ONE WOMAN FORCE OF NATURE

Never give up or go down                                              

“Women must empower themselves.  Whatever our age and status we need to work together and understand the feelings of others. Never be a burden on your children – they have their own lives. I don’t feel guilty about being alone and independent.”

A stirring statement, delivered with force, knuckles rapping the table, the coffee cups jumping as in an earthquake. 

Tati (Tatik) Soepijarniwati seems too small, too slight and too old to agitate – but doubters beware. This is no recent graduate from the Me Too movement asserting rights.  She started exercising these when aged about 11.

It happened in Singosari where her family has lived for generations. It was the capital of the 13^th Century Tumapel Kingdom, which she admires and depicts on her batik.

Tatik’s test came in a sudden confrontation with a Japanese soldier during the occupation.

“He stopped me in the street and told me to salute his flag,” she recalled.  “I refused and he got angry.  I had no intention of obeying.  So I told him I had to get home to care for my dying mother and had no time to follow his orders.  Fortunately he let me go.”

Tatik, 86, has only strengthened her resolve since she was a wee pre-teen staring down raw power, an armed invader who could have slapped her around to make a point. 

Now she runs an angklung group of retirees making music from shaking bamboo tubes and giving public performances; when not on stage she designs batik to illustrate the rich history of Central East Java.  In between she does her darndest to keep her generation from slumping into misery.

Her quest includes visiting the psycho-geriatric ward in the nearby Lawang Mental Hospital where she talks to staff about the issues of growing old.  She was recently in Singapore to look at facilities for the aged (“we do things better here”) and gives pep talks to the depressed and distressed.

The ward is clean and bright, but it’s the raw end of the medical spectrum and not for the delicate. Rallying new Mums suffering the baby blues is a zephyr compared with encountering the maelstrom of shattered minds and hopes of the mentally sick, offering cheer to those discarded by their families and suffering from the ennui  psychologists label ‘resignation syndrome’.

To do this Tatik has assembled a long list of mnemonics, the easy-to-understand memory jerkers built around commonplace words.

A favorite is saiki, Javanese for ‘now.  In her system the letters stand for Sehat (health), Activitas, Inspirasi, Kreativitas and Innovasi: “Use these principles and all will be well.” Coming from a younger woman, however well qualified, the words would float away.  But her manner and age give them weight.

Tatik went to a Catholic school and learned Dutch which she still speaks despite getting little practice for that generation totters on the edge of extinction. She also has some English, garnered when her late husband  worked with foreign engineers in the oil industry.

She trained as a health professional and developed her ideas while working with a German doctor on the family-planning programme.

During the Soeharto New Order government an intense national campaign rammed down the brakes on runaway population growth.

In one of the world’s largest social engineering exercises, thousands of women community leaders were employed to advocate dua anak cukup (two kids is enough).

The two finger V-sign was plastered everywhere; it featured in garish statues showing the Ideal Family – with the eldest child usually a boy.

It worked.  Tatik’s mother had ten children, she had two daughters.  The old proverb banyak anak, banyak rejeki (many children many advantages) was given a twist with the last word replaced by  masalah (problems).  The message got through: Big families are poor.

Though not all.  Cynics noted that while the second president was urging contraception his wife Siti ‘Tien’ Hartinah had tripled the quota.

When the programme stabilized Tatik became a midwife, mainly working in the villages; here she used the moments of intimacy to urge women to space their pregnancies and insist their husbands use condoms.

Inevitably some guys grumbled that she was a trouble-maker by poking into their bedroom behavior. Which worried her about as much as the Japanese soldier’s bayonet.

“Women are so often the victims,” she said.  “Men need to have much greater respect. We get tired from raising children and doing housework and are often too exhausted to enjoy sex. 

“Husbands have to understand these facts.  Attitudes are improving but they are not yet good enough. Women should not wed before they’re 25; however I do not approve of the western ‘try before you buy’ culture of living together before marriage.

“Intercourse may satisfy physically, but marriage is about the joining of our souls.” 

Despite her frankness she retains some prudery, complaining about a huge statue on the road to Malang of Ken Dedes, the first queen of Singosari and mother of the Rajasa dynasty that later ruled all Java, because she’s portrayed topless.

Tatik’s husband, who worked for the State fuel company Pertamina, died last century but she refused to remarry, saying she was a “one-man woman”.

Physically agile she doesn’t use glasses and only has some slight problems with hearing.

Unlike many pensioners she has embraced modern technology.  She uses a cellphone and has a WhatsApp Messenger account.  A diary helps her track appointments.

But on some issues she remains implacably in the past, an ardent supporter of the ten-point Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga (family welfare programme) launched in the era of Soekarno, a man she admires:  “I went to every rally where he spoke.”

Criticised for ‘manipulating motherhood’, PKK  has since moved from health and hygiene towards education, a cause Tatik urges on all who come within earshot, though always politely.

“The elderly can get apathetic if they don’t get involved in society,” she said, dissociating herself from the stay-at-homes. “Don’t be jobless, or a floater. 

“Grab knowledge from the tree and reach as high as you can. Then when you’ve found education open your mind. Don’t be arrogant or lazy; mix with people who can inspire.  Eat meals together.  Read books – take an interest in everything.

“I have my cat and chickens.  I am never lonely.  I go to the mosque twice a day to pray and contemplate, to seek peace.

“I don’t care what religion you follow, you can still get guidance from God.”

First published in Inside Indonesia 136 https://www.insideindonesia.org/aging-remarkably?utm_source=All+Subscribers&utm_campaign=4bba694f4d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_07_29_COPY_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_32cd77f926-4bba694f4d-245880661

KIDS UNITE TO HELP SAVE POLLUTED PLANET

YOUTH SPEAK OUT - BUT IS ANYONE LISTENING?

Dear World: I am Indonesian and I want to keep our environment green and clean. That’s the way to make the earth better. Sincerely, Intan Agustina.

Student Intan’s plea may not have stirred too many governments secure in their own responses to the planet’s pain. But it sure resonated among the young who care for the future – the place where they’ll be living.

Early July more than 200 high school students and their teachers from 16 countries gathered at a training facility in the East Java hilltown of Lawang ‘to make the earth better’.

The event was the 24th conference of the Caretakers of the Environment International (CEI), an NGO conceived in a Mexican restaurant on a freezing day in Chicago, nurtured in the Netherlands and now coming to maturity in Asia. (See panel)

During the weeklong conference participants visited rice fields, a rain forest, mangrove swamps and a grumbling volcano.

But it was their trip to a wildlife park that really roused their ire and illustrated a cultural and culinary distance from the West where pooches are princes and every cat a queen. Indonesia is no country for old dogs. Or any other edible beast.

The overseas students wanted the birds to have proper housing, and the alligators access to water. “They didn’t like the way the animals were being treated,” said Jakarta teacher Stien Matakupan. A prominent environmental activist she coordinated the conference titled Biodiversity and Culture.

“The students spoke to the zoo manager and stressed the importance of animals in the ecosystem and the need to treat them humanely. He listened and said he’d consider their concerns. This is how we progress. Small steps make big changes.

“Things are definitely getting better. Indonesian kids used to think that forests were full of evil spirits and rivers dangerous places. That’s changing.

“I’ve never been to an opening ceremony before in Indonesia where two ministries (Education and the Environment) were working together to support our goals.”

Commented Indonesian Carmelite Father Albertus Herwanta who is based in Rome but came to observe: “If we love God then we must respect all His creations. Jesus was a conservationist.”

Unlike many Indonesian conferences where the oldies dominate proceedings and the young are to be seen, though not heard, in this show the kids were kings.

At one stage an angry Swedish girl harangued the crowd for not paying full attention during a presentation on the benefits of wild herbs: “This is serious. We are here to learn. That’s why we came.”

The student was unfazed speaking in English in a foreign country where protocol trumps performance. The audience included many worthies, who in the local culture should be given respect even when snoring or shouting into cellphones.

Among them, but not offended and certainly alert despite being ill, was veteran greenie Dr Suryo Prawiroatmodjo. He’s a man who also takes such issues seriously and was enthused by the passion of the young.

A former zoo vet he started campaigning for the environment back in the Soeharto era when some considered conservation a synonym for communism.

He persevered, went overseas to meet like-minded others, ignored the naysayers and hostiles, stirred interest, lobbied intensively and founded CEI in Indonesia.

“This conference should help us build genuine friendships for a better future for everyone,” he said.

“It might inspire us to improve teaching systems and conditions. We need to show that good education is not necessarily expensive or unreachable.”

Most of the Indonesian schools represented at the conference were private, faith-based colleges turning out motivated students challenging the generation that’s raped the planet – holding their own amongst the outsiders and doing so in impeccable English.

But what about those who can’t afford anything more than basic State education? “The trouble is that many government staff are too frightened to embrace new ways of teaching,” Dr Suryo said.

“In Indonesia environmental issues are just taught as theory in the classroom. Overseas students go on field trips, they learn to do things practically in the wider community.”

The proof was in the projects, which included devising a high tech game involving snakes and rats in rice fields, conserving gilt-head bream in Turkey, breeding horseshoe crabs in Hong Kong, digging frog ditches in Poland and building cosy nesting sites for shivering birds in Scotland.

Prize winning student Claudia Castico wasn’t content with micro management. Her group’s project was How to Keep Portugal Clean. The Romanians also think big. They mustered 100,000 volunteers to clean up their country.

Curiously absent from the conference were participants from Australia and New Zealand, countries that are world leaders in conservation. Organisers said they’d been intimidated by travel warnings, something that didn’t bother the Americans

Oregon State University academic Dan Hoynacki, a CEI board director and frequent visitor to Indonesia, used the Lapindo mud volcano in East Java and the BP oil gush in the Gulf of Mexico to illustrate the importance of environmental care.

“These events are opening peoples’ eyes,” he said. “We can see the context and relevance. Real change has to be from the bottom up. It can only come with knowledge.

“I sense a perfect storm of change is on its way and it’s being driven by people working together across the world, particularly the young who are using modern technology to bridge the chasms, creating the global classroom on line.

“I want to see more and more school-to-school partnerships where students can ask others around the world: ‘How do you think we can fix this problem?’

“When students learn about these things in class they take the information back to their families. And so it spreads.”

Like most campaigners for the environment CEI President Birgitta Norden is an articulate and persuasive advocate. Despoilers beware; this Swedish biology teacher will have you on toast. Wholemeal, naturally.

“There’s been a big commitment by teachers focussing on landscape,” she said, “but we must also look at biodiversity in relation to culture. We need to consider the way people see the environment, the social and economic factors. There’s a need for holistic thinking. That’s what’s been happening at this conference.”

On the verandas long-skirted girls in headscarves sat alongside blondes in shorts and skimpy tops thrashing laptops and thumbing cellphones.

Here was generation green flashing ideas around the world it’s determined to save – ignoring the pessimism and indifference of generation grey. The Will Do kids, demolishing the old adage that elders are betters.

(Next year’s conference on heritage and tourism will be in Hungary.)


Craving for the right place

Back in the 1980s when Isabel Abrams was pushing ecology studies in Chicago she knew her chosen field wouldn’t boost her status as a credible science teacher.

“In those days the environmental class was for kids who couldn’t cope with the real stuff – they were seen as the lesser achievers,” she said.

She may have been in the frustrated minority but she was not alone. Chance meetings over tortillas and tamales in the windy city with people like fellow American Edward Radatz and Dutchman Arjan Wals, created the right mix to get things going.

Europe seemed more amenable to their ideas, and soon other teachers had joined, driven by personal concerns, not instructions from governments or employers.

“We were craving for a place to meet others who had the same hopes,” she said. And so the CEI was born. Indonesia came on board when she met Dr Suryo – “one of my great heroes.”

At the heart of the founders’ mission was a determination to show that studying the environment was more than collecting tadpoles, but undertaking serious classroom research and applying findings in the outside world that would benefit all.

Good teachers everywhere share a common goal whatever their discipline: Their holy quest is to find new ways of getting complex ideas across to their students, and fire the spark that ignites young minds.

Every day there’s news of yet another ecosystem collapse, species extinction and major poisoning. Coupled with these signs of onrushing disaster go calming messages from governments, debunking doomsayers and twisting research.

Climate change? A hoax. Limited resources? Impossible. There’s megaton’s more just waiting to be found. Pollution? A hiccup. New technology will fix everything.

What’s someone growing up in this world meant to think? Will there be anything left to share and enjoy?

Ms Abrams took her mission to a wider field. She turned science writer and produced The Nature of Chicago telling how glaciers created the site of the third largest city in the US, through to the need for city parks.

Her idea was to show urbanites their connection with the natural world.

“CEI wants to examine the issues; we are not an advocacy group,” she said, though that message seems to have bypassed the students calling for animal rights in Indonesian zoos.

“Young people, no matter where they live, should know why they need to be caretakers of the environment. The world is their laboratory. It must be treated with respect.”

And do the teachers of hard science still sniff at ecology majors? “I think environmental science is now mainstream.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 3 August 2010)


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