But the river is also a threat. Rita tells me that the army built concrete barriers along the sides of the river walls to stop the wet season floods spilling over the banks into homes. The barriers are both a curse and a blessing – when they were built, they significantly reduced the width of the river and, as a result, parts of Yogya still flood.

Resting on the river-bank

A resident listening closely adds that years ago this river was a dumpsite for butchered animal off-cuts and leather scraps, along with the rest of the city’s waste. Working with residents, a community-based program, the Kali Code Care Program, has helped to ensure that this kind of waste no longer ends up in the river. According to researchers at the Gadjah Mada University, a serious change of attitude needs to take place in order for the river to be no longer seen as a rubbish dump. Months ago an excavator dug out the sediment that was clogging the river, to ensure smooth flows during the wet season. But this also wiped out vegetable crops planted by some enterprising locals in the soil that had begun to emerge on the river’s surface. And despite the work that has gone into cleaning up the river, it remains a familiar murky grey-brown, choked with rubbish.

Even despite the water’s unappealing tinge, several men squat over its banks, fishing rods in hand, waiting for a bite. I ask a fisherman if he’s ever caught anything. ‘Once’, he tells me light-heartedly. ‘There they are.’ He indicates the flashes of silver under the water’s surface, a school of fish swimming in the nearby eddies.

An optimistic fisherman

Kali Code constantly surprises with the life it contains – despite the odds – lingering just beneath the surface. It is these unusual and unexpected contradictions that make Kali Code such an interesting place, a community that resulted from, and endures because of, its diversity.     ii

Tessa Toumbourou (tessatoumbourou@hotmail.com) is an Indonesian language and politics graduate, currently in Indonesia on a Darmasiswa scholarship.

All photo's in this photo-essay are by Tessa Toumbourou