One-side Australia.

Forgotten of indigenous, deep held, spiritual culture.

Children and parents unlearned of hand skills from our parents like washing by hand, cooking a good meal every night, or the average fix-me-trick for mechanics. Slowly introduced to the drug of consumerism and development now deep in the veins, yet accustomed to recognising the side effects, polluted waters, reduced wilderness, littered streets. Already housing vast dialogue of ethical, political, environmental correction. Community run initiatives already beginning to pick up the broken glass and bruised surrounds. More and more farmers each year turning from chemical based solutions to sustainable practices. Consumers demanding Organic, ethical products as well as recognising the value of personal relationships with the stallholders. A society slowly opening the box that indigenous Australians have been placed in and admitting of our mistakes.
We are an oil dependant society turning our boat on an environmental-ethically aware wind in search of a better way, many of which are already known and being put in place, even by the government.

The other side, Indonesia.

Strong of indigenous, long term, hand made culture.

Newly introduced to a quick injection of consumerism and development, still giggling with the high of addiction, only a few rupia left to get home. The only sign of a clean up party being the 10% effective LSMs (NGOs) run predominantly by westerners in a country whose habit's side effects are flowing far out into the oceans and atmosphere.
A shmoggle of all three stages, the older generations carrying everything on their backs, some talking only Javanese. The younger generations ridding motorbikes everywhere, own two phones in the least and turning to petrol based practices in the fields to keep up (if not selling the land to developers). And the third a movement of young students encouraged by western hippies and a new sense of political freedom, asking the questions about pollution, recognising the problems of a chemical based existence and teaching the solutions to the children (even though the majority of them still smoke).

Working in Sukunan: A working head

My working head from Australia is per hour. Work 6 hours a day 7 days a week then rest. When you work if you are honest you work hard and well. Thus you are deserved a 'well earned rest'.
Here I went through a desperate few months of feeling useless because I had nowhere to work hard and therefore couldn't justify all this rest.

I went to work with the compost team.

They were sifting the compost. 15 mins later they sat down. 'Istirahat (rest),' they said. 30mins later they are still resting, talking in Javanese under the tall Jackfruit, Durian, Rambutan, star fruit and coconut trees. My, then of 'well earned rest' judgement started doing summersaults. If these were the people I was primarily going to work with, how would I ever be able to sleep at night knowing I had done a good hard days work? But as I looked around, it seemed all the obvious work had been done. There were a few bags of compost ready to be sold; the green waste from around the village and local depot was safely in its composting position.

These men are paid by the project (funded by donors from Australia and regular visitors). They are all farmers; one of rice, one of ducks, one of a very handsome moustache.  Between composting, farming and the small income their wives might also get from carving sate sticks from bamboo or sewing bags from unrecyclable plastic packaging, their families earn enough. Thus it is they sit and chat when the work is done.

It's taken me a while to grasp this new norm. To put a full stop after earning enough and not continue onto to say, so now we are finished that, shall we earn another living, or solve this environmental problem over here too?  As in the analogy, why would they buy another fishing boat, so they could catch more fish, to buy another boat, then earn enough money to go on a holiday and... do what they are doing now, relax?  After all is it not the desire to grow without limits that got us into this mess in the first place?  And I thought I was coming here to teach permaculture.

I came here to teach permaculture if the villagers were interested in learning.

With my head full of saving the world I've had to assure myself that that'll have to wait for another day.  There is so deep to learn here. Even such fundamental things as why people work here are really different. It takes a lot more than a one month crash course to learn the language let alone the culture, the specific village, it's specific people, their specific desires and then build a reliable relationship with them such that you can do productive work and receive appropriate feedback.
Let alone are they even interested in designing parts of their lives for sustainability? Some of them are quite happy as they are.

I've had to really look back to myself and my learning to ask what am I here for?

I sat in one of the monthly women’s meetings. Wati and I were there to discuss the classes we were going to start. Next in line after us were two men. They were there to sell Tupperware and all things kitchen.  Part of me hated them for coming and approaching these women in their homes. The nerve of that company. Then as I looked around the room it struck me, Wati and I were not all that dissimilar to them. Searching for a form of trade with these women. Besides who was I to think these women were unable to trade effectively? In fact, what more an appropriate a place? I suddenly had respect for these men. They, unlike people who use TV as a mode of trade, were selling their products face to face with these women, on their grounds. This form of trade has been around for centuries, of travellers arriving in villages, bringing goods from afar. A small slow solution, using well-worn energy flows. I've got to watch that defensive 'green' in me, it may just be making me miss good permaculture elements of this village, let alone see things from a neutral head.

Observing and interacting:

I am finding that if I am truly to understand how things are here, I must let my self not understand first. A difficult task for a girl who had a scientific upbringing.

Let this culture be just as right as my own. Not a culture that can be defined by my own or second best to my own. Two parts of a larger whole rather than one a part of the other. 
To learn things these ways I not only learn the way things truly are to the people here but also I find a part of myself that relates to them and their ways. Thus not only understanding of head, but understanding also of bones.

It's a tricky thing to see what's actually in front of you instead of seeing what you know to be there. When I finally do get what's in front of me, that's when the solutions are easy to find.
After all I was taught that to design for long term health you must take time to watch how the energies flow thus changing, appropriating only those that are relevant and most pivotal.
Looks like saving the world really will take longer than I thought. No wonder so many oldies gave up on it.

It's a tricky balance between the countries’ expectations. We come across from Australia as professionals yet the first part of our job is to not know anything, just watch and learn the new surrounds. This can be a hard change of character for some people. When do we stop being aid workers and begin being salesmen, stuck in the identity we hold of our 'important role'. Sometimes it can take a while to admit your solution isn't.
(It hit me when sitting at the lunch table at my Bahasa Indonesia school. It was a moment back in the western world. A man from America was talking of this great solution his LSM (NGO) was distributing. Simply it was chlorine in a tablet form, add it to the water instead of boiling and diarrhoea incidents are reduced remarkably.
“For the people who use gas it's easy, because they can save a ton of money if they don't have to boil their water. It's the people who are too poor to buy gas, that collect firewood instead. We've tried the argument of saving trees, but the trick is that they don't cut down the trees, they use the wood already on the ground”)

This is where I live, in Sukunan village.

On the edge of the city, Yogya, whose fat concrete body is fast consuming the swampy rice paddies that Java’s culture has its roots in. These people are certainly using and valuing the edge. No one told them to do this, it just happened. Things are changing fast and deep every day yet I still feel like I am only just starting to get it.

Each day here is different.

Wati, my colleague and housemate, is running classes for the women of the village, Cooking, sewing, reading and writing, health and together we run an English class.

If we don't eat at a warung (roadside restaurant or corner stall) we buy our food from the local markets by the river. I bargain a little with the women there, but most of the time I give them a high price and spend the rest of the time giggling with them at how I can't speak Javanese.
We buy our water drinking water (the rainwater is apparently undrinkable) and shower and cook with water from the well.  We wash our undies by hand but everything else we drop off at the Laundromat, it's sort of rude here with Muslim women doing the laundry to send your undies in too.
When we go out to visit their enviro groups (and there are many) we travel mainly by push bike and bus (the busses are Rp2000 each trip and smell a lot) but we have recently acquired a motorbike like the 3000 000 other people on Jogja. It uses less petrol and we can go more places easier, but I will miss the buskers jumping on to play their music. Actually we are living the middle class life in a lower class village; there are only a few other families in Sukunan that live this way too.

Most families wash their clothes in the river and drink boiled water. The women all go to the markets in the morning and they bargain hard. Then come home, clean, cook, look after the kids. When they're not doing that they may open a warung selling packaged food, carve sate sticks from bamboo or work out in the rice fields.

The men find small jobs working nearby, Bejak drivers, rubbish collectors, warung dish cleaners. Some men are out of jobs at the moment because of the rising price of Soy Beans, normally they make and sell tempeh.  The village used to have 50% farmers, now only 20% are farmers.
Some houses the kids sleep four to a bed, some don't have toilets. Others have TV's, garages and motorbikes. That's just how it is.

The kids all generally go to school but don't seem to go further than junior high. Instead they drop out and get a job nearby to help the family. This reduces their choices dramatically as you need a senior school certificate in order to work elsewhere.
 
By gee the tempeh's good here. Rp2000 for a 20 x 10cm slab 3cm thick, freshly grown in banana leaves. Soaked in ground garlic, salt and coriander seeds, fried and served with rice. mmm.

Where we have freedom from family, here they have freedom of family. In this village of Sukunan children growing up all in the same village with their grandmothers who have lived here three generations and more. Only a few will move away, these children are related to each other, schooled together, stuck together, they will be in each others homes till they die. different hey?

Wati also coordinates environmental activities every Sunday morning with the kids. These are great and the kids now have begun coming around any time they have, to play games, get help with English homework or just to hang out. Today a few of the girls asked if people from the west, like me, could cry. Did I seem that inhuman that they thought I couldn't? They then also asked if I menstruated the same as normal people. One boy burst out laughing when we were playing cards. Look at ka Sophy's hands, they're so strange. The old cobblers in the fields puzzle their heads at my sunburnt skin. The women and I laugh together at how boney I look next to their strong round healthy arms.