Tika told me that the WPA group meeting before the Makassar event was very important because it marked the start of the group’s decline. She considered the meeting unpleasant, with tension between Naniek and Tati. She knows Tati very well, so understands her attitude; a good person who tends to dominate others and show off about her work. Tati’s attitude often caused problems with people unfamiliar with her manner. Tika stated that Tati’s attitude at that meeting was ‘too much’, and she understood why Naniek felt irritated and decided to leave the group.
59 In 2008, Indonesia started to adopt harm reduction programs. Each year, the National AIDS Commission hosted a Pekan Nasional Harm Reduction (National Harm Reduction Week), attended by harm reduction practitioners from throughout the country. The second annual meeting was held in Makassar. At the meeting, the HR-PKBI team gave a presentation about their innovative program, which had been successful in involving community members. They also introduced WPA as their innovation. Pekan Nasional Harm Reduction in Makassar was the largest conference for harm reduction kader in Indonesia. All institutions involved in this program gathered to share information about their latest work, especially their latest innovations.
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Tika did not want to elaborate on the root cause of the tension and she suggested I ask Naniek for details.
Naniek recalled that during the WPA meeting before Makassar, they discussed choosing a representative of the group. Before the main part of the meeting, the kader discussed their most recent activities as usual. Naniek spoke about their activities at Babakan Sari, where they had just organised a free, health checking service for local residents and collaborated with a college in Bandung to reach out to street children. For the health check, she told the group that she had received help from a volunteer, a medical doctor. As she finished telling the group about this, she heard Tati criticising their actions. Tati claimed that their work in Babakan Sari had been initiated and funded by people from outside the kelurahan, and asserted that WPA actions and funding should come from within the community. According to Naniek, they later argued about the definition of WPA and its mission. Naniek argued thata collaborative activity with an institution outside the kelurahan should not be perceived as a drift from their original intentions. Naniek hoped members of the HR-PKBI team would mediate their argument but they did not. She took the team’s silence to mean that they agreed with Tati, which disappointed her and her allies. Instead of resolving the situation, the team continued the meeting and discussed choosing a representative for the Makassar meeting. Naniek had been interested in representing the group, but the team’s recent behaviour had made her lose interest. After the meeting, she decided to discontinue her involvement in WPA and her activities at Babakan Sari. When she withdrew, other kader followed, and after that the activities of WPA in Babakan Sari declined.
I also asked Tati for her opinion about that meeting in 2008, to compare it to Naniek’s story but she did not say anything about her comment to Naniek and how it had irritated her and other members. She said that a few weeks after the meeting, she heard from the HR- PKBI team that Naniek decided to resign as WPA coordinator, but she was not told the reason. Instead of discussing the events of the meeting, she discussed her experience of representing the group at the big national event. It was clear that she was very proud of this.
I attempted to get Riki’s opinion of the incident at the meeting while he and his team had been aware of the tension between Naniek and Tati, they did not expect it to be so open. They understood the personal attitudes of each kader, but dissipating the tension was beyond their control. The team felt guilty about what happened to Naniek, but were too busy preparing for the Makassar trip to be able to intervene. They planned to resolve the situation after the Makassar event. However, by then it was too late; Naniek had left the group. Riki understood that neither he nor his team had the skills to manage the dynamics of social interaction in the group. They were 78
young and not confident in mediating conflict between senior people.
According to Riki, the success of Tati’s presentation at Makassar encouraged the team to take her along every time they attended HIV meetings, in or out of Bandung. They wanted to show off their success in setting up WPA groups and with WPA collaboration in the harm reduction program. Tati unintentionally became a WPA icon and this caused her to become overconfident. Riki was aware of the potential adverse effects, so warned the team to stop exposing her, to avoid envy from the other kader. Nevertheless, some team members wanted to push ahead with plans to boost the popularity of WPA, hoping to attract more community members. But Riki’s concerns proved valid, and Tati’s popularity generated envy among the kader. Tika, who had previously collaborated with Tati, withdrew her support in late 2008, a decision based on her disappointment with Tati. She had hoped to develop activities where she and Tati lived, and always discussed her plans with Tati because she wanted her collaboration. However, Tati always took the initiative to implement plans that had originally been Tika’s, without informing Tika or inviting her to participate. Tika became upset when, at regular WPA gatherings, Tati took credit for ideas and activities, never mentioning Tika as her collaborator.
My intention to carry out some activities was merely to articulate my concern about HIV and AIDS. It came from my own will to protect the people I care about from disadvantageous behaviour. I did not have any intention to show off or to compete with other kader in these actions. Sharing and updating stories about our activities, WPA meetings became a contest of telling about activities instead of building collaboration. I had no idea how this sense of competition emerged. I preferred to withdraw from the group, and carried out my work outside the group. (Tika Justika,
WPA kader, Maleer).
Tika’s disappointment reached a climax when the team again chose Tati to represent WPA kader at the International Congress on HIV and AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) in Bali in 2009. According to Riki, the team initially intended to take Tati and Tika but their budget did not allow it. Tati was selected simply because she had represented WPA previously at the Makassar meeting in 2008, and delivered successfully a presentation about WPA to a large audience. However, the team’s decision disappointed Tika. She decided to terminate her cooperation with the HR-PKBI team and work individually at Maleer. The HR- PKBI program at 15 kelurahan finished in 2009, and so did WPA activities except at Maleer, where Tika continued alone. She was already motivated and had been taking action since before she joined the team. Her activity intensified after 2010 (discussed further in Chapter 4). In Kebon Gedang, 79
Tati gradually discontinued her work because of her own health and that of her diabetic husband. She had to take care of him and she herself suffered from chronic arthritis that limited her mobility. Her colleagues followed her example in withdrawing from activism.
The history of WPA Kota Bandung illustrates how local residents in Bandung are competent at responding to the HIV and AIDS situation. The WPA group comprised people of diverse social backgrounds and status, all were well-respected health volunteers, and they were as one in their concern over HIV and AIDS. The kader’ social relations were dynamic and unique but also fragile: when one course of action was considered better than another or when one kader was chosen over another to represent the group, their social relations were disrupted. The HR-PKBI team had not anticipated for this. HR-PKBI’s collaboration with WPA ended because of the damaged social relations between the members of the WPA group.