 |
| From left to right (Kak Glenn, Bagus, Kak Ima, Ryan, Dadan, Kak Reyhan, ME, Kak Uni, Kak Nining, Kak Dyah Kak Ardina, Dimas Kak Laili (blur ): ) |
Since the first day, we were treated like "kings" by people there, when actually we want to mingle in the society. The girls volunteer stayed at Kak Uni's house, while the boys stayed at one of elders's house. In Mendure, a bathroom inside a house is very rarely, include at our houses. There are some bathroom build by some people scattered at some locations for all people in the village. Don't be surprised, if you want to shower you have to go around the village looking for an empty bathroom. Usually we had our favorite bathroom, so we can scramble the bathroom and the loser had to find another bathroom. But, IF you are lucky, you will be invited to shower at her/his house with bathroom inside because the house owner were kind and feeling pity at you.
Most of people in Mendure are farmers of rice and tobacco. As you can see from our selfie picture above, February is perfect month for rice because it was rainny season, right? Rice paddy need lots of water to grow up! In fact, it's not too rainy in Mendure. The weather was pretty good to dry your laundry, just took 2 hours from 10 AM-12 PM! Moreover, the temperature in Mendure is always above 30 degrees celsius! It only happened once a heavy raining on the last day during the farewell ceremony :(
Move on from the weather and livelihood, I will tell you about Mendure's all time favorite beverage: LOMBOK COFFEE! Yeah, Inaq-Inaq in Mendure love to serve coffee for guests like us. They were pounding and blending the coffee with their own recipe. I don't drink coffee, but the other volunteers said the coffee was really good and unique. Maybe because the coffee blended with rice pounding that increased the flavors. In the last day, some of my friends ordered to inaq-inaq to make coffee because they want to buy some kilos of Lombok Coffee! I think they've been addicted with the coffee after a week non stop consuming caffeine XD
 |
| caffeine time with guava and rempeyek |
By the way, I've been talking about children in Mendure on my previous post. Yeah, they are so lovely. After dhuhur prayer, we held our programs and mostly our target is children. While their parents were busy on the farm, we taught them how to turn garbage into useful things, the important of clean and healthy lifestyle, and the spirit to dare to reach their dreams! Kak Uni said, the children were very excited about our programs. They even had their own "Kakak favorit". I will tell about Kakak Favorit later. Anyway, the pictures below were about the kiddoss!
 |
| I was using bahasa mixed with Sasak little bit while explaining to the kids |
Beside their cuteness, the children in Mendure are very religious. After Ashar prayer, usually they went home, took a bath, and went together to Masjid in the different village before magrib. Actually there was a mushola in their village. But, they don't have any ustadz or ustadzah to teach them read Al Qur'an in that mushola. The high learning spirit of the children eventually making them accustomed to go to the Masjid even though the distance is far.
Saw this problem, finally we asked for permission to teach the children read Al Qur'an after Magrib prayer for a week. After reading Al Qur'an, usually we help the children to make their homework.This is also being one of our unexpecting program, so they didn't have to go that far to learn qur'an and enliven their mushola too.
 |
| my dream when I was in elementary school was beeing a teacher LOL |
In that mushola, we made a mini library from a small unused room in the mushola that is being our main goal to increase their reading interest. We called it "PERPUS KANCIL". PERPUS KANCIL stands for Perpustakaan Pustakawan Cilik. Beside many books for the children, there is a section for writing their dreams inside the PERPUS KANCIL, called "Aku Mele Jari" means "I Wanna Be". They wrote their dreams in the notes then sticked it all. We were advised them to always keep this library and keep those dreams by being Agen Kancil. Agen Kancil is a team that will look after this library although we (kakak-kakak) are not there. The children were very excited to be Agen Kancil. Again, I want to thank you for those books donation because it means a lot for the children in Mendure.
