It has been five months now, as a village facilitator, I have been carrying out activities assisting indigenous communities in Maros Regency. Of the many intensity of activity achievements, daily work plans, coordination, and meetings with several people, perhaps the encounter with the figure of Suriadi was the most intense. Starting from accompanying Suriadi to harvest corn, spending the night in his garden house, chilling together there until morning, teppu-teppu (separating the corn kernels from the cobs), teaching indigenous children to read and write under the house, teasing each other, listening and complained about the fate of the education of the Bara indigenous people.
Suriadi is almost thirty-five years old. He already has two toddler-aged sons. He is not a native of the Bara indigenous community. He comes from Laiya, Bantimurung, and is married to a woman from Bara Hamlet. Until now, and perhaps forever, he continues to worry about his daily income as a volunteer teacher, farmer, secretary of a Bara traditional institution, retail petrol trader and occasionally a fish seller.
When I met him in the garden house which he was still assembling from bamboo slats in his new garden, I was stunned to hear him say,
"Once in a while, even just once, I would love to swap roles with rich people in the city, so they know how hard it is to live in a village like this."
Suriadi's anxiety is the anxiety of everyone living in Bara hamlet; worried that what they had planted themselves at low prices had been growing and taking root for years. I can't just judge, and always feel guilty, when I romantically say that wouldn't it be more comfortable to live in a village with all the beautiful and natural panoramas. The bitter reality in Bara Hamlet is truly bitter.
While I continued to be friends with Suriadi in Bara Hamlet, the village forest began to thin, while the population of children in the Bara Adar community continued to increase. When Suriadi was worried about his life, I understood, when I saw Suriadi's two small children playing around his garden house, who in the future will have to receive basic education.
