February 2017
Barefoot Conservation Project on Arborek
As an avid scuba diver I decided to take a trip to Raja Ampat as part of the volunteering initiative of Barefoot Conservation. The volunteer experience is on the island of Arborek, about 1 hour away from Waisai, the “capital” of Raja Ampat. The activities in Barefoot camp were based around the stunning marine life in the area, but in reality you were not required to dive for you to become a volunteer. Here we will have a look at the life in this remote part of Indonesia.
This post is the second part for my Scuba post on Raja Ampat. Even if you are not a diver I would recommend checking it out as it will for sure inspire you!
The way of living & the people in the Barefoot camp
If you are a complete germophobic then probably you will need to try to adapt to the idea that you can only have 3l of fresh (rain) water a day and that there is a chicken running in the kitchen ready to jump on the stove. But this is what makes it interesting – after couple of weeks of simple living you start realising how little you need to actually have a happy life and how adaptable our immune systems are.
As life on Arborek means you are on an island which takes about 10 minutes to walk around that also means you have no place to escape – this is where community living at its finest comes in! You are with people at all times, private conversations are a challenge as they very easily progress in group conversations (people just join from nowhere)! … but if you are prepared for this you soon adapt and you get used to the group dynamics of crazy topics conversations. There are moments you feel like you are part of a social experiment, but then yet again if you learn to live in such a close community then you can live anywhere! And you always find some way to escape even for a bit.. dancing in the rain is one way (as everyone hides in main camp) or alternatively go to sunset point on the other side of the island and hide away with a book in one of the hammocks at Manta Homestay.
Best part of the community living were the Barefoot dinners and after dinner time. 7pm dinner starts and everyone is at the dinner, 7:20pm we get to hear “Selamat malam” from the Expedition leader to which the response was “Malaaaaam” from all of us and the community catch up started. We covered the following:
- Community – the community officer updates everyone on what we have done for the communities that day – school, etc – and what was the plan for the next day
- Science – what has been covered as lectures / research that day and what was the plan for the next day
- Diving – what diving took place that day – science or training dives, fun dives, what people had seen in the dives – and what was the plan for the next day
- Stories – any fun stories from camp that day
- Fish of the day – everyone can nominate a fish / other creature they had seen that day and we all voted. Fish of the day included: blue ringed octopus (cephalopods win by default), marble rays, crocodile fish.. you get the idea! Among the more bizarre ones rainbow pygmy seahorse (which by the way was only seen in the dream of one of the volunteers ha ha)
- Fact of the day / embarrassing story – one gets nominated to say a fact (it can be anything) and if anyone else on the table knows it – well you are busted. Time for an embarrassing story!
- Large Flagship Species – during science training you learn to identify the large flagship species and then all these are noted with their sizes in a database for research purposes.
And then jetty time! Grab that Bintang!
The Barefoot Jetty
Sounds so simple and yet for the people who have experienced it – it means a lot!
I don’t think there has been a single person who has not had this on top of his list. Picture this (pun from camp intended ha ha) – long day diving, school, lectures – as like in a movie the day finishes with a cold Bintang (don’t be surprised there is beer on the island – demand from volunteers is quite high haha), stunning sunset and night at the jetty with cool chats, a bit of singing and lots of stars (possibly lightning and storm on the way too).
Nothing better than sleeping on a bean bag on the jetty! Ah and this girl you really like – make sure you reserve a spot on the steps of the jetty on a stormy night – from experience I can tell it is quite awesome.
The children at Arborek
“What is your name?” is a question you hear a lot over the first few days.. then you start hearing your name being called from far away and children gathering around you and trying to speak to you in Bahasa Indonesian. The children on the island came often to camp – so one day we could be dancing Macarena, the next we could be playing volleyball or teaching them English, the day after showing them Coralwatch surveys and teaching them more about marine life and how to protect it or having a beach clean up.
The school experience
Going to school was such a bizarre experience. And by bizarre, I mean a mixture of feelings flows in when I think about school. The classes are separated class 1-3 and class 4-6 for the time we teach so it is very likely that in the same class there are children from age 4 to age 9 or from age 10 to age 15. This makes it really challenging as apart from the communication barrier for volunteers (they don’t speak English, we don’t speak Bahasa) there is an additional barrier of the genuine difference between the abilities and the understanding of the children within the same group. And sometimes there were up to 40 children!
We taught them some little songs “this is big and this is small, I can be big like a bear, I can be small like a ball” with a lot of dancing and gesturing. Another good one was “what is your hobby” song in which we gestured “play volleyball, play football, cooking, singing, dancing” – you can guess that at the part of dancing children laughed a lot!
There were kids who were genuinely interested in understanding what they were taught and there were kids who kept running around and leaving the classroom just to return 5 minutes later with a bunch of plastic bands (they used them to play a lot). Until here – sounds like a normal school. The part which was really difficult to overcome was that there were children who only recited by memory – even in Bahasa! It is something that kept me thinking of way to improve the lessons and we ended up drawing with a bunch of little girls – mantas, sharks, boats, everything they see in their day and they like – suddenly their understood what they were saying! I still have a little heart drawn in my notepad from one of the little girls.
Highlights of the trip & overall experience
The time in Barefoot provided me with a lot of new insights and knowledge, variety of emotions and thoughts and it also gave me the right frame of mind to reconcile how amazing our world is. Not to mention that it introduced me to amazing underwater world, stunning people, some of who became good friends, and unforgettable experiences.
