Inside the fishing villages of Indonesia’s most remote islands and how tech plays a part
My co-director, Jess, and I had just finished our second Live Learning trip in Indonesia where we’d spent a week facilitating an experiential learning trip for executives from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CGAP, CFI, BTCA and the Mastercard Foundation. The week was jam packed and to say we were exhausted by the end of it would be an understatement.
Just as we were settling into wind-down mode we heard from Utari Octavianty, the co-founder of Aruna, which is a company using tech to solve challenges faced by the Indonesian fishery and maritime industry. We knew of Aruna from our first Live Learning trip to Indonesia and found their business particularly interesting; they enable better market access and fairer trading opportunities for fishermen and buyers. Utari heard we were in town and wanted to know if we’d like to join their team on some socialisation visits to remote fishing villages on the island of Waigeo, in the Raja Ampat Regency; a collection of islands with a population of less than 50,000 people.
Even after an intense week of immersive learning, when another opportunity to dive into the impact that technology innovation has on people presents itself, we can’t say no! It took us about a nanosecond to decide whether to go. And so, we soon found ourselves making our way to our first stop — the small town of Waisai. Getting there from where we were in East Java required a very long drive, two flights, a ferry, a small speedboat and over 24 hours. And we were still in Indonesia!
Here’s what this spur of the moment extension to our learning trip looked like.
Day 1
We arranged to meet Dennis and Zull from Aruna at 8:30am at the end of the market in Waisai. We turned up with everything we might need for the two days, including a roll-up mat for a bed and all our food and water.
After loading up the boat with enough gasoline for the two days we left the harbour and headed down the river and out on to the Pacific Ocean, only to discover that one of the two motors on the boat wasn’t working. Our captain diligently worked to get the troublesome motor going again, until suddenly it spluttered into life and we were back on our way.
The water became choppier as the channel into the Majoli Gulf narrowed and we passed islands covered in dense jungle and spectacular karst outcrops covered in trees clinging, seemingly, impossibly to the rock so that they appeared to pop out of the turquoise water.
We’d later find out that what we couldn’t see from the water were the vibrant villages that occupied these islands, hidden from sight by the dense vegetation.
After about 2 hours we arrived in Wegalas, which is where we stayed for the next two days. It is a tiny fishing village on the east shore of the Majoli Gulf. You won’t find it on a map, and you’d most likely miss it if you didn’t know it was there! We were given a tour of the tiny village, including the Aruna processing plant, and the house that had been built by Aruna for staff accommodation, where we also stayed. In Wegalas there is no cell reception and the only electricity is from the generator that Aruna installed, which runs only when the processing plant is operating, or when there is a good reason. However, with just 11 families (40 people or so) living there, it was peaceful and calm yet full of life.
After a short rest, we jumped back in the boat and set off on our first socialisation visit with the Aruna team. We were heading for Kalitoko, another small fishing village about an hour south of Wegalas. Our captain somehow identified a tiny gap in the vegetation which was the entrance to the 2km waterway through the mangroves to a beautifully colourful village, teeming with children splashing around in the water.
Unfortunately for us, it was graduation day for one of the villagers, so most of the fisherman we had intended to meet were away celebrating in a neighbouring community. One of the challenges of not having a cell signal is that Aruna cannot contact fishermen in advance to arrange meetings, meaning that multiple visits to these remote sites are often required to communicate sometimes quite simple messages. Where there is cell reception, communication by phone or mobile app is made difficult by the area’s low literacy rate. To address this challenge Aruna employs “local heroes” — tech-savvy younger people who assist the fishermen by posting photos and uploading information to facilitate Aruna transactions.
Since we couldn’t meet with the fisherman in Kalitoko, we sailed back to Wegalas where Alvious, the lead fisherman there, let us join him bringing in his crab nets.
Alvious explained that catching crabs involves two trips. The first trip is to drop the cages — usually around 15 of them, baited with some fish, and all connected by rope with a buoy to locate them easily. The catch is collected on the second trip, about 12 hours later. Fisher families in Wegalas catch approximately 100kg of Blue Swimmer Crabs each day, which are processed by Aruna staff in the village and taken to Waisai for distribution every three days.
Once all the cages were hauled into the boat and emptied, it was straight back to Wegalas where we were shown how to process the crab. We also learned how to differentiate between male and female crabs. Pregnant and small crabs are thrown back to help maintain stocks. The crabs that are kept are then dropped into a huge vat to be steamed, (and, in our case, subsequently eaten straight out of the pot!) then the meat is tinned, ready to be distributed. Aruna pays the villagers $1/kg of crab (including shells), netting the village around $100/day.
During our Live Learning meetings we learned that before Aruna, a typical Indonesian fisherman would usually make about IDR 1.1 million (US$82) per month, losing vital income to middlemen and spoilage. This has led to a 50% decline in the number of people working as fishermen working in the country over the last decade. Aruna are trying to reverse this trend in 3 ways:
- Integrated Fishery System (IFS): a cloud-based platform to help companies, governments, and institutions in the industry to manage, analyze, and report data in real time.
- Fisheries e-Commerce platform (B2B): Aruna’s fisheries e-commerce platform, PasarLaut.com, is a marketplace that connects large scale buyers directly to fisher groups from all over Indonesia. Aruna is currently partnered with over 2,000 groups in 16 provinces.
- Neyalan Aruna (B2C): A mobile app for Fisherman Group Partners to sell their seafood products to customers directly.
By connecting fishermen and potential customers through Aruna’s online platform, the startup is able to dramatically reduce transaction costs, helping the fishermen raise selling prices by as much as 20%, while buyers can pay up to 15% less.
That evening, we were invited by Alvious and his family to join them for dinner. Alvious’ wife, Mama Selina, cooked us a delicious traditional meal of fish soup and sagu, fried curried fish and rice. To top it all off, we were treated to an incredible sunset too.
Day 2
We were up early the next morning for our next socialisation visit to Arawai. This village was a little more developed; it had a larger processing plant, school, clinic and in certain areas a little bit of mobile signal.
This time, socialisation was possible because the fisherman we were hoping to meet with was available. After we left our meeting with the fisherman, we walked through the village to Mama Mall’s house. She is one of seven fisherwomen working with Aruna. She offered to cook the noodles we took along for our breakfast and made us banana fritters as a snack for the journey back to Waisai. Mama Mall catches around 40kg of crab a day, but also catches and dries anchovies — from what we could tell, anchovies are in abundance in Waigeo — these little fish were everywhere! Aruna also creates additional job opportunities for women in seafood processing, which in turn adds value to the fishermen’s products and boosts the local economy.
Aruna also uses a point reward system for active members which can be redeemed against boat equipment, fishing equipment, basic necessities, or even cash for their children’s tuition and for religious pilgrimage. “We want to instill a mindset to save for the future in these fishermen, encouraging them to think of long-term financial goals” explained Utari.
Our time with Aruna in Waigeo was up, but not before a quick dip in the crystal clear Kalibiru Blue River on our way back to Waisai. An invigorating end to an enriching few days.
We try to incorporate a rural visit on every Live Learning trip to give us and our clients deeper insight into the markets we’re aiming to learn about, but this impromptu visit to Waigeo allowed us to really get to the last mile and hear first hand from the Aruna Heros and the fishermen themselves. We’re grateful to the Aruna team for inviting us along on this experience.
