The workcamp with the Koreans

I’m back from Wonosobo and it was absolutely fantastic. I made some great new Korean/Indonesian friends, stayed in a very friendly community and had a positive impact on the village.

Our project was located in the mountain village of Kalimendong which is a fifteen minute drive away from Wonosobo, the largest city in the region. Our tasks were to help renovate the three toilets of the first primary school in the mornings and to teach English in the first and second primary schools in the afternoons. The Koreans were also encouraged to present elements of their own culture, language and customs to the students on those afternoons. We had exactly two weeks to achieve these goals.

All in all there were two German volunteers (Paula and me), four Indonesian volunteers (Nensy, Novi, Anggun and Janah) and eight Korean volunteers (Daniel, Jee-Hye, Chang-Hyong, Son-Hung, Hye-Rin, Sang-En, Son-Mi and Tyler). The ceramic tiles, the cement and pretty much all the materials we used to renovate the toilets were financed through the volunteer’s participation fees (180 US dollars per volunteer).

The day before the work camp started Paula and I took the bus to Semarang so that we could meet our work camp leaders at the Dejavato office. Now, the Dejavato office is rarely empty, one or two staff members are usually there along with the occasional volunteer passing through, but on that day the house was crammed with people. Mas Ketut (Dejavato’s founder and leader) often lets several work camps run simultaneously; on the day Paula and I arrived we found the leaders of no less than three work camps, some Korean volunteers who had arrived early, the Dejavato staff and some interns from Semarang’s Diponogoro university all jammed into the small house.

After we met our camp leaders (Anggun and Janah) and the two interns who were joining us (Nensy and Novi) we waited until six o’clock to pick up our Korean volunteers from the airport. I remember it was raining heavily (we are after all in the rainy season by now) and soon the two rented angkots (public minibuses) arrived to take us to the airport. Due to the bad weather the Korean’s flights had been delayed for one hour and so Paula, I and the Indonesian volunteers had some instant cup noodles while we waited. We ate the “Mie Goreng” which means fried noodles; I’m not sure how it works, but we simply added the in-package seasoning sachet to the noodles and they tasted as if we had fried them, even though they had only been boiled.

The Koreans finally arrived and we introduced ourselves. They had brought several parcels of Korean food and ingredients with them which we were to enjoy in Wonosobo on the “Korean cooking evening”. We managed to fit everyone and our bags into the two angkots and then we were off to the Dejavato Centre.

The Dejavato Centre is where Dejavato usually receives larger groups of volunteers and it is essentially the house of Mas Ketut’s wealthy uncle in Ungaran,. It is outfitted with 16 bunk beds and is large enough to accommodate that many people. It even has a pool which the uncle lets the volunteers and the students of the nearby middle school swim in.

Paula and I were both very excited to go to the Dejavato centre because we too had, at the beginning of our volunteer service back in August, arrived there fresh from Germany and still completely baffled by Indonesia. It was in this building that we had passed our initial two week orientation seminar on Indonesia, the language, the culture and how to live here. Now, six months later, we were looking forward to the rush of memories and emotions we would experience when we entered that house again in a different, far more adapted state.

We also got the chance to speak with Mas Ketut’s uncle. On our first visit we had not understood any Indonesian and although we had received a very warm welcome from him and his wife, we could not express our gratitude for their hospitality effectively. He was very pleasantly surprised when we greeted him in fluent Indonesian and had a nice chat together. We also spoke to his wife and I remembered how Paula, I and the other German volunteers had learned some of our first Indonesian words with them as they taught us the children’s song “Balonku ada lima”.

After that night we traveled to Kalimendong. During the bus ride the Koreans and I played games to pass the time. We broke down along the way in the mountains, but luckily the bus driver was able to fix the problem with the wheel which had ground us to a halt. As we mounted the long windy roads into the mountains all I did was look out of the window. The peaks and hills were large, sharply contoured and whole forests rested on their awe inspiring backs. From afar they looked like they were covered in moss.

Once we arrived in Kalimendong we received a very warm welcome and were shown the house we would all stay in for the next two weeks. It was slightly crowded with the fourteen of us living there but it was still very comfortable. Since it was already mid day we had lunch which our neighbors had kindly prepared and would continue to do as long as we were there. It was delicious every day and we really do owe a lot to them for their continued hospitality.

After we finished resting we were summoned to the village office where we sat at a large semicircle shaped table in front of a large welcoming committee. What followed was a series of speeches by the head of the village, the heads of both primary schools and the head of several villages in the region who had come especially for this occasion. Our leaders then also said a few words followed at last by impromptu speeches from me, representing “team Germany” and then from Daniel representing “team Korea”. Then we got to enjoy a musical interlude as the village’s local traditional music group performed some Javanese and Arabic songs. I always like hearing that kind of music here; it focuses heavily on the rhythmic beats of drums and tambourines along with religious texts sung in either Arabic or Javanese.

To conclude the gathering we took many pictures with the various important people we had met, and then it was off to settle into our house and prepare for the start of work the next day.

On that night I started to get to know the Korean volunteers. I found out that they were all university students studying a variety of subjects from Chinese to Political science and Economics. Chang Hyon and Song Hyon had already served their Korean military service and spent two years in the air force. The other two boys had yet to fulfill that duty. I was also introduced to the Korean game culture, in Korea children and young people love to play games in groups. We played many of the games they still knew from their childhood and their university time. I learned “the wink game”, “007 Pang!”, “Dadadadada”, “the name game”, “Humsan” and how to play with knuckles. They also knew many riddles and mind games, so needless to say our evenings were never boring.

The next day we woke up early to visit the primary school #1 to see the toilets we would be renovating. An open pickup truck waited outside the house, ready to take us the short way there. One wild and crazy ride around the rollercoaster like mountain streets later we arrived at the primary school. I must say I have never seen so many cute little children anywhere else. They were all eagerly waiting at the school gate and when they saw us, they started shouting and waving excitedly. Every single one of them wanted to shake our hands and the Koreans couldn’t seem to stop taking pictures of and with the kids.

After we had greeted the principal and the teachers we inspected the three toilet buildings which it would be our task to renovate. We also met the two friendly construction workers who would oversee our activities and balance out our lack of professional know-how. Their wages were also paid through our participation fees.

Then, once we had seen and heard enough, we entered the classes and introduced ourselves to the students. We didn’t teach at all that day, instead we played games together on the playground and started teaching the children English as well as Korean songs. All in all it was a very noisy and active day.

As we drove back to our house on that day a ritual began that would be continued throughout the two weeks of our stay. The children waved happily and ran after our truck as we left but soon couldn’t keep up with its speed. We thought that was the last we had seen of them that day, so imagine our surprise when in the afternoon they all arrived at our house! They had followed us and stayed in our building until the six o’clock prayer. While they were there we had our hands full entertaining them and I was quite glad to escape occasionally into the male volunteer’s separate room after having so many active kids around me.

The second day is when we actually started to work on the toilets and get serious with teaching. After that a routine set in: in the mornings we would work on the toilets and in the afternoons we would teach English. After that we would go home, the children would follow and we would have a great time.

We started by knocking the paint off the toilet walls. The first few days were permeated by the continuous knocking of our hammers as we flaked a thin layer of paint and cement off. Then the moldy doorframes, or what remained of them after the termites had had their fill, were changed. The toilet bowels were also replaced and we started cutting the ceramic tiles to size. Finally we, under the careful guidance of the professionals, laid the tiles onto the floor, the walls and the water basin. Finally the taps were also replaced. We did finish the project on time but there is no way we could have done it without the kind help of the patient construction workers.

The teaching also went well. At first it was Paula and me who did most of the work, we could after all speak the language and had more experience with teaching than the Koreans. After a few days of taking a more passive role they also started teaching alone, successfully. Our lessons were often a mix of learning vocabulary, and playing educational games and songs.

On some days we had the opportunity to see some of the local industry. We saw how red coconut sugar is made and we stopped by the local cassava chip factory. We also visited the salak (a fruit which tastes like chewing gum and has a leathery snakelike skin) fields around the village and were even allowed to try out the traditional orchestra’s instruments. We hammered around on the xylophones, drums and gongs as one of the musicians taught us how to play together.

In the first week I and the two other Korean’s Chang Hyon and Song Hyon were invited to join the head of the village in marking the village’s borders. Together we dug out holes all around the village’s outskirts, set large concrete pillars into them and then painted their tops with thick red paint. While doing this we came pretty far into the surrounding forest and I felt somewhat like an explorer in the jungle. As we rested one of the men in our company found some pineapple plants, cut off a fresh banana leaf and then peeled the pineapples onto its underside. That has to have been the freshest and juiciest pineapple I have ever had. Chang Hyon Song Hyon and I couldn’t get enough of the stuff!

One more episode should be mentioned. Chang Hyon and Song Hyon are both very passionate about football. Once they found out that the village had a football field, they were eager to play a match with the local team. In our second week this was organized; our village team of Kalimendong allowed Chang Hyon and Song Hyon to play with them in a friendly match against the team from the nearby city of Wonosobo. After ninety minutes the score was 8:0 for the Wonosobo team. It was the worst score in the history of our Kalimendong team…

On our last day we said farewell to the children of both primary schools and at primary school #1 a phenomenal crying fit broke out. Tears were in the eyes of every child and their sadness started to affect some of us volunteers as well.

After that tearful goodbye we retuned once again to the village office for a farewell party which was quite similar to our welcoming party. At the party, after several speeches, Daniel and I took to the podium again, this time with some words prepared in advance. I was quite impressed by how much Indonesian Daniel had already learned in those two short weeks. We thanked everyone for their hospitality and apologized for the mistakes we had made.

As our bus drove out of the village there was a lot of waving of ands with some weeping sprinkled in between. We arrived back in Semarang and drove to the airport. We bade goodbye to the Koreans and amidst the hugs and kisses we promised to stay in contact, that’s what Facebook is for right? They really are very great people and I do miss them.

After that I went back to the Dejavato office, which is where I started writing this blog entry. This work camp was a truly great experience and I am very glad to have taken part. I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed writing about it.

All the best to you

Yours,
Arnaud