India adventure—the 21st country I have visited (5:last)

What is Indigenous terra madre?

Indigenous Terra Madre is an international event that brings together indigenous people from all over the world to network and share knowledge about food, nutrition, and biocultural diversity. The first Indigenous Terra Madre was held in Jokkmokk, Sweden, land of Sami people. The second event was organized by Slow Food organization and NESFAS (North East Slow Food and Agrobiodiversity Society). The objective of this event is to give opportunity for indigenous and local food communities to interact with each other and with policy makers, scientist, UN agencies, and international institutions to discuss issues that affect the vitality and sustainability of their food systems. To give a touch of the indigenous people of North East India, the second ITM is called Internationa Mei-Ramew 2015. Mei-Ramew means mother earth. (source: here)

Closing remark – What did I learn? (11Nov 2015)

This question came from Anna, my flatmate. Keren banget emang orang eropa kalo nanya selalu berbobot ya.. (I can say that I can tolerate the accommodation—maybe that’s the best they can provide). Well, despite all the chaos due to transportation and detail program on the first day, yes, of course I learned a lot from this experience. This event taught me how to speak more about what I really understood, not really depend on the slide. Slides are just as decoration but the main point and subject is me! What I am going to talk about. What message I am going to deliver. Not only disseminate the method and result of my experiment/research. That’s the main point. In the non-scientific environment, it is better to just give pictures on the slide, without or with less word on. It is better to present it the more story-telling way.

Second, this event gave me a new perspective on how to preserve our biodiversity, to acknowledge more about differences, forget about standardization because it is good to be different as long as we believe in what we think it is right and we do not bother other people. About preserving biodiversity, I learned a lot from a lot of indigenous people all over the world in this meeting. It inspires me to do more community service in Indonesia’s rim land, to encourage indigenous people to be proud of what they have, to teach my students about diversity, to teach them about tolerance and give them more opportunity to be proud of their homeland. This community service on preserving Indonesian biodiversity would give outcome such as: travel log, native food book—documentation with good pictures, video recording of their ritual, local wisdom and folklore, or could be also a FB page. Just to remind me and helping my friend (Bao) to promote his work, we can search “café new guinea” as a reference.

Third, as I am going to serve back in Indonesia as a lecturer, it is important for me to gain network with other Indonesian in this event. I met Nando (1986)--a young farmer from Flores, Pak Elyas--a custom officials from Krayan, North Kalimantan. I hope I can make a community service project on food biodiversity as a strategy to achieve food sovereignty with them.

Fourth, It makes me think what and how could I do to give a better contribution to this mother earth. I would like to have my own garden to support my herbs, spices and some vegetable needs for my everyday food. I would like to teach my children about how to appreciate the food we eat.

Extra – Jokes about women in India

When we were in Delhi, we saw A LOT of men on the street. Not so many woman we met, made us wonder where the women are? We keep on asking many people, if there is gender equality in India. Do women drive? Do women work? Or do women have the same opportunity as men? Until we arrived in Shillong, we saw more women. We saw how women work and participate in the daily work as well as men. So, the question was answered. Where are the women? They are in Shillong! Hahaha…

I survived!