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KangGURU Travels to Karimunjawa in 2002 In early October, Ogi visited Surabaya
and the island of Karimunjawa off the coast
from Semarang. Ogi then travelled to meet with SURGA FM, the Excellent
Club (a KGRE Connection Club) and some Australians volunteers
in the East Java town of Jombang. While having dinner I asked many questions to Pak Hisyam about Karimunjaya and the activity for the next day. Pak Hisyam Zamroni, S.Ag is the school Principal of MTs Safinatul Huda in Kemojan village in Karimunjawa. He had initiated to build MTs and the school has developed well and with the help from the local government and Bupati Jepara, they are now building a Madrasah Aliyah. Pak Hisyam was very concerned about education for the people in Karimunjawa. And knowing that Karimunjawa is developing and will soon become a popular tourist destination, he proposed a series of English workshops for people from all walks of life in the villages. His idea is that in the future, the village people will be able to be tourist guides with good knowledge and speak English.
Later that night I also managed to contact Capt. KGRE who was working with Ibu Helena in the other part of the city. Pak Hisyam picked me up before 7am the next day and we went straight to the Pelabuhan Tanjung Emas Semarang to take ferry trip to Karimunjawa. It was a good ferry actually and I got an executive seat but it took more than 4 hours to get to Karimunjawa and I felt a bit of sea sick in the last two hours! Apparently Karimunjawa was getting lots of attention from the local government and many activities were prepared for the 10 October such as national seminar on development of Karimunjawa and fishing competition (lomba mancing). I was very glad when we arrived at Karimunjawa but then I found out that I had to take a motorbike to go to the desa Kemojan where the school is. It is about 25kms from Karimunjawa. Students and teachers were ready to welcome their guests including Bupati Jepara. I was then rushed again to the homestay (or a house to me) which was about another 4km away to change clothes for the ceremonial activities. By 3pm I was back again at the school and before long the Bupati Jepara and his entourage arrived at the school. Bupati Jepara was invited to do ‘peletakan batu pertama’ for the new building of Madrasah Aliyah and to officially open the English workshop and also the ‘Lomba Duta Wisata’ for the SD students in the surrounding villages. It was good to hear from Pak Bupati that he supports education very much and the important of English language for the development of the area. There were also REOG dances to greet the visitors and I think that was the highlight of that afternoon activities.
Not long after that I met with the students. I informed them about KGRE and suggested that they should first improve their listening and speaking skills first before writing and reading. They seemed interested and asked several questions. They were particularly happy when I gave away some magazines and prizes from KGRE such as buku tulis, koala and stickers. I got information that they have formed an English club and meet every Tuesday afternoon. I hope they will soon join the KG Connection Club network. At night Pak Hisyam with some of his students treated me with ikan bakar. We set up the fire by the sea port which was close to the house I stayed and we grilled the fishes ourselves. It was wonderful. I got up early the next day and found time to enjoy the beauty of the beach. Karimunjawa is beautiful place for marine recreation. I hope the area will develop well and that it will bring prosperity to its people.
I informed them about Kang Guru Radio English and the services we have that they can enjoy. I gave them some basic English grammar/useful phrases and then vocabulary activities. From my point of view, it wasn’t very successful activity. However they were very keen in getting KGRE material such as magazine, flyers and stickers. They were eager to answer questions when I gave away T-shirts and keyrings and music cassettes. I finished it just after 12 and it was also the end of the school day activity. I just noticed that the school had a day off on Friday instead of Sunday because it is a Moslem school. After some goodbye with the teachers and students I was then rushed to the Pelabuhan Karimunjawa to take the ferry trip back to Semarang. It seemed to me that people always rode their motorbikes so fast or ngebut, maybe because there was no traffic. But I still managed to look around to see the scenery with its beautiful beaches. I felt really well during the 4 hours ferry trip and arrived safely in Semarang about 6.30pm. Then I did a bit of jalan-jalan in the city of Semarang to buy some oleh-oleh for friends at the office in Bali. It’s a bit sad because I only had the chance to see Semarang at night and I would be flying back to Surabaya early morning the next day. I caught a taxi to Semarang airport in the early morning of Monday, 11 October 2004 to catch my Merpati flight to Surabaya. Luckily the flight was in time, the aircraft was bigger and we arrived safely in Surabaya. I continued my trip to Jombang by taxi. It was good to see and passed by towns in East Java again after so many years. I was raised in Madiun and Maospati and I left the towns in 1984 to continue my high school and university study in Bali. Well, of course I did travel to Surabaya several times but never visited Madiun again. And without realising it I had arrived at Hotel Fatma in Jombang.
They had the radio programs well scheduled as well as shift schedules for the staff. They made sure that staff who were responsible were available to deliver the programs. Pak Hasyim expressed some ideas about how KGRE can help them especially with the English club. I have noted that and I promised to discuss it with Capt. KGRE. I think they were lucky to have an Australian volunteer there. Caroline was more than happy to help them with ideas on how to develop the program especially the English interactive show in conjunction with KGRE radio program. And I noticed they got on well learning English and Indonesians together. As I did in other places I also had presents for them and they were thrilled, including Caroline, when I gave them a pair of English – Indonesian dictionaries. Waras, one of the staff member, rang me the other day and said they didn’t have dictionary to help them with their English. I hoped they would find the dictionaries useful. I spent about two and half hours there and I had to go back to the hotel because I had to go to the Excellent Club. Pak Hakim and two of the members from the Excellent Club picked me up before 3pm and together with Caroline we went to Ngoro where the club was. There was a funny thing here. I thought that Caroline had visited the club before as I informed from Waras. But then as we were talking I found out that Caroline had no idea about the Excellent club. Apparently she also helped STKIP students in Jombang who had an English club and who sometimes did the interactive English program at Radio Surga FM.
I was back in the hotel feeling wonderful that KGRE had helped students in this small town and Caroline even told me that now she had a better idea of what KGRE was doing. And then I went around town by becak because I still wanted to enjoy riding becaks. Pak Becak showed where to buy nasi pecel and I followed his advise and we ate nasi pecel together. It was the best nasi pecel that I’ve ever had after so many years. I traveled back to Surabaya the next morning. I have scheduled to take
afternoon flight back to Bali so that I could spent a bit of time in Surabaya.
I went to visit IALF Surabaya and as always it was good to visit friends
there. Then I went to the printer again to check on the progress of re-printing
the KGRE Teacher Package. The teacher package was very popular and we
have to re-print them and this time I have to make sure that everything
is correct. If everything went well I hope by mid November the revised
KGRE Teacher Package will be ready. Pak Yusman from the printer took me
back to the Juanda airport and that was the end of my travel. I hope that
I can do more visits next year. |
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