Cast Away (Part IV): Highway to Hell

Finally, the day that everyone in the KKN is waiting for...the day of observation!

A lot of rumors flying around concerning how are the condition of each unit's village, and today is the time to see the truth. My unit is assigned in the Dusun Ngaglik, KelurahanPagerharjo, Kecamatan Samigaluh, Kulonprogo. As I have mentioned in my previous notes, it is located in a mountanious area. As a usual KKN Reguler destination, the place is also located so far away from Yogyakarta. Although this note is titled "Highway to Hell" I refer the "Hell" part not as the village, but as whole shitload of work that I'm gonna do in the village:D

So, in order to get there, we are guided by this DPL (Dosen Pembimbing Lapangan) Assistant, Mr. Jeffry. Mr. Jeffry will lead our unit as well as several other who is also located in Pagerharjo...there were about 6 units if I'm not mistaken. Our rendezvous point is in some bridge at Godean. It's an easy task to find the bridge. It's quite big, and you only have to go west from Tugu 'till you find it. If I say "easy", it doesn't mean "not far". To get to the meeting point,the road is smooth and pretty wide for two bigass truck side by side, but it is far enough to melt your butt in the motorbike's seat. But in the end, we, and the other unit manage to get there.

After the meeting point, we continue our journey to the place so far away. I figure out later that the meeting point was not even half of the trip. But the road are still fine in my opinions. There were some up and downs, straight road, everything we usually found in Jogja. However, it were all change when we took the first turn to the left. The road is not so friendly anymore....well..there were still ups and downs, only far more extreme. I've been warned that there are a lot of 45 degrees road, and I think it was all a joke to scare us...and It turns out that to mention it 45 degrees is only to ease our mind. Not only extreme ups and downs, the road also twist around like burritos! It was a roller coaster ride I tell ya! The mountainous area has indeed provide some difficult geographical challenge for the untrained drivers as well as for automatic and two strokes motorcycle! Good thing I've borrowed my friend's motorbike.... Now, If I say "extreme", it doesn't mean not far! Those extreme road last long enough to make you bored to death. The worst part is, just right about when you wanna kill yourself, when you think that maybe jumping off the cliff isn't a bad idea after all, you reach your destination--"

Before we goes to the village, we stop by at the Lurah's Office to get some briefing. The briefing was short, mainly emphasizing on the need for us to adjust with the society's culture and value. After that, the Head of Dukuh (hereinafter Pak Dukuh) pick us up to show the way to the Dusun Ngaglik.

Now lets talk 'bout the village. The weather was cool....the water runs well and clean...the existence of electricity....cell phone friendly.....the view was quite amazing....but wait...where are the people?? where are the...houses?? It turns out that right now is harvesting time for clove plants. So everyone is too busy harvesting. For an area with such economic depression like Samigaluh, I bet the folks wouldn't just sit around smokin' when they know that they could generate some cash. So our observation (that is mainly going to be carried out in interview method) wasn't so sucessful at day one. We only have a session with Pak Dukuh today. Well, he explained a lot of things anyway...such as the structural organization of the village, the important person living there (such as pak ustadz and such), population, and the current problem that the people are dealing with. The main occupation of Dusun Ngagglik are farmers. And they have a problem at farming --". One important thing about KKN is that you have to pay attention on what the society needs instead of what the society demands. We see that the whole problem in Samigaluh is on the marketing of their product. This is the problem that we should fix, but this needs to go through acknowledgement by the DPL and also discussion with the people (which currently unavailable due to harvest time).

Now what about the houses? as far as I see, there are only three houses and a mosque on sight. It is just about then when we find a map of Dusun Ngaglik. The Dusun was H.U.G.E. Now imagine a mountainous area with cliffs all over the place, logically, people would build their houses in an area where the land are relatively flat. Now keep imagining because that is not how these people in Dusun Ngaglik thinks. They actualy build their houses in the cliffs! So no wonder there are only three houses on my sight, the other are below me or located behind the jungle --". I find more houses and meet some of the people on my way around the Dusun.

It's a good thing that this is Friday so there is Jum'atan. A time when people gather in one place. That moment of course, becomes the time of meet and greet with the gentlemen in Ngaglik. After the interview failure in day one, we planned to have a meeting with Ngaglik people tomorrow night. Which is also a routined schedule of society's meeting. The people in Ngaglik have a lot of these schedule, it would be best for us to adjust with those schedule so it is not giving too much burden for the people:D

My first overall impression of the village was : Except for the stupid distance and terrain, it was all okay:D
I can't manage to take any pictures of Ngaglik, but I have a few shots of Samigaluh:
Samigaluh is located somewhere on that mountain
Some view from Samigaluh...nice!You don't see this kind of road very often in Samigaluh...

So that is it folks, I'm gonna sleep over at Ngaglik tomorrow so there aren't gonna be any update on the cast away....See ya!

1 comments:

Unknown said...

If you called it a hell, i called it a heaven..... it's still a home sweet home for me...