Last November, I and other twelve volunteers from Jakarta, Denpasar, Tobelo, and Manokwari were traveling to Serui to share our enthusiasm in improving Indonesian education to teachers in
Kabupaten Kepulauan Yapen, Papua. We happily spent our time and energy as our contribution for this beloved country in a volunteering movement,
Ruang Berbagi Ilmu (RuBI).
Most of us chose Yapen as our volunteering destination since it was
one of the farthest places in RuBI 2018. We might have no idea whether we would visit there unless it was for an important moment like RuBI. Flying from Jakarta to Yapen was like flying from Paris to Moscow but without any direct transportation. To get to Yapen, we had to take flight from Jakarta to Biak, via Makassar. Then from Biak, we had to take another flight or take a local ship to cross to Serui. Darius, one of the volunteers, even had to drive for four hours from Tobelo to get to the nearest airport in Ternate, before flying to Makassar, Biak, and Serui. And we did all those trips voluntarily without any sponsor. 😊
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| "Unity in Diversity" (Papua Hei, Yapen, 2018) – 📸 by Darius |
Preparation for Papua
The volunteers were not random people. We had to submit an essay about why we wanted to join this program and what we would share to teachers in remote area. After the committee carefully assessed our essays and selected the applicants in September 2018, we gathered in Jakarta to have briefing and get to know with each other. We then met for several times to understand who our audiences were. We learned that the
local education activists in Yapen came from various elements in the society, not only teachers but also pastors, army, and professionals. We also gathered few times to discuss about our knowledge sharing materials. We carefully prepared every materials to share with those experienced teachers.
And eventhough the number of volunteers in our group decreased from 30 to 13 people due to various circumstances (well, it was a voluntary activity, nobody could be forced to do anything), we kept our enthusiasm high because we learned that kids in Yapen were very enthuastic to come to school to learn from their teachers although those kids had to walk quite far to get to school. 💪🏽
From the moment I wrote my essay to join RuBI Yapen, I remember Bu Helena, my science teacher in
SMP St. Mikael Cimahi, who moved to Papua 16 years ago. She and her husband started a ministry and built a school in Jayapura. Right after the announcement of selected volunteers, I contacted Bu Helena and asked her if I can visit her school for few days, and she happily welcome me. I invited other RuBI volunteers to join me, and Andreas was willing to allocate more time to share happiness to elementary and middle school students in Sekolah Papua Kasih.
I also conducted some research about tourism in Papua, but unfortunately there were only few references about traveling in Jayapura, Biak, and Serui. Most articles I got were from
TripAdvisor and some outdated blogs. Other information like local public transportation (flight, boat, bus, etc) were also very limited. Surely there were a lot of homeworks for the government tourism office of Papua to promote the beautiful sides of Papua besides Raja Ampat.
