Son is the pimp from central casting. Dressed in black skivvy and pants, he's boastful and loquacious with a chunky gold ring and "Barbie Girl" for a phone ringtone. He claims he no longer works in Indonesia's thriving sex industry, but then extols his judgment as a purveyor of girls.
Until last year, Son worked as a "channeller", supplying village girls from the Indramayu region of West Java to the brothels of Jakarta and Sumatra. Credit: Eka Nickmatulhuda. Can you take her? Son would then tell the parents if their desires were realistic: "A pimp can see if the girl is pretty enough, how many guests she will get per night.
It's as simple as that. The parents would get a loan and their daughter would pay it back with her labour, usually over 2 to 3 years.
A disproportionate number of Indonesia's prostitutes come from this one small cluster of villages in West Java. Not every girl here becomes a sex worker, but again and again in these villages we hear the same story: when an Indramayu family has a baby girl, they celebrate. They know that, if it becomes necessary in the future, she'll be able to support her whole family.
Indramayu has become the region that sells its daughters. Nur'Asiah dresses for work. Nur'asiah is a slight year-old. On the wall of her grandparents' house in the Indramayu village of Bongas hangs a picture of her as a little girl dressed up as a princess.
