Humor akan dapat mencairkan suasana. Hidup yang berat bisa terasa menjadi ringan dengan humor. Di kalangan pemimpin kita sekarang humor seperti barang langka. Pemimpin seolah-olah harus tampak serius. Berkelakar seolah haram. Orde Baru, yang terkenal sebagai orde tanpa humor, seperti menghantui sampai hari ini. Dalam sejarah, hanya sedikit di antara pemimpin kita yang memiliki selera […]
Banda Chiroscuro
The Banda Islands are a place that has sunk, enve; oped by a deep sea. Now they have become part of a ‘languishing Indonesia’, isolated and neglected. But this is the very place that was a bone of contetntion between the ruling states of the West in times gone by. The reason was that on […]
Pesta Kaum Tani
Menjadi atraksi, siapa sangka barapan kebo mulanya adalah sebuah kegiatan gotong royong yang kerap dilakukan oleh masyarakat di Sumbawa, Nusa Tenggara Barat. Berlangsung saat musim hujan tiba, barapan kebo sering kali diadakan sebagai penanda berlangsungnya musim tanam di sana. TANDA MUSIM TANAM | Dalam masyarakat Sumbawa, Nusa Tenggara Barat, barapan kebo sangatlah populer, terutama bagi […]
Miniatur Indonesia di Tengah Lautan
Di negara kepulauan terbesar sejagad raya yang menaungi 16.000 pulau dan hanya memiliki 297 bandara ini, kapal Pelni adalah transportasi reguler yang paling bisa diandalkan untuk menghubungkan pulau-pulau yang tercerai-berai, terlebih di bagian timur Indonesia. Pelni tak ubahnya miniatur Indonesia: centang-perenang sekaligus kaya warna. Tidak perlu bicara bagaimana kenyamanan dalam dek-dek kapal pesiar, tapi banyak […]
Manokwari
Manokwari is a town that is blessed; messages regarding God’s blessings are found on signs at crossroads, on school walls, and in homes. This is the place where Christianity was introduced to Papua, as a result of the work of German missionaries Carl Wilhelm Ottow and Johann Gottlob Geissler, who arrived in 1855. “Im Gotes name Tu Betraten (In God’s name we set foot in this place),” were their exact words, now engraved on a monument on the beach of Mansinam Island, a popular destination for religious pilgrims.
Island of Refugees
In the late 1970s, after the communist North had won Vietnam’s civil war, many from the South who did not want to submit to communist doctrine chose to flee on small boats. This exodus brought many of these boat-people to Galang. Nguyen was one of them. Escaping from her ravaged country, this young girl’s life ended in tragedy when she was a…
River City
It is home to one of the oldest rainforest, the largest in Asia, the third largest island in this planet. Borneo is divided by three countries that have not been 100 years free from colonialism: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bruney.
SUARA-SUARA YANG JARANG KITA DENGAR
Di era yang penuh iklan pariwisata: foto-foto dan video-video yang mengacaukan psikologi dan meyakinkan kita bahwa Anda perlu liburan, Fatris memberi narasi lain di dalam bukunya. Narasi itu adalah suara dari manusia-manusia yang ia temui.
Pekanbaru: A Road Less Travelled
The Siak River, still and quiet without a ripple, sits on the edge of a city once known as Senapelan. For centuries trade ships carrying commodities and natural resources from the island of Sumatra would dock along this river. It is a river tightly entwined with trade and the power of the kings of bygone […]
The Sins City
Changing one’s destiny was not an easy matter on the West Sumatran coast.