Our consultant - Sutiyem :)

HONG KONG –
A day in Victoria Park , Causeway Bay 

It's a sunny Sunday morning, a nice day for myriads of domestic workers to enjoy their day-offs in Statue Square in Central and Victoria Park in Causeway Bay. By gathering in small groups, they sit on the floor with newspaper beneath, on benches, railings, and even besides the street. Similar to other domestic helpers hanging out in Causeway Bay, Sutiyem, 41, works as an Indonesian domestic helper in a Hong Kong family. She has left Indonesia for 10 years. She claimed that it is essential to obtain experience in Singapore prior to working in Hong Kong. For this reason, before coming to Hong Kong, she has worked in a Chinese family in Singapore for 5 years. This year has already been her fifth year in Hong Kong and her employment contract is going to terminate next year.
 

Sutiyem's family and her future aspiration

Sutiyem has her own family back in Indonesia. Her husband works as a primary school teacher over there, and her two sons aged 17 and 20 respectively. After Sutiyem was left for work as a domestic helper in Singapore, she only got to see her family once every two years. Telephone is the only tool to connect between her and her family in such a long distance. She said her family in Indonesia is impoverished as relying on her husband’s income is not enough to put their children through schools. Her future aspiration is to earn enough money and build her own house in Indonesia.


About Sutiyem's linguistic repertoires

Concerning her linguistic repertoires, she is a multilingual speaker, who possesses knowledge in Java(mother tongue in Indonesia), Bahasa(Indonesia official language), English and little knowledge on Cantonese which was mandatory to learn before coming to Hong Kong. Sutiyem was raised in Central Indonesian since she was born and that she mainly used the Java with family, which is communicative limited within the Central Indonesia. Given the fact that Bahasa is the official language in Indonesia, it is mandatory to use in the education curriculum. For English, she did not receive any proper English classes; instead she learnt it aurally by listening to the routine conversations and interactions with her employers and tried to imitate. She then said it is the same mechanism to learn Cantonese. It is crucial for her to learn Cantonese and English for better communicative purposes, as she is required to take care of an elderly whom language use is limited to Cantonese. Also, learning English and Cantonese is to create an attachment to her employers at home, as both languages are identified as an important mediating instrument for communication. It is seen as more “participatory” in a sense. We believe the working condition could definitely exert an impact on their language usage. 

 Language shift in Indonesia 1970s

With deeper understanding in Sutiyem's language background, there was a previous experience of language shift back in Indonesia. Around the 1970s, there was a language shift from Java to the national language, Indonesian. Most of the Indonesian are demanded to speak Bahasa Indonesian, which makes the use of Java more confined to limited interaction and left it in the danger of extinction.

Living in a foreign country, how can they develop such a strong sense of community?

After talking to Sutiyem and her friends, Victoria Park has already been treated as their significant community spot to hang out. They have gone to other places like the Peak, but interestingly, they said it does not feel like a holiday if they do not come to this spot in Causeway Bay. This not only provided them with social meaning, but also a sense of “home” in a “host” country.Due to the fact of globalization, it draws Indonesian domestic helpers together and form the so-called "Indonesian Community" in Victoria Park, Causeway Bay. They actually speak Java within their group and we believe they are unified by their common language, which strengthened their internal ties.