KangGURU Travels to Jakarta and Pontianak
by Kevin
The first trip for me for 2006. Kang Guru Radio English was on the 'hop again' and this time to Pontianak to visit RRI Pontianak and to present a KGRE Teacher's Workshop, in cooperation with AEC Surabaya. I left Denpasar on a public holiday in fact. The flight was good and before I knew it I was in my room at the Sari Pan Pacific Hotel in Jl Thamrin. That night I had dinner with friends in a Lebanese Restaurant in Jl. Sabang, downtown Jakarta. Later in the week I met with the new Australian Ambassador, Mr Bill Farmer, for a chat and invited him to visit the KGRE office someday soon - he did this on January 30th - fantastic!
| Wednesday took me to the Regional English Language (RELO) Resource Centre in Gunung Sehari Raya for a meeting with English language teachers organized by Damon and Kun from the center itself. It was a roundtable meeting in which I gave a presentation on KGRE and the participants asked questions as I went along. KGRE will be sending teacher packages to the center for those participants to purchase at their next meeting in February. |
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After the RELO meeting I caught a taxi to my hotel to pick up some things but then straight onto IALF Jakarta in Jalan Rasuna Said. The next stop was the Australian Embassy and meetings with Beverly Mercer, Cultural Attache at the embassy and then a meeting with Bill Farmer, the next Aussie Ambassador to Indonesia. Bill was very interested to hear about the work of KGRE in Indonesia and of course, I was happy to tell him all about our clubs, our magazines and so on. I invited him to visit KGRE in Bali whenever he could find the time.
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Bill Farmer, Australia's new Ambassador to Indonesia, did visit KGRE on January 30th. He and his wife, Elaine, called in for about 40 minutes to chat with KGRE staff and to do an interview for KGRE. In this picture, Bill is chatting with Ogi as they look at the latest teaching materials fromm KGRE - the SMP Teacher Package.
Bill and his wife were most interested in KGRE and we will be hearing from Bill on KGRE radio during April and May 2006. |
Very, very early on Thursday morning I checked out of the hotel to go to the airport and onto Pontianak. It was certainly an early start for me. I arrived in Pontianak at 7.45am and was picked up by Pak Effendy, Broardcast Manager from RRI Pontianak. He and his friend Muchtar whisked me off to the Hotel Santika and then off to his radio station for an interactive student meeting. |
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Fifty students were there to participate throughout the hour long program and they certainly participated well with questions. Several callers rang from out side the studio too. Thanks to all those people for supporting KGRE and making me feel so welcome. I met Cory, a lovely young woman who may soon become RRI Pontianak’s new English language interactive radio presenter. I hope so Cory! Cory and Pak Effendy hosted the interactive program as questions were asked and questions answered. I interviewed two students after wards - Faris and Yuliana. They were great as were all of the students, representing around 6 schools, that took the time to join in with the meeting.
At 1.00pm I began my first KGRE Teacher Workshop for 2006. The venue was the Hotel Santika and the workshop was set up by the Australian Education Center at the Australian Embassy. Thanks to Shannon Smith and his staff not forgetting Josephine Ratna from AEC in Surabaya. It is always great to work with the people from AEC and we have plans to do more joint activities as this year goes on. The workshop finished at 6.30pm.
On Friday morning I met with Irwan, an AIYEP alumni from way back in 1998. Irwan lived on-exchange for 2 months in Darwin and Canberra. He is now a married man and living in Pontianak with his wife and young son. He talked about his experiences in Australia and how they have changed his life. He especially spoke about the life of young people in Oz and these comments will be featured in the March 2006 KZGRE magazine. Irwan has many fond memories of his time in Australia and urges anyone interested in the Australia Indonesia Youth Exchange Program find out more about it and apply. He had the time of his life!
I then met with Asep Haryono, a long time friend and supporter of KGRE. Asep works at the Pontianak Post newspaper as their website manager. Asep has always kept in contact with KGRE with many wonderful suggestions and ideas about KGRE in general and more specifically about the KGRE website. We really appreciate his efforts and support and we hope that an even stronger relationship can e developed with Asep and his newspaper.
I also had time to take a quick look around the area near my hotel in Pontianak. Chinese New year is due at the end of January so shops had lots of Chinese type lanterns and other things for sale. In front of my hotel there were Chinese lanterns hanging. They were quite large actually. Pontianak has a lot of Chinese people and it is easy to see their influence around the town – temples, architecture and so on.
I left Pontianak in the late afternoon and traveled to Jakarta arriving just as the ‘heavens opened’ and wild electrical storms lashed the city. The taxi took an hour and a half to reach the city due to rain, floods and road works on the freeway.
On both Saturday and Sunday I worked in my hotel room writing articles for the March magazine, the next issue of the POUCH bulleting for KGCCs and generally catching up on emails. It was great to have a good internet connection in my hotel room for once – it really allowed me to do quite a bit of work.
Late Sunday afternoon I went across to the Kemang area of Jakarta and met with Nicholas Sasputra. Nicholas is a movie actor hw has appeared in recent movies such as Gie (2005), Janji Joni (2005) and Arisan! (2003). We chatted in the coffee shop for around 45 minutes. During that time Nicholas and I spoke about his film career, his architectural studies at university, he travels around the world and his views on being a an actor. He spoke freely about his two current passions – architecture and films. It was fun talking with him as he was quite willing to chat about anything including his interests in the arts.
You can hear Nicholas talking to me on KGRE during April and May 2006 on KGRE across Indonesia. |
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Monday, January 16th was the last day of this trip. After a brief stop at IALF Jakarta I went to meet with Loise Hand, the Deputy Australia Ambassador to Indonesia. Like Bill Farmer, who I had met earlier, Louise was very interested in the work of KGRE. We talked about that and also about some of her experiences since arriving in the country. I had originally met Louise in Cambodia in 2000 at a Language for Development Conference. Louise was the Australian Ambassador then in Cambodia and she opened the conference. KGRE invited Louise to visit our offices soon in Bali and she indicated that she would like to do that at some stage.
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Straight after meeting with Louise I met with Beverly Mercer downstairs in the embassy. Beverly introduced me to the 5 Muslim Exchange participants who had just arrived in Jakarta from Australia. Although time was short I managed to interview three of them for KGRE. It was a little odd hearing strong Aussie accents coming from the female participants for example, as the were all wearing jilbabs. They had such interesting things to say that I know you’ll really enjoy hearing them on KGRE. One of the women is the only jilbab wearing member of the Victorian Police Force.
The
Muslim Exchange Program
comes from the Australia Indonesia Institute (AII).
More about these people during the year on KGRE radio and in the KGRE magazines.
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Overview
In January 2006, five Australians visited Indonesia. They were participants in the Muslim Exchange Program from the Australia Indonesia Institute (AII). This program has been running for many years and has proved very successful. It basically allows Muslims in Indonesia and Australia to visit the other’s country. Participants have the wonderful opportunity experience the Muslim way of life in a new country. The differences and the similarities are important to understand and appreciate.
This year’s participants were:
Rowan Gould, Chief Executive Officer of the Islamic Council of Victoria
Marwa Khalaf, an environmental officer with the Victorian Government and leader of new Victorian group, Young Muslim Professionals
Brynna Rafferty-Brown, Project officer with Asialink
Irfan Yusuf, a Sydney based lawyer and
Maha Sukkar, a Victorian policewoman
Marwa (front row with pink shirt) wrote to KGRE a few days ago with this report on her trip to Indonesia.
'Over the last two weeks of January I was lucky enough to be one of five Australian Muslims who travelled to Indonesia as part of an exchange program run by the Australia-Indonesia Institute. The program aims to promote a greater understanding between the peoples of Australia and Indonesia and is funded by the Australian government. I didn't understand the extent of what that really meant until I was actually there. We are two countries that are immediate geographic neighbours yet we know very little about each other. Many Indonesians found it unusual that we were both Australian and Muslim and we had to explain many times that it was possible to live happily in Australia and still practice our religion. Conversely most Australians know very little about the daily life of Indonesians and don't understand how they are able to reconcile their Islam with living in a modern world. These are things that cannot be transferred on paper and must be experienced to be really understood. The tour itself was hectic and our program very full. In the one day it was possible to say good-by to a very memorable home-stay experience in the morning, have lunch at a traditional Padang restaurant then meet with the Vice Chairman of the People's Consultative Assembly in the afternoon and end the day by speaking to a couple of thousand eager young Pasentren students. We experienced and learnt a lot during our brief tour of Indonesia, but the things that will stick most in my memory are the small occasions when we really felt we were connecting. I will forever remember the schoolboys wrapping around us at Borobudur temple near Jogja and asking us to sign their books. It was probably my only chance to be treated as a celebrity.
Most of all I appreciate the connections we made and would like to keep and build on those contacts. This was an experience that will live with me forever and I already look forward to returning. Until that is possible though, I will eagerly await the next group of Indonesians to visit Australia on the same program and try my best to show them a bit of my country hometown in Australia'.
Return to Past Travels of KGRE
in Indonesia
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