This man may have had 99 problems waiting for him at his flooded Jakarta home, but an empty stomach wasn’t one.
Yesterday, two photos of a man eating at a roadside warung pecel lele (a stall selling deep fried meat, including catfish, chicken or beef, on rice with sambal) while floodwater nearly reached the top of his dining table went viral. Many thought the photos were just the sort of memes that usually pop up whenever we enter the flood season in Jakarta (humor is, after all, a great coping mechanism in hard times), but they appeared to be authentic after Jakarta Police’s Traffic Management Center (TMC Polda Metro Jaya) shared one of the photos on their Instagram page.
According to TMC Polda Metro Jaya, the photo was taken at 12:40 am on Tuesday on Jalan Jatinegara Barat in East Jakarta. The flood waters measured around 50-70cm in depth, which led to the road’s closure at the time, but evidently not the warung’s.
The all-terrain eater was later identified as Jakarta resident Ahmad Saiful Bahri. On his own Instagram account, he reposted the viral photos (neither of which he took himself — one was taken by a friend and the other by a passerby) and gave his account of why he ended up in the warung that night.
“Coming home from work I cleaned up my house because the flood came in fast. I felt hopeless about the situation after trying to clean the house, so I went to find somewhere to eat, never mind comfort, as it was imperative to fill my stomach so I don’t get masuk angin (a local health term that literally translates to “enter wind” that is used to describe a particular feeling of sickness or gassiness),” Ahmad wrote on the caption of the post above.
“I had a friend take the photo just for fun, and there was someone else from far away who took another photo and shared it on social media. And now [they’ve gone viral] like this, hahahah.”
Speaking to Coconuts, Ahmad said that he lives near the warung and that it was the only dining option available to him at the time.
“The seller himself was surprised I wanted to eat there,” he said.
Ahmad was rather philosophical when commenting on his newfound viral fame and how people are painting him as a symbol for Jakartans’ nonchalance towards flood, which regularly affects many people’s lives in the capital.
“They can call me a symbol for whatever but what’s clear it that I’m thankful that even though my house was flooded I can still eat, even at a place like that. There are people who can’t even eat at all during floods, so I’m thankful of what God gave me,” he said.
Well, if there’s one thing we can take from this, it’s that problems are best faced with a stomach full of nasi.
On a more serious note, the flooding in the last couple of days in Jakarta has led to the evacuation of at least 6,000 people from their homes, with East Jakarta and South Jakarta being the most affected municipalities.
This article has been updated to include our interview with Ahmad Saiful Bahri.
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