Wanderlust in Kupang
A month here, so many great experience. Not only teaching technology, we’ve also been doing some adventure, meeting local people and learning their culture.
We’re so grateful and proud of being Indonesian. Indonesia has rich culture, especially in eastern part of it, everyone would easily fall in love at the first sight. Being a nomad also teaches me how to fit in other culture, how to approach them with our way. To cultivate new habit for people who are not familiar with us is never an easy task. We need to think what’s the best step to inject our values first. For us, forcing our work method from the beginning is unlikely, therefore we need to approach them little by little, introducing ourselves as one of them, then fall in love with each other. That way, the process of assimilation can be done naturally.
How did we do this? When we began our program, the first thing we did was simple: observing their daily habit. After that, we give them example how we do things and they would examine us.
Fortunately for us, every person had desire to catch their dream. Maybe half of them were capable to follow our method easily simply because the had privilege to afford laptop or other devices. I was really happy with this program because this program could be the bridge to help them reaching their dream. Even Tata (Randy Pradipta), our web developer mentor, prefered to accompany his students on the weekend for extra courses instead of going to beaches with us.
Take your time
“Tata, please don’t push yourself. Enjoy this city, you must visit beach or take some adventure here.” Mas Hilmi, Binar Academy Master, said that to Tata when he visited us.
“I don’t think so Mas, because I really happy being like that, go along with my student and stay to coding with them at hotel rather than go around,” Tata replied.
“Poor you Tata, you must enjoy your time. This is our chance to spot great places to adventure.” I added with a slanted smirk on my face.
“No, I think I want to witness their progress in coding, because seeing their spirit makes me happy.” Tata said agonizingly.
Okay then, we could’t force our opinion to someone else. Maybe it was just Tata’s way to enjoy this city, while on the other hand, I thought I need to enjoy the beautiful scenery here. Additionally, I tried to make friends with local people to get their insight about Kupang and Nusa Tenggara, walked along the beach, challenged my self for canoeing, climbed the cliff, and swam through the coast. I love adventure so much, that’s why I took this chance to entertain myself like that and go traveling alone without them. But sometimes, we spent our time together, like having dinner, went to fish market, and eat grilled fish on the sidewalk.
Tata didn’t care about his weekend life, he thought he can enjoy it later after finish Kupang project. For the first time he wasn’t sure when he started his class because it was hard for them who haven’t tried to code before. So, we knew how big was this challenge for Tata.
Furthermore, the students only had 10 days to complete their project. That was the reason why Tata didn’t want to spend his weekend for hanging out with me or Kevan. On the Eid al-Adha holiday, Tata thought his student would spend their time to celebrate it with their family. However, they still went to the class to continue their project. We were astonished, the commitment and determination they showed us to finish their project were shockingly unexpected. We could see how big their desire were to show their best.
A small step to next level
In one occasion at August 18th, we attended local community meet up, Komodev. Komodev was a new community that was formed when we were just a week visiting Kupang. After that, they established a small event and invited Tata as speaker for their first event.
Tata asked community member about their progress. Although the community was newly born, it became the first tech community that uses Ruby language in Kupang. Moreover, many of its members were his students. In that event, Tata explained more about Ruby language to the member of Komodev community.
In Kupang, we tried to make our student enjoy our class by conducting outdoor class, walking across the coastline while discussing about materials, or singing along from Spotify playlist. So much fun we did here, so we can fit in our work culture with a fun way. They were extremely happy to learn new things in an easy way. We hope, after they finish this program they could make a change, and continue to advance their skills beyond what they’ve learnt from us.
Start with problem
Everything started with problem like in “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” book said,
“Problem never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded.”
When we started to make a product, we were looking at the problem before it became a concrete idea to develop. So, we stimulated our students to define the real local issue in Kupang, and find the pain point from that problem. If one product didn’t come from a problem, then there would be no value from that.
One idea from our student that’s made us amazed is Airdo, a platform that answers the difficulty of getting and distributing clean water in Kupang. This idea shone bright as a hope from the society who needed clean water without any disturbance from distributor.
In our program, we introduced agile methodology as a framework to build a product. Our student weren’t familiar with working as a team, let alone the knowledge about agile/scrum.
Actually, they didn’t know each other so they needed to bond themselves first. They needed to learn how to generate idea and mature it eventually. As a mentor, we observed it and it wasn’t easy for them. They must learn how to break their ego down. Zero ego became the top point when they were working as a team.
It’s hard to say goodbye
After a month, our students finally finished their product. There were 5 team in total: Lopotenun, baBagibuku, BantuBeta, Airdo, and Komodev. They came with different problem and business model, but half of them choose to be on demand service, like a baBagibuku, a platform that could help everyone in Kupang to access books. The mechanism was like this: when someone borrowed a book they must donate another book and that book will be distributed to remote area in NTT which was hard to access literature.
We were very proud of them. They could find their potential and make a small step to be a change maker and give big impact for their hometown. Their learning journey from their unfamiliarity in programming, they learn with spirit and big effort, and everything will be balanced with the impact for themselves.
In the last day, we celebrated the demo day. After they demonstrated their product, our headmaster encouraged them to keep learning about anything, especially in technology, then we dance “Tobelo” together as a farewell. What a beautiful and adventurous month in Kupang. We are so grateful because we can share what we have. After that, our journey still continue.
“Everyone is a teacher, every home is a school.” -Ki Hajar Dewantara
