On our second day in Bukit Lawang, our guide loaded us each into our own kapok, or tuktuk, a motorcycle with a carriage attached, to visit several family cottage industries. This tour is a way for them to support the local economy as part of our fee goes to the families themselves.
There is David in his Kapok in front of me.
Here are some of the cows that roam everywhere, getting in the way.
Our first stop was at a Muslim school. Children were still arriving and we were amazed how many can crowd onto one kapok “school bus”.
We were able to talk with the headmaster for a few minutes. We learned that the first six years of schooling are free in Indonesia but further education costs the parents tuition. In addition to the Muslim school, there was also a mixed school in town for other faiths.
Before we left the headmaster wanted to take photos with us in the yard.
We noticed that, although the headmaster smiled and laughed when we were talking with him about the school and the children, he refused to smile for the photo. He definitely wanted to present a serious face.
We were able to walk around as the children talked and played before classes began. A group of girls was delighted to pose for a picture and the boys wanted to joke and make faces.
After the school visit, we stopped briefly at the “morning market” where the local villagers go to buy fish and vegetables for the day.
At our next stop, we walked through some beautiful green rice paddies and past a piranha pool (they grow them for food) to a hut where a family harvests and weaves thatching for the roofs of houses and shops. It is very effective at shedding the rain and lasts several years.
They fed us some delicious melon and sugar cane while we watched and some of us tried our hand at the thatching.
Back on the kapoks (tuktuks) for another bumpy ride to a home where they were boiling down sugar palm sap to make palm sugar, just like making maple sugar. We all hung around watching the pot boil, as it were.
While we waited, I took some photos of the livestock and their enclosures. In the first picture below, the woven cone is cover a hen and her chicks but one kept popping out from under the edge.
After the expert deemed that the sugar was ready using the trusty cold water test, we got a chance to taste the finished sugar cake while it was still warm. Sooo delicious! We bought a cake to take with us and nibbled on it like precious candy for several days.
The next stop was a tofu making shop with a bubbling vat of foamy soybeans and various drainage devices. But none of us were vegetarians so this was a pretty quick tour.
We ended the morning with a delicious and plentiful lunch at a homestay place. No one seemed to be staying with the family at the time of our visit but there were aged posters on the wall about the various projects that one could help with in the community. The little boy in the family took a liking to my cane and made off with it while we ate, swinging it wildly in the air. I hope he didn’t hit anyone with it.
The rest of the day, we lounged on our porch overlooking the river.
Opmerkingen