COP’09 at Sumberyuyu

In the fall, on July 3^rd, 2009 at midnight (technically July 4^th) I took my first overseas flight to Indonesia along with a friend of mine, Naveena to attend the community outreach program of the Petra Christian University, Indonesia. i still remember the Italian guy who was my co passenger in my flight from India to kaulalumpur and the meal was lousy but i dint know then that my flight from Malaysia to Indonesia will be horrible. if i wasn't so many feet above i would have definitely risked a jump.

we saw few western ppl in our Malaysian flight. i had strong doubts they were cop participants and my instincts were right. but few problems awaited us nd we couldn't go to our resort with them. we landed in Surabaya, the capital of east java on the 4^th afternoon. the first trouble was with our visa. we thought we will get a VOA. we paid the fee and got our visa and i thought tat was all. but no. we had more surprises. they refused to stamp our visa cos we weren't there for tourism. (have no clue how they found that out). we were stranded there for hours and i had such huge dreams of what could happen, i never realised my imaginations could go so far!!! the student who came to pick us up was also confused and he took the dutch participants and sent another person for us. and finally we were given a warning (!) and "released". we went with the participants who came from Hong Kong in the next flight. then we were taken to a resort. it was AWESOME. and we were one of the lucky ones who got double bed-room with a royal suite bathroom!!! that was luxury. and the food was jus amazing!!! (well, later u will know why)

The stay in Surabaya was exciting. The nights and the days were busy alike. There were so many malls for the teenagers, islands for the tourists wanting a sun tan, food festival that went on all nights for people with different taste buds. i went out on the same night with the dutch. then mall on the next day. we made friends before u could say the word friend.

On the day of the city tour, on 7^th July, we met all the participants. We were 170 students totally from Indonesia, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Japan, India, and South Korea. We were divided into 10 villages and all the villages were around a town called Kediri. We had team building events for each group and we made friends easily. In our village Sumberyuyu, we were 20 students and one supervisor. Our village had participants from Hong Kong, Netherlands, India, Indonesia and South Korea.

We started for our village with hopes and expectations on the 9^th of July with our supervisor, Mr. Iwan. The village looked like our Indian village. I was reminded of my birth place, Trivandrum when I saw the houses there. They had typical tiled roofs like the houses in Kerala. With so many fields around and so many mountains surrounding the village it was a beautiful sight for the eye.

We were given a budget of 10 million Rupiah. Our supervisor left us at the village and he left for the city. We were given the responsibility and the freedom. We met with the villagers and found out their needs and wants. We walked around the village to see their life style and houses. And finally we came up with projects like building walls to prevent flood, teaching them to make manures with garbage, teaching the kids at the kindergarten (the village had only kindergarten facility), renovating the kindergarten, building play ground for the kids, installing garbage bins for the non organic waste at many places around the village. In building the retaining wall we got the help from the villagers and we only passed the cement buckets for them. As a student of economics, I did the proposal for the project. But, for me the greatest project was the kindergarten renovation. Though I didn’t teach the kids, I was there for the renovation job along with my retaining wall team.

We painted the walls, varnished the desks and made drawings on the walls. And for me, a person who has not done more than 10 strokes with paint brush, these entire painting job was a fun filled memorable experience. Not to mention, the teacher gave us juicy fruits and healthy porridge during our work and at times it acted as incentives, the little boy played Indonesian pop songs in his music system everyday to the extent that all foreign participants picked it up. And as a result we never felt tired at work. Since the project on the garbage involved communicating with the villagers in their local language (Javanese) we dint do much for that. But we all had our hands full.

In contrast to the life in the city, life in the village was a peaceful one. We lived in the villagers’ houses. Four or five lived in one house along with the host family. They provided food for us and took good care. My house owner was an old man. I still remember the day when I spoke to him for an hour. He kept talking in Javanese and I kept talking in English. In our free time we climbed mountains, crossed streams to meet our friends in the next village. During our week ends we went to the town Kediri for fattening; tasty food, sight seeing and a break. I always had troubles finding out the correct food because I was a vegetarian. But otherwise we had a good time on all week ends. In the village we were given rice, noodles, boiled vegetables and fried egg. It was not the spicy Indian food but it was healthy. We liked the tapioca that our house served us. So we learnt how to ask for it and we asked them to make it for us. I shared the room with a girl from Hong Kong. And in my house we had persons from Indonesia, South Korea, Netherlands, and India.

We completed all our projects successfully and we gave a farewell for the villagers on our last night there, 2009-08-19. We ate dinner together with all our host families and it was such a touching moment. They all bade us farewell with streams of tears and hugs. All our resolves not to cry were broken in two seconds. The kids came running out of the school when we got into our car. The kids were so friendly there that none of us wanted to leave them behind. Only after we waved and departed did I realise that those kids didn’t even understand all that we spoke but they were sad that we were leaving. With a heavy heart I left the beautiful, calm village with its loving people behind, recounting all the memories and moments we started for the city.

On the last day we all had our last dinner party and we had our closing ceremony. We had practiced a musical drama from our village in our free time. It was a big hit. And with that I had bid our farewell to the fellow participants. It was the toughest job of all. Everyone were making plans to meet as soon as possible, many were making promises to visit the other person’s country soon. At that moment I wished we were all in the magical world like Harry Potter, being able to travel anywhere, anytime. But I came back to reality and made similar promises.

On the whole, this outreach program has moulded me into a different person. It has taught me how to apply my knowledge, how to adjust with the surroundings and the main things it has taught me how to appreciate what I have, how to work in a team with people who are very different from each other. Even in the absence of supervision we all acted responsibly and I learnt to respect the freedom that was given and use it properly. On the whole it was a very good learning experience that I would like to relive at any point of my life.