Kang GURU
Travels to Lombok, January 2008
Ayu visited Lombok in early 2008 for Kang Guru. Ayu went there to meet participants of the 2007-2008 Australia Indonesia Youth Exchange Program (AIYEP) from the Australia Indonesia institute (AII) and to meet members of some of the Kang Guru Connection Clubs based in Lombok. It was Ayu's first trip for Kang Guru. Here's Ayu's report.
This was my first Kang Guru Connection Club (KGCC) trip and my first trip to Lombok! It was pretty exciting since I love traveling, but this time I was not really on holiday. I had to work for Kang Guru!
I had an early flight to Lombok. The flight was at 8.30 am. I woke up and was shocked to see the time! I was nearly late. I just changed my clothes, brushed my teeth, called a taxi and went straight to the airport. Phew! Lucky, I still had half an hour before the plane departed. I flew with Merpati. The plane was much smaller than I thought. I’m scared of flying. The last time I went on a small plane was when I flew from Sydney to Ballina, a small town in the north coast of NSW, and I have promised my self then never to fly with a small plane ever again. Well I think I should change my mind now. The weather was not really good, a little bit of rain and it was quite windy so the flight was very bumpy. I kept my eyes closed during the flight but thank goodness it was a very short flight.
I arrived in Mataram at around 9 am and went straight to Senggigi Beach Hotel. I told the taxi driver that it was my first visit to Lombok and he explained about the places as we passed. As we passed Ampenan I saw so many horse carriages. I told the taxi driver, “Wow the dokar here is unique” and he said that it’s actually called a cidomo, and not a dokar like in Java. We both laughed and I was bit embarrassed.
I arrived at the hotel at 9.30 feeling abit sleepy and the only thing on my mind was a comfortable bed and soft pillows. I needed to lie down for 10 minutes before heading to Narmada I thought. Unfortunately the room wasn’t ready. So I had to wait for 15 minutes in the lobby of the hotel first. Then the bell boy called me and took me to a room on the second floor. After he opened the door, I went in, surprised to see the room was not even ready, the bed was still very messy and there was some left over food in the room. I was bit upset and I had to wait for another 15 minutes. Finally I got a very nice room overlooking the beautiful Senggigi beach. I looked at the time and I realized that I didn’t have time to lie down. I went straight to the shower and got ready. My plan for the day was to meet a group of Australia Indonesia Youth Exchange Program (AIYEP) at SMPN 4 Narmada then go to the village where they were staying.
AIYEP is a program supported by AII (Australia-Indonesia Institute) which aims to provide opportunities for young people from Indonesia and Australia to appreciate the culture, development and way of life of each other's country. After going through several selection criteria, 36 young people were successfully selected to join AIYEP 2008. There are 18 young people from different places in Australia and 18 from all over Indonesia. The 18 Indonesians stayed with host families in Victoria for two months late in 2007 and now they are here in Indonesia. All 36 participants are staying in Sigerongan village for 24 days before they move onto a month in Mataram and finally to Jakarta on their way home to Australia in late February. The AIYEP team leaders are Edward, Ellie, Luthfi and Farida .
The first thing that I did was to call Nouvie. She is an AIYEP alumni and the program coordinator of AIYEP in Lombok. Nouvie asked me to meet her at the Mataram Mall and go to Narmada together. I met Nouvie for the first time and she introduced me to Fibri, also an alumni of an Canadian exchange program. Both Nouvie and Fibri are coordinators for this visit. They are both pretty busy people. On the way to Narmada Fibri called one of AIYEP members and found out what was happening in SMPN 4 Narmada. Bad news as the program that the AIYEP team was holding at the school was almost finished. They said they only would have another game for the kids before the program finished. I was so disappointed hearing that so we asked the taxi driver to rush to the venue.
AIYEP participants in Lombok with
Kang Guru - Jan. 2008
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Former Kang Guru staff member, Cheryl Reid, visited SMP4 Narmada in March 2007 attending the school (see Travel Report -March 2007). Now SMPN4 has more than 300 students. The school is only 2 years old that’s why everything still looks new. Read about the Australia Indonesia Basic Education Program (AIBEP) and the official opening of SMPN 4 Narmada held just after Ayu's visit on January 14th, 2008.
I arrived at SMPN 4 and I saw a group of young Australians and Indonesians in white and brown/khaki uniforms, a Trans TV team, teachers and students all energized by the presence of the AIYEP team. I was introduced to Ed for the first time. He is the AIYEP team leader for the Australians. I was surprised with his fluency in Bahasa. The classroom was packed. I tried to squeeze myself in but was not successful so I decided to wait outside and meet other AIYEP members in the meantime. The activities in the classroom ended with the singing a birthday song. Apparently that day was one of the AIYEP participants' birthday. His name was Arius and he was from Papua.
The next program was “Siapa Berani” quiz. All students were asked to go outside and stand in line on the sports field to do the quiz. Around 100 students joined the quiz but only three winners were chosen. The quiz was conducted by two Indonesian AIYEP participants, Ratih and Dion, who were the MCs for the day. While they were doing the quiz I had a chat with some AIYEP members and the SMPN 4 English teachers. I spoke to Ellie, one of the team leaders whose Bahasa is much better than myself and I also had a chat with Pak Subayanto, one of the English teachers who is very keen on Kang Guru. At the end of the game I was asked to decide who the winners were. Before I asked questions I introduced myself to the students and explained Kang Guru to them. Then I asked the three winners to make two sentences in English as quickly as possible. Well, finally the decision was made about the three winners. They all got three nice packages from Kang Guru containing a Kang Guru T-shirts, a badges, note books, posters, stickers and a Kang Guru bag. Wow! They were all very excited to receive the packages, and soon after that a big crowd of students came to me and they also wanted some goodies.
Then it started to rain really hard. All the students went back to the classroom and after a few photo shots of AIYEP and the teachers we were all invited to have kolak - a traditional sweet stew dessert made from palm sugar and banana - and some jajan - traditional snacks. We all sat around chatting with the teachers and enjoying the snacks. I had more chats with a few other AIYEPers. I was impressed by level of Bahasa of the Australian participants of AIYEP 2007 - 2008. Their Bahasa was excellent and the enthusiasm and energy of every single member of AIYEP was fanatastic. Ed asked me to meet the group again at 4 pm to attend the peresmian bak sampah , the opening of new sanitary disposal at the village.
Perormance time in the village - Saman Dance
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Village meeting with AIYEP participants
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I went back to my Senggigi hotel but dropped off Nouvie and Febri to Nouvi’s house in Mataram beforehand.
I had an hours sleep and rest at the hotel before I left once again for the village to meet up with Ed and the team. I took me around 40 minutes to reach Embungmas by taxi. Once again I met a nice taxi driver who told me about his son who is really keen on English. When he dropped me off he left his phone number and I gave him a Kang Guru magazine and a key ring for his son. I asked him to tell his son to write a letter to Kang Guru if he wants to receive more magazines for FREE during 2008.
I arrived at the village and I needed to find Haji Shahdan’s house where Ed lives. I finally found the house, met Ed and Kim and went straight to the peresmian. It was about 500 meters from Ed’s house, near the rice field. When we got there I saw that some of AIYEP’s member were already there and they were well equipped with rubber gloves and waste plastics to remove the scattered rubbish to the new AIYEP-made waste disposal.
The opening was jam karet as most of the villagers were attending a village wedding. The village waste disposal was officially opened after the ribbon cutting by Ibu Uci one of the village officials. Apart from building waste disposals in the village, the AIYEP participants also built a badminton and a volleyball court, taught English at six schools in the area, gave free English lessons for villagers in the afternoon and conducted a friendly sports match every Saturday.
After the ceremony Ed prepared five AIYEP members to be interviewed by Kang Guru. Their names were Ross, Karen, Dimmy, Lea and Nick. We had the interview in a hut near the rice field belonging to a local family. They were so nice to let us use the hut and we were even served with very nice jambu (guava) and banana. It was a busy and quite noisy location for the interview. We could hear the sounds of motorbikes passing by, the roosters, the chickens, the birds andthe frogs in the background.
In the interview they shared the experiences of life in the village living with a real Indonesian families in traditional houses with traditional households. They said that they really enjoyed living in Embungmas village and they loved the people and the host families.
Although they could adapt with the situation very well they found a few cultural aspects that were challenging for them such as living in a close community where privacy doesn’t exist. The lack of ‘space’ became the main issue for the group as villagers always wanted to know where they are going. And also they had to get used to being an alien, said Nick because everywhere you go people would stare, even want to touch them. One thing that people liked to do very often was to sit with their legs folded (crosslegged). Dimmy, who is not used to sitting crossleggednever goy used to it. Apart from that, the toilets also had become a big challenge for them. Eating rice three times a day was bit too much too for some of them. They shared a lot more interesting comments with Kang Guru during that chat.
Ayu with some of the AIYEP participants in Lombok
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However 24 days in the village bought them closer to the villagers and made them understand the culture even more. Now they are used to mau ke mana and tambah lagi expressions after every meal. When they walked down the street they began to ask mau ke mana instead of waiting for the villagers to ask! They also learnt how to wash their clothes by hand. After the interview we went back to the village and the AIYEPers went back to their houses and got ready for the farewell ceremony that evening. Nick took me to meet the Indonesian AIYEP members at their homes and interview them.
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I spoke to three Indonesian AIYEP members - Darman from Kendari, Mikel from Jakarta and Dwi from Kalimantan. They also shared some interesting experiences about when they went to Australia and stayed with Australian families for the first time. The problems they had there was mainly with the food. “Australians eat lots of meat and bread', they said. They had to adjust to the ‘western’ toilet (with toilet paper and no water) and the fact that they have to be independent rather than waiting to be served. But they consider those aspects of life in Australia as challenges and parts of learning new culture. But overall they loved staying in Australia very much and they were impressed by how organized the cities are. When I asked what they liked most about the whole program, apart from going to Oz, they said it was their counterpart or partner. They became very good friends and that is how they learnt so much about each other’s culture.
At around 6.30 pm I went to Ed’s place. Ed was already at the rehearsal. I was sitting there and met Ed’s wonderful family - Haji Syahdan’s family. Ibu was so nice, she insisted me to have dinner but I wasn’t that hungry and she gave me a big plate of delicious urap jagung - corn mixed with grated coconut. Hmmm, that was yummy! Then I met Luthfi who was staying there also. We talked for about half an hour then we went to the rehearsal together. Luthfi said that he was mostly impressed by how people dress on the day of the Melbourne Cup - a famous horse racing day held in November each year in Melbourne, Victoria. He said it was amazing. People wore fancy dresses and unusual hats. And he also loved the shops. He bought a very nice black jacket and a pair of woollen gloves. He put them on for me and I took photo of him with his new jumper and gloves.
Many children were at the rehearsal. They excitedly watched AIYEP doing the sasak dance while calling out their names. It seems that even the village kids knew everyone’s name. Ed was busy memorizing lines for the sinetron skit. Everything was pretty hectic at the rehearsal but I could see the closeness among the AIYEP groups. They were more like a family to one another and the AIYEP team seemed so close with the village children.
It was 8.30 and all the villagers gathered at the venue. I was curious and excited too. Everyone was sitting on a carpet under the tartar roof. Lucky that night wasn’t raining. I could see the excitement on the villagers face, couldn’t wait for the surprises from AIYEP.
The MCs of the evening were Tim, who has Javanese accent when he speaks, and Nita. They were such a good team and made the evening alive as they were both very entertaining. The ceremony started with a speech from the kepala desa. I was impressed by the kepala desa’s English proficiency. He made a nice speech in very good English. Then what we were waiting for, the performance began.
The first performance was a didgeridoo show. Then a medley, parodi sinetron (a skit adapted from a sinetron scene), a Saman dance, the heels and toes dance (an Australian bush dance), Nuansa Batak, a Sasak dance and the Rafa’i dance (rebana) Then thanks and goodbye to the host families and finally the closing singing kemesraan .
Every single performance was amazing. They were all talented. I just couldn’t take my eyes off the performances. My favorite performance was the Parodi Sinetron and the medley songs. In Parodi Sinetron, Kim, Ed and Lea performed a scene from a famous Indonesian soap opera 'Intan'. The whole village burst into laughter and I was laughing too. The medley was a series of both Indonesian and Australian songs like Sajojo, Kookaburra, Sinanggar Tulo, Waltzing Matilda, mana di mana, the Rocking Chair, ampar-ampar pisang, Suwe Ora Jamu and We are One. It really showed how every member of AIYEP has worked hard in blending the cultures together.
Well that was the end of the AIYEP farewell ceremony. It was quite emotional to see them saying goodbye with their families and the whole village. I was so tired and said goodbye to everyone, called a taxi and went back to the hotel. I couldn’t stop thinking and admiring the AIYEP members’ for their energy, warmth, friendliness , enthusiasm and above all is their closeness with the villagers. Thanks guys for everything..you are a great bunch of people!
Having completed all my interview with AIYEP, I still had another plan for the day. That was a meeting with all the 6 Connection Clubs in Lombok. I was informed that the dinner with the club would be at 7 pm at Delicio Café in Mataram Mall. I arrived bit late my first time to see members of KGCCs.
Sultan and Febi from Gado-Gado English Club
Mulyadi, Rudi and Dian from Sasak English Club
Jasmadi and Rhido from ALFA English Club
Nassradin, Sam and Yusuf from AECO and finally
Fadil, who help Kang Guru organizing the dinner. Fadil is also a Kang Guru Champion and a member of the Alfa Club.
Members of the Gado Gado and Sasak
English clubs in Lombok together with Ayu
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Ayu with Fadil, a kang guru Champion in Lombok
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At first they looked shy and tense. They kept looking under the table for some reason. I thought there was something wrong with me or there was something underneath the table. Well, I couldn’t stop being chatty. I asked questions and asked and asked. Phew, finally they became more relax and were willing to speak! Because it was getting late, I asked everyone to order their drinks and food. I was told that typical Lombok dish is ayam taliwang and I was dying to try that. Unfortunately that restaurant didn't serve that. Well, may be next time. I had spaghetti instead and everyone had fried rice and also some chicken. The meal was nice. Then as we started to have an in-depth discussion about Kang Guru as the live music started right in front of us. It was so loud. I had to shout when I talked to them and they shouted back at me ....... ha ha ha! So that night we had a ‘shouting’ discussion with the clubs, not that we were angry but because of the loud music. The clubs gave me lots of input and good suggestions to take back to the office in Bali. The most importantly is that they really hope that KG can visit the clubs not the representatives in the coming months. My suggestion was that they should arrange a ‘club get together’ while AIYEP is in Mataram and let’s see if it fits in with the Kang Guru 2008 Travel Plan. If it can be done that would be perfect. It was soon 10 pm and I had to go back to my hotel. Thanks to all of you for your input, suggestions, recommendations and especially thanks for the enthusiasm of every member of the clubs. I hope Kang Guru can visit those clubs in the near future.
I had to pack up for the next day and not to forget ‘oleh-oleh’. Well because it was so late, I asked the taxi driver to stop on the way and I bought 5 kilos of rambutan - ace macan- to take back to Bali.
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