Women of Peunayong

How we determine the productivity of us as a human being? most of the time, we use age and aging as the main factor of how well we are as human and how best it is for everybody for aging people to step away from the beautiful frame of breathing daily life, but it is not really happening, if we are really opening our eyes and see around us and find the hard fact that what we may call old is defying everything and keep breathing and also enjoying life in the same time.

i live in Banda Aceh, the western part of Indonesia, here, is very easy to see old people still keep fighting in a daily life. and actually we may say that old people still there as a very hard foundation of society.

and talk about women, old women, who always there and have to do everything they could not only to support their own live, but i believe others life too in their family, and somehow, this "drama" always able to radiate a hope and faith that actually there is still a place for people to believe in their meaning as human being in society.

these women, especially who engage in daily trading in traditional market in peunayong Banda Aceh are a real proof that we should take and look at them as an example how to live our own life, instead of complaining and blaming everything we should take a look back and look at them, who probably have less than us but somehow gain more then everybody, they always have so much to give, ethically speaking, it is not what outside us is more important but us as inside should be more and more important and that somehow will make what we call live is always young to face.

most of the time we just ignoring everything, we really good in that, i give you that, but actually, ignoring thing give nothing in return, we just become dull and predictable, always react to "personal space" and self interest. these women here, know sometimes by their attitude that they are belong to the past, they just have to sit in the corner, face to the ground and be there until their time is come. in traditional market like Penayong, people trading, buying thing and bargaining, changing money with stuff they need, bring it home and have nice day, not once, we ever consider of this people providing us with material we need to survive and live another day as an important person, they are just old people selling not really important things in market, nothing serious there...

but of course, it is serious, it is fresh teaching of live without being hypocrite, make a living of trading goods is an honest job should be done by an honest people too, and here they are, we call them old, but they smile, humble, honest, not really thinking about getting rich, because by doing on small scale trading on pedestrian which sometimes could be evicted by authority and to compare with the giant player in supermarket, of course their chance to become rich is just super slim, and probably they realise it too, that is why they can act "humanly", live as a part of massive connection we call social, even thought there are things in between, like cabbage and mango, it should, as they show us, make us smile.

continuity, determination, everyday, they come, sit and wait, it took a lot of reasons to be able to do that, and by looking from that perspective these women are noble in their own way, of course nothing is perfect but when it comes to human and the classification of productivity it is easy to fall into wrong conclusion, that old people or in this context old women, are far from perfect, but they are perfect in a sense of banality of life, they are different, they don't live in a dimension of commoners, they don't have a selfish dream, or "changes the world" in that matter, they are just what they are, even us just passing by, throwing some money and take the good they are selling, and the feeling that we are better than these old women of penayong is just very subjective, they are strong and they proof it for themselves, nothing else is matter, in that situation, these old women of penayong are teaching us in a modest way, what live is...

Ikhwan (21/5/17)