muhammadiyah village school, which if caressed by just a little bit of strong wind, could fall apart.
    This was the most ironic thing in our lives: the glory of the Estate and the glamour of the PN School were funded cent by cent from the tin that was scraped out of our homeland. Like the hanging gardens of Babylon built for the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar III for worshiping the god Marduk, the Estate was a Belitong landmark built to continue the dark dream of spreading colonization. Its goal was to give power to a few people to oppress many, to educate a few people in order to make the others docile. The worshiped god was none other than status, status built through the unjust treatment of the poor native inhabitants.
     

Chapter 6

    Those without the Right
     
    WITHOUT A DOUBT, if one were to zoom out, our village would appear to be the richest village in the world. The amount of mines sprawled across the land was unimaginable and trillions of rupiah were invested here. Billions of dollars flowed in like rats drawn to the melody of the Pied Piper's flute . Yet, zooming back in, the wealth of the island was visibly trapped in one place, piled up inside the fortress walls of the Estate.
    Just an arm's length outside of those fortress walls spanned a strikingly contradictory sight, like a village chicken sitting next to a peacock. There lived the native Belitong-Malays, and if they didn't have eight children, then they weren't done trying. They blamed the government for not providing them with enough entertainment, so at night, they had nothing to do besides make children.
    It would be an exaggeration to call our village a slum, but it would not be wrong to say it was a laborers' village shadowed by an endless eclipse since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Belitong Island, one of the first places in Indonesia occupied by the Dutch, had been oppressed for seven generations, when suddenly, in the blink of an eye, hundreds of years of the drought of misery were drenched in one night by a rain of torment: the arrival of the Japanese. My father vividly recalled the storm.
    "My son, the soldiers who never let go of their bayonets' snouts turned our world into a hell." His innocent eyes reflected the anguish of a man whose dignity had been wounded and whose land had been robbed.
    After three-hundred-fifty years, the Dutch said "good day" and the Japanese yelled "sayonara". Unfortunately, that wasn't the happy ending for us, the natives of Belitong. For we were to be occupied in another way. Our land was seized once again, but in a more civilized manner. We were freed, but not yet free.
    From our yard, we could see the Estate's walls.
    Our yard, overgrown with shrubs, velvet, and shoe flowers, was boring. Our crisscrossed fence, which leaned over the edge of ditches filled with still, brown water and mosquito nests, was also boring.
    Our stilted, worn-out house was crammed into the same area as the police station, the PN logistics building, Chinese temples, the village office, the religious affairs office, dorms for dock coolies, sailors' barracks, the water tower, Chinese-Malay stores, dozens of coffee warung —traditional roadside stalls—and pawn shops always full of visitors. At the edge of the village, tucked away in a corner, was the