The first village Kalabia visited in 2009 was Yenbeser... a tiny village on Waigeo Island in the Dampier Strait area of Raja Ampat.
This picture shows a traditional little fishing craft (with the palm frond roof) sitting in the water out in front of the village... the small square stilted structures are the washrooms.
It is true that life is simple in a Raja Ampat village. But nature is good to these people... In Yenbeser, they can literally have their rice cooked already for dinner, and THEN go to the jetty to catch the fish! They have a veritable fish soup right around their simple pier.
Every morning we watched a Wobbegong shark hang out under the pier, following his daily ritual... and in the late afternoon, we watched rays (including manta and devil rays) swim only meters away from the Kalabia while it was docked in the village… the afternoon of the last day of the program, I slipped into the water alongside them, and swam with 12 devil rays! It was magical… I have never seen them swimming in formation as they were, and so close I could have reached out and touched them! (I didn't of course, because I didn't want to scare them off, and lose the moment!)
The kids that participated in the program were so enthusiastic that the program was a guaranteed success from the beginning.
It doesn't take any more than a note about the message from the village head to see that the program did indeed have an impact... not only on the students that participated, but on the entire community. He gave a touching speech at the closure of the 3 full days of activities; he noted how special, and how important the program is for the future, for the kids as well as the environment. The teacher said that he was very impressed with the team, as well as with the activities and the style of learning... "Even though it often seems like the kids are simply playing, they learned a great deal in only three days... as can be seen by their results (in the final evaluation)"... He said that he had been inspired by the program and the team, and that he has a renewed hope for his students, and increased expectations for them... he was astounded by the amount of material they were able to learn, and truly understand, in such a short time because of the experiential education approach. (He also mentioned that he is sure that all the students will receive top grades on their biology/science/local element exams (because they already did, through the Kalabia program))!
The school bell for the small three-room school house, which is run by two teachers who tend to use the typical autocratic teaching style common throughout Indonesia:
Most touching of all, and, truth-be-told, brought tears to my eyes as well, was that some of the kids were in tears as the Kalabia pulled away from the jetty to set sail for the next village... it's amazing that in just three days they had learned so much and made such a strong connection with the Kalabia team!
Two of the older kids even stowed away on-board and swam back to their village just to get a few last few minutes with Kalabia!
Here I am with two of the fabulous Kalabia facilitators, Warda & Dece... another fabulous facilitator, Mona, is taking the picture!
See you soon!
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