by Nico Colombant, for Kemchicks Magazine, Jakarta, 1997
Another truth about journalism is that if a man bites a dog, that's also news. Working at a local news television station, I've come to experience both the former and the lighter side of news.
There is no shortchanging my producers for finding the story that will hit the sweet tooth. Take Ferry, a young man from Palembang, South Sumatra, who got himself a fake tooth to flash a million dollar smile. But then something happened in Ferry's quest for beautification as one day he swallowed his new addition. His lung started to ache but his doctor said not too worry. "One day the tooth will come out naturally," he said.
And, in a way, it did. A fertilizer company paid for a tooth dislodging operation a year later after Ferry had started coughing blood and we had led our newscast with the sorry tale. It took all of forty minutes and Ferry was one tooth short but this time around feeling the better for it. The CEO of the fertilizer company was awarded our Newsmaker of the Day feature profile five minutes of fame.
At my television, this type of story is a dime a dozen, and we're not talking depreciation. After the bad news segment, and the let's make the bad news sound like good news after all segment, we now have the zany segment. We have our very own Crazy Board System to determine whether or not a story makes it on air.
The report on an Indonesian runner- Ruwiyati- who drank her trainer's blood before and after races never made it to our line-up because my producers felt that was not out-of-the-ordinary behavior. However, when a reporter came across- or gazed upon- a man living aloft in a coconut tree, the executive producer of the program decided it was time to send out the camera crew. On tape, we had an exclusive interview of Budi who said he was sick and tired of the moaning and bickering of his three wives. "If you have one, can you imagine having three?" he asked rhetorically.
During the Christmas season, we reported on the sparrows of Lubuk Linggau in South Sumatra. The headline for the story was Sparrows at Sunset Cause Some Headaches. Every night at sunset, thousands of these sparrows crowd the telephone cables of this small town. The problem - and the focus of the story - was the danger of electrical bird droppings, according to a member of the town council. However, in his concluding remarks, he remarked, as a way of conclusion, that the sparrows were also a great form of entertainment and ornamentation for the residents of Lubuk Linggau at nighttime.
During the fasting month, we visited an Islamic school where students are forced to play soccer with a flaming coconut and a prickly durian fruit. The school superintendent said the tradition dates back to 1989. He said preparation for the yearly game takes at least two weeks, during which time the coconut is dipped into kerosene. When the coconut flames out, it is replaced by the durian.
But my favorite story of all is about the Jenglots. A man in west Jakarta has put tiny mummies he says are vampires on display in his backyard. The exhibition which started two years ago has attracted thousands of curious onlookers every day. The mummies, affectionately known as Jenglots, lie in tiny coffins in full view under a glass cage. The caretaker of this "open-grave site" says the creatures feed on his own blood and that they occasionally rise and turn into vampires.
Apparently, the blood-thirsty runner Ruwiyati has expressed interest in buying some of the Jenglots for "athletic reasons" That could get her in the picture. But first, I'll have to talk with my producers. ZANY News reporting.
