KangGURU
Travels to
Surabaya in 2003
'Travels
with The Captain'
KGRE travels throughout Indonesia on a regular basis. On this trip
Kevin travels to Surabaya to visit the environmental orientated
BEJIS project from AusAID and the innovative Tunas
Hijau group. Kevin also visited Lamongan in East Java which has a
thriving duck industry. Initial funds provided
for the revolving fund activity came from DAP and the Australian Embassy
in Jakarta. His last engagement for the trip was the ADS
Alumni Dinner in Surabaya.
Surabaya -
September 10 - 12
It seems a never ending series of activities at KGRE in Bali. We are
also now finding our office is almost too small for the work we do. There
seems so much to do. For example the December 2003 magazine is now under
way. It needs to be completely finished and at the printer by the first
few days in November. Due to the Fasting Month, and the Christmas New
Year demands on the printer, our magazine has to be ready much earlier
than usual. Ogi, Alwi, Darmika and have been flat out since early
August. To give you some idea of what we have been doing I have written
down some of our activities for you
- updating the KGRE magazine database now with around 18,000 names
- organizing the delivery of magazines to subscribers recently added
to the database
- sending out magazines and new KGRE posters to people working
in AusAID Jakarta and Australia, plus schools and businesses in both
Indonesia and Australia
- answering the continuing flow of hundreds and hundreds of e-mails
and letters
- sending prizes to winners of April 2003 magazine competitions
- accepting and filing entries for competitions announced in the Aug.
magazine (the GIGI task is most popular so far)
- writing and developing the August Reading Class Set (due out in early
Sept.)
- planning, organizing and delivering Teacher
Workshops and a KGCC Get Together in Jepara
- producing the latest POUCH
for KG Connection Clubs (sent in late Aug.)
- making significant changes to the KGRE website and
- writing, recording and sending out radio programs (4000 4012)
There have been other things as well such as the normal day to day activities
in a busy office answering phone calls, organizing schedules, management
meetings within IALF Bali and so on. But finally we fell that we have
caught up the jobs that needed doing. As I have said many times before,
the KGRE office is a busy one.
On September 10th I
flew to Surabaya. I had several things to do there including the Australian
Development Scholarships (ADS) Alumni Dinner. But first up was a visit
to the
BEJIS Project an AusAID activity based within BAPEDAL Surabaya.
Pak Koko, Awareness and Outreach Advisor for the project, welcomed me
to the BEJIS office. After just a few moments I had met everyone in the
office including Team Leader, John McGregor. I knew several of the staff
from an earlier visit back in mid-2001 when KGRE looked at environmental
activities including local NGOs, with BEJIS support, measuring air pollution
in central Surabaya and looking at dirty rivers in nearby industrial areas.
This time around I went to see several compost centres set up and supported
by not only BEJIS, but local NGOs once again.
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The first location was not all that far from the Surabaya
Airport. At the location there were about eight people including several
volunteers from Airlangga University. Yayuk and Henny (doing her Masters
Degree) are biology students at Airlangga and they are also very interested
in the environment. So what basically happens at this location? Household
rubbish from the nearby houses is collected by rubbish men pulling
those big carts a very familiar sight throughout Indonesia. The
rubbish is brought to the site and sorted into organic and non-organic
materials.
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The organic materials are then put through a process whereby after
a month or so the former rubbish is high quality compost.
This material can then be used for gardens and is actually worth money.
So besides creating income the process also means that rubbish from
households is taken care of. It does not end up in drains, rivers,
laying by the side of the road or buried in your own yard. Sounds
great to me. There will be more news on the process itself from KGRE
in the near future plus interviews with some of those volunteers in
Surabaya. |
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The second site, also supported by BEJIS, was miles
away on the other side of Surabaya close by a huge land fill area.
Pak Totok Nowdianto, leader of the Yayasan Mitra Alam Indonesia, was
there to meet us. He quickly explained about the setup he was involved
in. My bahasa Indonesia was really tested as Totok spoke so very quickly
that I had real trouble following his description of his work. |
I shall have to listen to the interview again (and again) in an effort
to try to understand it all before Ogi transcribes and translates it.
She does this, with assistance sometimes from Alwi, so that it can used
in radio programs and possibly in a future KGRE magazine. Totok and his
yayasan are involved in many environmental issues in East Java and you
will hear about these too. KGRE plans to catch up with Totok in
2004 as he certainly has a deep involvement in environmental issues in
East Java. You can hear him talking about some of his current activities
on KGRE early in the New Year January to February 2004.
Hendrik, a driver from IALF Surabaya, drove me to
Lemongan from Surabaya on Thursday September 11th. It was a
quick drive and within an hour I was at the offices of YAPSEM Pemberdayaan
dan Pengembangan Social Ekonomi Mayarakat chatting with Pak Nadhir I went
to see some of the results of a revolving fund set up by YAPSEM with funds
supplied by the Direct
Aid Program (DAP).
| DAP is based in the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.
Funds given at the discretion of the Australian Ambassador and generally
to small community projects such as water supply, income generation
and health facilities. In this case Rp.40 million was provided in
2000. By working together with the local communities in a series of
nearby kecematans (9 in total), this active LSM has set up a revolving
credit for women of the villages (1785 members as of September 2003)
to develop their duck businesses. Ducks are big time in this
area. |
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| I visited several houses with the
women of the village and was surprised to see that literally hundreds
of ducks were their pride and joy. There were nests full of eggs
almost everywhere and the delight on the faces of the women was
plain to see. They are very proud of their activities and rightly
so. There was also a spattering of chickens and goats as well.
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It was interesting to find out about and other
interesting aspects of life in this particular area of East Java
too. It appears that in some months of the year there is so much
water in the village that the idiom great weather for ducks
is very appropriate indeed.
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For several months of the year, generally
around January and February, this whole area is basically under a
meter or more of water. The villagers are quite used to this annual
flooding and in fact use the period to catch fish which, according
to them, swim in and around their flooded houses so catching them
is easy and quick. Most houses are built up high on mounds of mud.
This mud is rock hard for the majority of the year. Some houses however
are not and the annual swirling of water throughout these houses is
expected and is no big deal. |
Most of the women I met just laughed about that situation and how the
only way to get around is by small boats. Hundreds of these boats were
laying around the village when I visited but I was told that within a
few months they would be put to good use transporting children to school
and women to the local stores.
Other important income generating activities in this community include
fish and growing rice. The area is made up of thousands of ponds, many
of them as big as 50m by 20 meters. They are about 2 3meters deep. In
the wet season they are filled with water and are teeming with fish. As
the majority of these ponds dry up in the summer months they are used
for growing rice. They also lay dormant for several months each year as
they, and the community, wait for the rains to return. But the ducks keep
going year in year out.
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The revolving credit set up through the DAP funds and
the work of the YAPSEM continues to grow and as of September 2004
the credit available to community members is over Rp.100 million.
The women I met are very happy with their successes and are very proud
of their flocks of quacking income generating friends. It was very
nice to meet them all. |
The drive back to Surabaya was quick and later
in the afternoon I went to see Pak Roni at Tunas
Hijau. This innovative LSM based within the grounds of the Scouts
Headquarters in Jl Kertajaya, Sby is involved with so many great environmental
activities that I soon realized I would have to return to Sby to see them
again. Hopefully that will happen later this year. I really only had time
to visit one of their activities and that was to meet the very recent
winners of the Prince and Princess of the Environment Competition. The
final of this competition was held in Surabaya just a week earlier on
September 7th. The competition is held to encourage young people
in high schools to think more about their environment. It gives them a
wonderful opportunity to not only think about the topics but to write
and debate about it as well. The writing component of the competition
is conducted in English as well as Indonesian language making it of particular
interest to KGRE. Roni and I traveled across town to SMU 1 in Surabaya
to meet the two most recent winners of the competition plus a winner from
2002 who had just returned from Australia. Prizes for the winners are
quite fantastic with return trips to Perth for example. While in Perth
the Prince and Princess participate in environmental activities of all
kinds including Millennium
Kids. Tunas Hijau is also involved with Clean
Up The World. September 19th - 21st is in fact Clean up
The World Day. KGRE is collecting information of examples of 'cleaning
up' activities happening in Indonesia on that weekend.
The KGRE interviews with Domingo, Nasiti and Gracia (last year's winner)
can be heard on KGRE in the 4001 Series and in the December 2003 magazine.
We hope to talk to them after they return from Australia to see what they
did there.
There will also be more on Tunas Hijau with Pak Roni and from the BEJIS
project with Pak Koko and the team. Surabaya certainly is an action city
as far as the environment goes. What about your city or town? What about
you? How interested and concerned are you about your environment?
On Thursday evening I attended the Annual
Alumni Dinner sponsored by the Australian Development Scholarship
(ADS) scheme. Over one hundred alumni gathered together at the Majapahit
Hotel in Surabaya. This is a very famous hotel and it played an
important part in the fight for Indonesian Independence back in the 1940s.
A historical landmark in Indonesia, Hotel Majapahit was built in 1910
by the famous Sarkies brothers, who also built the Strand in Rangoon,
the Eastern & Oriental in Penang, and Raffles in Singapore. The acclaimed
hotel, which was originally named the Oranje Hotel and designed in a traditional
Dutch period style, was also known for a while as the Yamato Hotel during
the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in World War II. It is best known
however as the site of a major clash between the people of Surabaya and
the Dutch in late 1945 when the later tried to reclaim their colonial
rights following Indonesia's declaration of independence a few months
earlier. It was this event - an important step in Indonesia's independence
movement - that ensured the hotel's status as an historical landmark known
throughout the country.
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Activities for the ADS Alumni
evening included the presentation of certificates for many of the
recently returned alumni by the Deputy Head of Mission from the Australian
Consulate in Jakarta, Mr. Peter Rowe. He also spoke about the importance
of the ADS scheme to both Australia and Indonesia closer understanding
of other cultures for example. A short welcoming speech was given
by the Deputy Mayor of Surabaya and in it he welcomed the role played
by returning alumni in the development of his city.
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Josephine Ratna, representing the Australian
Education Centre and IKAMA
was the Master of Ceremonies for the evening. KGRE participated in the
evenings activities by presenting a Music Quiz. The winning table were
all alumni from the University of Sydney. Free airline tickets to Sydney
on Qantas and to Denpasar by Garuda were also given away along with Dinner
Vouchers for the Majapahit Hotel.
Return to Past Travels of KGRE in Indonesia
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