Bakti Desa

At first, I really didn’t understand on why we had to have Bakti Desa. Firstly, Bakti Desa usually happens when we’re tertiary. The secondly, I knew that Bakti Desa is a kind of requirement when you wanted to finish or graduate from college. And the thirdly the thing that I knew about Bakti Desa was a kind of activities when we served the public with our own hand for such term and it was usually been done in a kind of a go down place.  Well, those were why I never knew why we should have Bakti Desa at the stage of High School.

For one or another, lately I understood on why we had to have Bakti Desa. Firstly, I want you to know that my school has a different systematic learning than any other school in Bandung. My school or SMAN 3 Bandung has a systematic learning which is like a systematic learning in college or we can say ‘System SKS’. So there was no wonder on why we had to do that. The answer must be because we’re the same with tertiary.

So therefore Bakti Desa came.  The teacher said that we will have Bakti Desa at Desa Resmi Tingal, Kecamatan Kertasari Kab. Bandung. As the plan that we’d known about, we gathered at school at 6 a.m. so we gathered at the front park of SMAN 3 Bandung. We went there by Angkot (Angkutan Kota). It was quite long time but I enjoyed the time. In it, it was so crowded and because of the long time so we shared the meal with each other. The location that I knew it was right on the mountain so while we were riding off, we saw a handsome view. It was very green, everywhere we saw tree.

When we arrived there, we could see if they were preparing an opening to greet us. Honestly, I didn’t like the opening because it was taking too much time, but it was ok because at the end of the opening we had food party. No more starved so we moved to find our home to stay for three days. One house for one team and each team had three until four people. And of course in every house we got foster parents who would take care of us for those three days.

The activities that we were going to do was following our parents to go to work, teaching some kids there, and learn about their culture there and then to learn speaking Sunda. We had an obligation to share and to help them with the knowledge that we had. We ought to earn how to sociable with them too. So we were going to try.

At a time when we arrived at my foster parent’s house soon we sat at a sofa. My teacher gave money to them so we could eat from it. And then my teacher left us. We sat and stayed still. It was kind an awkward moment. I felt like I didn’t know what to say. And my two friends too said that what we had to do, please they didn’t understand Sunda. So did I. A little bit might be. Then our foster mother gave us some meal. Those were cake or we called it ‘Bolu’ and fried cassava. It was the greatest taste of cassava that I ever tasted. Oh my God I was going to miss this fried cassava.

I thought it was enough to make us silent. So I was going to start to talk.  Start with asking them their activities, their condition like economy, social, and education. It was kind a surprising to find that our foster mother only got Rp. 16.000; per day and for the father, he only got Rp. 40.000 per day. They worked from 5 a.m. until 12 p.m. but they got like I’d said above. This life wasn’t easy, was it (?). Our parents worked as a farmer. Our mother usually cleaned up some other kailyard and the father planted Shallotte. They never really had their own.

  They had a daughter. She was ninth grade. And you knew what. Yes the ninth grade was the stage when you got UN (National Examination) and it was the requirement for your graduation. So when your grade was lower than the standard that had been set up for, meant you couldn’t graduate. Despite of all of those requirements I found myself realize that their daughter couldn’t understand all of the lessons that would be on UN. She couldn’t understand the basic of math, English and so many things like multiplication, fractional operation, English vocabulary or even read those vocabularies and etc. I felt so sorrow to see that. So we spent one day at home to teach her.

The next day came. We got up and prayed. We got up late so our father had already gone to the farm, but it was ok because we could still follow our mother who would go to the farm at 6 a.m. So there we went to the farm. As we walked on the sun, the trees and the greatest view greeted us. The air there was so clear I felt my lung breathe more freely there. There was highland covered with morning fog and behind them we could see the sun was step to head to rise on. It was truly awesome.

It was quite a long road from our house to the farm, but it was fun. So there we greeted to the owner of the farm itself. We asked him if we could help and experienced some works there. After we got the permit we started to work. It was kind a quite amusing work. It was plucking weeds that we’re going to do. We plucked it from one field to another field. Although it seemed pretty easy but lately it was a little tiring too.

At the day we went home. We watched a show. It was Marawis Show. It was kind a music show again using tam-tam, gendang, kecrek etc. It was played every afternoon in the middle of their village. Usually kids there learned how to play Marawis too. Besides Marawis, there was so many tradition music show that they always did, such as angklung, kecapi, etc (I forgot the name). It was so amazing to see their activity was so different with what I had.

At the afternoon to the night we were teaching our sister (Our foster parent’s daughter) and now with more participants. Kids from the neighborhood wanted to learn too so there the reasons were.  And the night my classmate visit our house. Yeah I thought they must be had fun by visiting around. I made some little magic physic show. It was a popular magic show in my school. It was a challenge show to take a coin in the middle of water without our hand touching the water. The key was that using physics theory. Yeah and it was a little bit failure but it was fun. Haha J

Now it was the third day which was our last day there. We got up and prayed. We prepared our things and packed. We had our breakfast and we took some pictures together with our foster parents. We visited the other house to pick our classmate up to the place that had been planned before. Before we left we had to give some counseling about how to take care of our health starting with a good behavior like washing our hand after defecate and to reduce or may be to sop consuming cigarette. And after that we packed off and gathered at Kantor Desa.

There was a closing for the event. And after that we got ready to go home and packed ours to angkot. Our foster parents gave us some gift to us and gave a warm farewell. Every students got their gift too. We all got home with our gifts. It was harvests from the farm. I was really happy. I thought I would miss the moment. And it was such a memorable moment in my life.

Matswapati

Matswapati is a big event that was held by SMAN 3 Bandung. It is about Bandung culture. In this event, SMAN 3 Bandung tries to show up the culture of their beloved city, Bandung. Now days, so many people in Bandung itself have already forgotten their original culture. Because all of those facts they want to rise and give more socialization to everyone so they can start to love their culture again.

It is full of culture or traditional shows. The shows can be a dancing, fighting shows, games, music and many more. Start with dancing, there is so many dancing show in Bandung, such as Tari merak, Jaipong, Tari Topeng Priangan, and etc. And then for fighting shows or battle round. There is originally martial from Bandung or may be West Java Pecak Silat, and so many things.

No food no festival. Yes, of course there is. There is so many foods, from the traditional to the modern one. Every food such as onde-onde, lemper, gorengan, kebab, icecream, nasi goring, tea, milk, and many others. You can buy the food as please as you can and as long as you have money. About the price itself, it is pretty expensive for me because the price is more expensive than usual.

It starts with a great opening. It starts with a traditional dancing performance. There is mayor of Bandung City too. He is invited to give his speech in this big event.  He is so excited in this event because they have make a festival which is really benefits for the government to rise the culture of Band towards people in Bandung City. He is giving some games and prizes so everyone is feeling happy with his speech.

After so many opening speech from Mr. Mayor,  Ridwan Kamil, the head Master Mr. Encang, and for the last, the head of committee Mr. Degati, every festival activities begin. The activities are all what I’ve told you before. It’s so interesting but about the audiences is a little bit disappointed. Not too many people that attend this event maybe because the socialization about this festival too is not big fuss so not too many people know about this event. May one of their factor too can be in their way to socialization to public. I think the people who has advertised this event get a wrong words to explain the event because so they just keep emphasize about the guest star that they have, so it makes every people think that it is some kind of ‘Pensi’ (some kind like band or ordinary music event) not culture festival.

All mistakes can be seen but it’s not mean if the festival is not great. It is a proud feeling that we have for SMAN 3 Bandung because they want to work hard to raise the traditional culture of Bandung towards the youngsters. It is so amazing. I hope that one day if they held some kind of this festival they will put another of interesting culture that Bandung or any place has again.