Village Visit Chronicle

On the 3rd of January 2019, we came to Cibeureum Village that's located quite far from the center of Bandung City. To be honest, we did it to fulfill our duty as a student in SMA 3 Bandung. But while we're at it, maybe we can treat it as a contribution to society and help those villagers. We were there for 3 days with the aim of helping people and socializing with them.  It's also to make us understand that not every people aren't that lucky to be born then live normally without any hindrance. There are lots of unlucky people that must go through lots of hardships for the sake of surviving, unlike us people who lived in the city.

As soon as we arrived at our foster parent's home, we were quite surprised because our foster parents weren't there at the time. Later, the parents of our supposed-to-be foster parents explained that they're currently in Bandung for work matters. And then, it was decided that we lived there without any foster parents. Even so, sometimes we went to the parent's house since we were asked to. Because of that, our group "united" with the group of our friend, Ilham Azka, since the parents of our foster parents were their foster parents. When we were alone, we basically did nothing at all except for fulfilling our duty, like tidying up the house and such. But when we were at the parent's house, we helped them to do their daily basis as much as we can, even though sometimes when we voluntereed to help they only allowed us to do it a little.

On the second day, as soon as we finished Subuh prayer at the nearby mosque, our group and Ilham's went to the hill to watch the sunrise together. We stayed there for about half an hour I think, and the weather at the time was 14 degrees celcius, so it was really really cold. 

After that, we went back to our foster parents' house to discuss our activity for today. And then, it was decided that we're gonna help our foster father with his gardening. We went to his field by motorcycle since it was quite far away from our house. We didn't helped with his work just for about 20minutes since we afraid that us helping just gonna destroy his field lol. As soon as we finished our work, we took a bath in a "hot spring" near there. The "hot spring" was good enough to clean up our dirty bodies and it really hit the spot. But we can't say that we were satisfied by it since the supposed-to-be hot spring were actually just a normal toilet with a hot water coming directly from the mountains. Soon after, at about 10 AM, we went back to prepare to do our duty as a muslim, which is Jumat prayer. Because we didn't expect the mosque to be that crowded, we almost got ourselves standing all the way until the pray begins. Luckily enough, there were an empty space outside the mosque. Broad enough to contain me and my group. It was really embarassing to go inside the mosque to pray after the lecture since everyone' were gazing at us when we opened the door.

In the afternoon, we were organizing our "souvenir" to the people who are currently badly in needs for foods, clothes, and health service. Thus, with the help of our foster mother, we went to give several Indomie, several kg of rice, cooking oil, clothes, and free voucher to check-up at the Community Health Center in the following day. Later that night, we helped our foster mother to make moring, it's an Indonesian traditional food created from wheat flour and tapioca, then you shaped them together, cook it, and after it dried quite well, you cut it into several tiny pieces. To make even a pack of it is quite tiring since everything was done manually and not any machine was used to make moring, at least in that village. To make it even worse, the results of the sale are not too large because of the length of production time. if only they had the tools to cut the dough into thin pieces, maybe that would really help them in the future. That's why me and my friends (in a group) think that maybe the best solution for them is to make an environmentally friendly tool. We prefer a tool that won't need to use electricity but it can function optimally, but we don't know if that's even possible. And while we're at it, we also hope that in the future, there'd be a tool that could help the other citizens on their everyday' work, either they're a farmer, breeder, or whatever it is that can significantly increase their outcome. Thus, they can enjoy their life even more like us in the city.

On the last day, we went to the hill again as soon as we finished our Subuh prayer. But now, some of the girls from our class joined. Because of several circumtances, we didn't stay as long as we were on the second day, but it was more fun with more people I guess. After we finished our sightseeing, we went our separate way to do our things until 9 AM since at that time we were supposed to gather around the green mosque near the convenience store. We did so becacuse our class had a plan to go to Sungai Citarum' source of water. After all of our class members were present, we went there by 2 mini trucks, for the boys and the girls each for about 15 minutes. After we arrived there, we didn't stay for too long, just about 1-1.5 hours since basically there's nothing to see there except some views. But there's this satisfying feeling when you just successfully walk around the river since it was quite far. Nvm. After that, we went back to our house to pack up our belongings, and prepare to say our goodbye to our foster parents and thanking them for letting us experience this village life even though it's only for 3 days. Then, we gather together again at the village hall to wait for our "angkot", which will take us back to SMAN 3 Bandung.
And that marks the end of my Village Visit Experience tales.