AN INTERESTING STORY

Two  years ago, I was a student of Sanata Dharma University. It was a popular university which is in Jogjakarta. Jogakarta itself was known as one of the bigest cities in Indonesia and also known as the student city because there were many universies and of course with large numbers of students. Most of these students came  from all over Indonesia, from Papua to Aceh.

As a student city, there were many student organizations which had been established  with the main aim  to train and to educate students  to be future leaders. I had been studying for two years, when Alex my friend called and invited me to join a humanaitarian organization. This organization was founded to help the needy, particularly those who suffered  from injustice.

During the Christmas holidays last year, this organization had decided to get involved in humanitarian activities. We dicided to live together with the peoples of the underdeveloped villages for two days. We would help them as much as we could.  We would do what we could do, then we agreed to bring some food like noodles, sugar, coffee, tea and so on. While others raised funds for this acivity, some others prepared a few entertainment activities for the peoples who lived in that village.

On 20th of December, we left Jogjakarta by bus. Our destination was Wono Sari. It was an isolated village. It took 3 hours to get there from Jogjakarta. The majority of the people worked as farmers and fishermen.  Most of them were elderly. All the youth moved to the city and worked as labourers. Minimum education and lack of goverment attention was a major problem which caused under development for this village.

After traveling for two hours, we arrived in that village safely. We were received by Arnold Gasa the village head, together with all the people. Then, we were divided into 10 groups, each group with 2 people. Together with Alex, I lived with Arnol’s family. They were a simple family, his wife’s name was Katrina and they had 2 sons and 1 daughter.

As we had agreed before, we helped the villagers with some food, like noodles, rice, sugar, coffee, tea and so on. And also we had public speaking and singing contests with the main participants being childrens with their parents. All families were involved in to these activities.

At the end of our activities,  Alex,  as our leader was given a chance to speak to them. Then Alex invited all the peoples to take care with their sons and daughters future. Alex told them that good education was the key to exit from their problems. Then, we ended our activities with a song “Kemesraan” by Iwan Fals.  We also invited all the villagers to dance together.

That’s the end of my story. I think my journey to help the people two years ago was one of the best experiences in my life. There are many other things that happened in my life, but this experiece , when I lived together with the villagers, taught me a lot.