A couple of days ago I have talked to a friend of mine, Let say he is a member of Students Association For Environmental and Adventure Activity or usually called MAPALA (Mahasiswa Pecinta Alam). Actually “Pecinta Alam” is an Indonesian terminology that can’t be translated literally to English, in person context Pecinta Alam are those who love, respect and appreciate the splendor of nature as a beautiful gift from God.
We’re just hanging out and I don’t know, somehow we’re already talking about this topic. I never really being a Mapala, but I know a little bit about this kind of organization because I have a few friends from Mapala on my college. One thing that I know, Being a Mapala is about Responsibility, Respect and also Love, in case of both organization and a person.
You know what’s funny? when you talk about Mapala, most of people will think that it just a bunch of jerk, junkies, and criminals, why? there are so many negative things come out from a word Mapala. The answer is a wrong stereotype from most of people in Indonesia, just because a few peoples are bad, does not mean that a whole peoples are bad, so do Mapala.
Most of people blame Mapala for an environmental damage, “Mapala. they are not responsible and only caused a damage, pollute the environment with litter” Holyshit, can you feel it? do you know what it feels when you’re blamed for something that you’re never do? Mapala is not a hipster boy or a trendy girl that come to nature just because of trend, not passion.That kind of guy just came to a mountain to take a selfie then uploaded it to social media as a trend so they will looks good but never really care about what they have left there.
Mapala maybe looks like a bad person, long haired men, smokers or junkies, but deep inside they are not careless. Pecinta Alam that comes from a word “Cinta” which is means Love and “Alam”, means Nature. They are doing their activity and adventure because of love, it comes from the heart, You’ll never know how tired it will or how far it goes but they will keep the ball rolling, because of love and believe it or not there’s always a feeling to look after something that you love.
If there’s a good, there’s always a bad too,but in my opinion, it’s not fair if we blame a whole of them for a mistake that was made by few of them or the others. It’s not only Mapala that should be care of the nature, it our responsibility too, to treat this nature as it should be treated, as a gift and as an amazing creations to be protected. a little advice for Mapala and all of us, no matter where we are, its our nature, its our environment, so keep our responsibility for it, start from a little things like litter will be great to keep this beautiful. So we don’t need to blame each other.
My friend and I ended up the conversation with a cup of coffee, and I will never forget his quotes “Don’t blame if you don’t know, cause Mapala is not them”
DHD
