Business Women in Southern Lombok

Ayong Rosari is Indonesian Chinese. Married to a Sasak man in Lombok, she has not lost the apparently inherent skill to Chinese people: she has a natural sense for business.

Ayong has one single child (she still follows the Chinese imposed tradition of having only one kid), and owns the only shop in Ujung, where she also lives. She is in charge of the shop and makes the only income for the family. Her husband farms a family land for rice 6-7 months a year, during the rainy season, contributing to the family income in kind. 

Ayong is part of the Ujung savings and loans group and she made a commitment to herself of saving 50,000Rp every month. 5 months after the group started she asked us for help to manage her business.  We went to her shop, in the front of her house. She invited us to see her house: it was falling apart. The roofs to the kitchen and the bedroom were completely broken, so they were sleeping in the outdoor “beruga” (see picture), which had also a broken roof covered with a plastic to protect them from the rains. She told us she wanted to fix the house but was afraid of investing her earnings on this as she was not sure she could afford it. She wanted to take a loan from the group but thought she needed much more than she could access.

The old room converted into kitchen

The open "beruga" converted into a family bedroom

We started teaching her to make a monthly record of income and expenses, so we could better understand her business. After 3 months we found out that she was making an average profit of 3.5MillionRp every month!! (For perspective the minimum monthly wage in Indonesia is 1.25Million). Although this helped her realise she was making money, she was still not sure of spending it as she was worried because many of her sales are made on credit and she was afraid people would not pay back and would therefore not have enough money to continue with the business or pay for her daily expenses.

We left her to think about it and to our very great surprise, the next month when we came to check her numbers she had fixed everything: new roofs, new kitchen, new room, and even a new electricity connection so she can buy a fridge and expand her business introducing vegetables and cold drinks! We asked her how she had done it and she said, “with my the benefits from the business and a 1 million Rp loan I took from the group”. 

We feel very happy for Ayong and her family!