The Girl President Of Jakarta

When Ayu Kartika was born,the sky above Jakarta was leaden,and the streets of the Kampung Pahlawan slum were filled with sounds and smells that were hard to forget.Around the tin shack where she was born,the rain beat furiously on the rusty roof,and the cries of the neighbors mingled with the laughter of barefoot children running through puddles.It was a small world,too narrow for such a big destiny.The girl with eyes as black as the tropical night soon learned that life offers nothing for free.That a three-square-meter room could be called "home" if you had a corner to dream in.That girls in the slums were not allowed to dream too high.And that the truth...was sold cheaply,on street corners,in purchased silences.But Ayu was not like the others.She had a flame inside her that would not be extinguished by hunger or by abuse,not even in the face of death.When others gave up,she wrote.When others cried,she kept quiet and learned.When others ran away,she moved forward.From the first article she wrote for a local newspaper to the speech she gave before the UN,her life was a succession of crossroads and wars.She loved and lost.She fought and fell.But she always got up.Her story is not just about a woman who came to lead a nation.It is about the courage to face a network of corruption that seemed impossible to destroy.About a love that crossed social classes,continents and tragedies.And about a child,Raka,who would learn from his mother that change begins with a single step.Now,Ayu Kartika looks from the balcony of the Presidential Palace at the same city that once forgot her.