#roteisland

-> Interviewed two fishermen in Hen’s house in the morning from 730am. 

-> One of the fishermen bought caught one wedge fish and three silty eye shark on Nembrala harbor today.  Nesha rushed to the harbor and managed to get a sample of the fin from the wedge fish. 

-> Interviewed another 3 fishermen on their boat(Payoro) at the harbor. 

-> Bait prep at 4pm in the evening and head out to Nembrala Out! resort infront of out basecamp for a beer sunset evening. *Thanks to Nesha for pulling us out from work

-> Cashed out in Melati and bought myself an ikat kain from the wife of the first fishermen we interviewed this morning! It’s an Earth tone ikat with natural dye combination of dark army green, light brown, brown and beige colour. I fall in love with it at first sight!  (Guess that’s the most accurate way to get a souvenir)

-> Had simple noodles dinner(unlocked my 4th indon mee flavour in Rote) with Clara in the house. No FRIENDS this time, just us chit-chatting around as FRIENDS:) 

This place looks just like Narnia, Narnia in the magician’s nephew. Most of the land is dry, barren, dusted and brown. No sign of living in vegetation, domestic animals can be seen roaming around, with little population of humans: as if it’s not domesticated yet. The empty tree with dry branches along the broken and narrow roads(which is how most of the roads look like on the island), and the rocky wall made entirely by big rocks piled on each other, reminds me of how pristine this place is, and it just feels like the Narnia in the early ages, before the arrival of the Pevensie siblings. 

D-4 Nembrala Beach

> Socio-economy and background of seaweed industry survey

> BRUVs analysis and Sunset by the beach in Oenggaut

Lunch diary: had our lunch out and I got he boring vegetables soup. Gadu-gadu which Clara have was so good. It was a a combination of vegetables and tempeh with peanut sauce. We played the eat-and-run biodiversity game again which is a great way to kill time than the internet!

pic: me chilling by the beach

Me and Novi designed an interview survey and questionnaire to kick start our assigned internship project on seaweed farming industry along the coastline of Nembrala desa.

That took us the whole morning discussing and modifying it into the best form we could do. We had an incredible lunch with Carla. I love how we have spicy food for every meal here. I am with the right gang of people here!-people with the same taste stay tgt;)

After lunch, we went to the house of the ketua desa and conducted our first interview with him. We decided to get the pilot survey on him to get a rough and general idea of the seaweed industry in Nembrala. Being a seaweed farmer himself for the past decade(before being elected as the ketua desa in 2016), he has so much information to offer about the industry from the beginning until today.

He started right when the industry was introduced to Nembrala when the seed was brought into the island. It was 1996 that year and the industry started to boost until 2006 where people start quitting. 2006 to 2010 was the transition phase for the industry where it experiences large changes and instability due to infertile harvest and decreasing water quality(due to oil spill from the west coast of Australia, according to rumor). He made it through but he changed his job twice to work for foreign hospitality business hoping for a higher wages, but still ended up in seaweed farming as it still offers him the best pay.

After being elected as the ketua desa of Nembrala, he quit the industry. At the same time, he doesn’t wish his kids/the future generation to take on the career as a seaweed farmer as he doesn’t wish them to get distracted or overwhelmed by the large income it could bring to them. He wants them to focus on education at the moment. He also shares with us about his dream for the village, where he wishes the ocean is clear from the seaweed plantation and where animal and human can live in separate spaces(so that the animals couldn’t get threatened by human’s incident) it was kind of inspiring for me hearing him saying that and it once again support my belief of local context, local solution. Every human being is a hero for their own land.

Me and Novi went to the seaweed farm nearby after waving Goodbye with Bernard, the ketua desa. Unfortunately, it was high tides at the time and we didn’t see any farmers or seaweed plantation(as it was soaked in the water now). We did a short stroll on the beach and headed back even before sunset.

At night, I shared some good Soto instant noodles as dinner with Novi. It was a supreme one as we added more chili into the soup! So good. We had a pleasant conversation about early career NGOs with Nesha before we finally go to bed.