Life Teacher

Hello, digital world. It’s quite long time since the last time i write. This time I’m gonna share my experience for being a village girl, living out of town, in a small village that i’ve never been to before, far from the crowd of jungle city, where I could see sheep and chicken and sometimes cow right the time when I open the door of the room that my team and I use to sleep, eat, talk about the project, and play together, yes basically we do everything in this same particular room. Just FYI we have 10 people n the team including me, mmmm you can imagine how crowded it could be, but that’s all not the thing that matter. I’m used to sleep in a small space together with a lot of my family, I love it. I name it sharing the same  condition yet we stay together. I’m not that type of town girl who doesn’t like being dirty surrounded by such animals. I don’t care that i rarely get signal for my mobile phone. Enough that i could check on to my LINE account to know what’s going on with the team in AIESEC, ah another story that i haven’t had the chance to tell, well later on the next post prolly :)

Well, let’s just start this story. I will live in this village somewhere in East Java but it is actually closer to Central Java than the heart of East Java for about 3 weeks. It’s a compulsory subject from my university that all of the last year student must attend. Since the motto of my Uni is Excellence with Morality, they want us to apply what we got from uni to the society by directly working with them. So, we have this programs that we name it as project :p

First week, was filled with teaching the local elementary school children. A lot of shocking things that i’ve never imagined before happened here. I mean not to mention that i’m comparing with what we have in town, not even have to mention Surabaya, when i compare it to Banjarmasin, which geographically located in South Kalimantan, and politically is not in the centre of the governmental thingy, what I had when i was still in Banjarmasin studying from kindergarten until high school I could say and feel that I am totally blessed. Somehow i feel sorry for the kids here, it’s just so unfair that we live in the same country yet we don’t have the same chance just to access to a better education or at least the same. This particular elementary school, it only has 6 classes for its students -in Indonesia we have 6 years of elementary school life, grade 1 till 6- Each class only has 6-8 students average, but 16 for the first grader. Again, I compared it to my elementary school, I was in a class with 20 students, they already name it as an exclusive one, well i was quite sharp back then in elementary school that i was in acceleration class :p so that i finished elementary school just in 5 years while normally is 6. But the point is, this elementary school only has a quarter of my class’ student, well i could say it’s quite a privilege for them to study more since they will only share one teacher for 6 or 8 of them, but it irritated when i joined the class, when i got in contact with them the students, they don’t have the same level of understanding of their subjects. i could say not even close with what i had back in when i was their age. I have this one little guy over here sitting down on his seat while trying to digest what my friend taught them, it was mathematic, i will admit that i’m not that good at math, i hate numbers, but it was 2nd grade of elementary school, i just prepared the worst that they will ask me about times operation, but i was totally wrong, mostly the students hardly counting with ease, and this little guy over here, oh my god, i told myself, if he was my dad and my mom’s kid, he will not have his leg standing steadily -just a short flashback, i remember when i was in kindergarten, my dad asked me to draw a single leaf, but i wasn’t able to do it (well it’s proved now that i dont have any art blood :p) so my dad asked me to stand up on single plastic chair, it was small surfaced and high, I thank him because of that i don’t give up easily now in facing every problems)- He needs help just to count 7+7. To be honest, I almost lost my patient when i dealt with this little guy, but what makes me calm was his eagerness his willingness to learn, he asked me to give him more question so he could learn how to solve it. After the class ended, I had a little talk with the teacher, I didn’t know why the teacher told me the story about that little guy I told you just before. It turns out that he doesn’t have a father, his mom is staying in Surabaya for work, and he is staying here with his grandparents. The time i heard this story, i felt so guilty towards him, i was wrong comparing him as my parents’ child while he never even had the chance to meet his father and rarely seen his mother, what could he expect from his grandparents, ay? Just quite a tough life for a little guy as him.

Next thing that shocked and made me quite mad was when the teachers just laugh at my report about one of their students talks dirty. What they said was “yo ngono iku mbak anak di desa”, which translated into english as “yeah, that’s how children in village behave”. I was like daaaaaaammmnnnn, no, it was not because of they come from village or town that shaped how they behave, you can imagine what makes a small 2nd grader kid could behave like that, either they are from not friendly for children area or they don’t get any knowledge or education about how to behave, there is no one telling them what is good what is wrong. I remember my lecturer said, the worst part of stereotype is when the person being stereotyped agree with what the people told them what they are. and it’s just happen here. Yes, some of the town people labeled village people as less than them the town people, but it’s just a label, prove them they are wrong, don’t just passively saying yes to what they told you.

2nd week which is this week, filled with health project. We were helping the doctor in conducting free check up and consultation to the olds. There is actually still good things happened here, they do it routine monthly for free for their citizen, which i don’t know if we have it or not in big city. I kept an eye to the olds that were coming, they came alone by themselves, some with their child or grandchild. I saw two old men sitting at the corner of the room waiting for their turn, they reminded me of my dad at home, my dad is not as old as them, but he will be. I was just feeling so bad that if someday he will experience that these two grandpas experienced as his only child is dreaming not to stay at her hometown but travelling for living. I’m sorry papa, you know what i want to be :’) but this big girl over here will not ever let you feel alone, you too mama.

Next lesson i learned, when my team and I were having talks with the people in charge in this village, what i learned is this village is just soooo patriarchal, they see men as the strong one, the one who the women should rely on to, and the woman as the one who needs to be protected, well I agree somehow protection is needed, but the protection itself is from what the men do to us the women. They see the women as a thing, an interactive thing. I haaaaate that time i spent to talk with them so much. nonsense. but once again, perspective :’)

Oh one more, this one i just experienced today, 28th of july. One of the high school student asked a question to us or i could say she asked for a motivation for them so they want to enter the university. At that moment i was thinking, am I the one who dreams too big, or? well well, i said to myself nah, it’s never too big for a dream. I just answer to her question with another question, why should you stop at high school when you can go to university for a bigger world you will have someday?

The more I learned :)