Journey With Kapa
Original Post Date : August 12, 2005
1996 is not so far away, but I don’t remember many of the details.
I had wonderful journeys with Kapa, too bad I didn’t write it down and now I forget most of the details. So instead of properly arranged, I will write whatever comes into my mind for my future reference. :)
Kapa is an organization in my Faculty, focusing on outdoor and fun activities. We had mountaineering, rock climbing, caving, kayaking, rafting, river crossing, and environment. At my time, the proportion was almost always female : male = 1: 4. Nowadays I heard they have more female…(and there goes all the fun? ;p)
I had been eyeing to join Kapa since my first day in campus. Although it was quite hard as I didn’t have any close friend to suffer together, I’m glad I didn’t back out.
PRE MEMBER
The Orientation
Divided by one-week class and one-week site orientation.
CLASS
It was an interesting paRt of the journey. I had to spend one lonely week in campus. Holiday time, nobody was around, and I had to attend class everyday.
I met some new friends, the classes was quite interesting. I remember CPR class, Environment Class which we had to perform a short drama :) (what is the connection with Kapa?)
Navigation class was the worst; I always suck in Navigation, until now. Why we have to count our life with that small little circle thingy that moves in whatever way it likes?
Lucky, the task was completed in-group.
There were many other interesting things to learn, I still keep the manual handbook. Like what we have to do if we encounter with wild animals, what could be eaten in jungles, knots, survival tips etc. We also had indoor practices like wall climbing, and if I don’t remember wrongly, we had our water class also.
Last day on class, we had to stay until pass midnight before we had another program. We didn’t know what to do, so we slept, talked, played paper airplane, read novels. We had known each other quite well; there were about thirty-five of us. Around 2 a.m, we were called one by one, the seniors called it M.I, it is a method to approach and put some ideology when your mind is flying high because of exhaustion.
So we had all the groups divided. There were seven groups; each group consisted of one female and four males. I had a great group with Willy, Handy, Ucok and Deddy. We had to prepare all the things we need for site orientation.
SITE
JATILUHUR
It was a long journey, we traveled by army trucks. Before that, we had to stand in the sun for about one hour with big backpack consisted of 5 litres water, rope, food, clothing etc. My cheap backpack broke that very moment, so Kapa lent me one. A lot of scolding, as usual, like military. :) We were introduced to seri. One seri means ten-time push-up with backpack. They were very generous with that I must say. :)
Water thingy
We had to cross the lake by swimming. The props were raincoat and dry leaves. We needed to fill the raincoat with leaves and tied them all together with plastic rope, that was it. I was the first one. Hell, finish first, rest first, dry up first, right? :)
When I was swimming, clinging to the raincoat to keep me floating, the seniors did their job, scolded, asked me to report, which group I was in blabla, it was good to keep me out of breath. Half way, water started to come into the raincoat, so I had to swim faster and reached the edge safety. Ha, I had a lot of time to dry everything in my backpack while waiting for the others. I think it was raining the night before, because there were a lot of laundries anywhere from everybody. :)
Next, we had to handle a traditional fishing boat and drove it to the other side of the lake, I thought everything went well, until I looked back and saw I was forty-five degree away from where I started. Then, we had to do the same with one-seater kayak, kayak was easier to control, but it was tedious to climb back to it after we did the accident drill. So, we had to climb from the back, moving while sitting and put the backside first inside the kayak, then the legs. Although everything was done under pressure, it was fun. Just pretended to be deaf and everything would be fine. :)
Next, we had to march the river as a group with rubber boat. It was hard to coordinate with about six to eight people on the boat; we had a leader to give the command. Left, right….Then the scenario, the boat would be upside down and we made it back up, alone. So, we had to stand at the edge of the boat, pulled the ropes attached to the boat and put all the body weight in our back until the boat flipped. Of course, when it flipped, we were turned upside down in the water.
It was a wet day, but the most fun part of the journey. :)
Climbing thingy
Rock climbing! The wall was divided into three. One for girls, one for boys and one for jumaring (hope it spelled correctly). Jumaring is the type of climbing when you use a tool hanging on the rope. So it is attached to your harness and you climb step to step by pushing it up. Just like those monkey toys or those climbing ondel2, :) I don’t know how to describe it. It was the hardest thing to do, arm strength was majorly needed, which was hard for girls.
Manual climbing was much easier for me. I finished the wall quite fast because the longer I hung up there, the more tired I was. That time, I also volunteered to be the first. So, the day supposed to be over for me, but the senior asked me to try the boy’s wall. It was more difficult and took longer, but I also finished it.
Rock climbing is easier than artificial wall climbing. We can use any kind of help, the crack, plant, root, the uneven stone protruding can provide good helps. With wall, everything relies on the points, and the scenery in nature is much stronger motivation to reach the top. Nice.
It was also my favorite day, the day I became black in color :)
Search and Rescue
For me, it was the toughest part of all. We had to navigate, and looked for victim, and the route was very steep. I remember we had to lie flat on the chest to avoid sliding down. The problem was with our backpacks. So we formed human chain, and transferred all the bags up to the ‘hill’ before we climbed ourselves. The guys were helpful; those sloppy, ignorant bad boys and easy-going guys were gentlemen in Nature. Hehehhehee :) Really.
The navigation. Arggghhh. We had to follow clues. Hmmmmm..Wild Amazing Race.
Survival Thingy
We had to survive for two or three days with one pack of instant noodle shared by five of us. The seniors took our food away. For me, I was quite ok; all the tiredness killed my appetite. But poor boys, they were hungry!
We did find some survival things, like jack fruit. One jackfruit shared by seven groups, I had one, one seed, but it was good. :) We also found a bunch of banana, and drool ourselves thinking about pisang bakar, so we heated up the fire and try to roast the banana. But, damn banana! It was not ripe enough and full of rocks! Don’t know what kind of banana was it…so with little ceremony, we threw it away.
One of my friend, managed to hide choki2, those long chocolate candy. He shared it with every group. Each group got about one fifth part of the fifteen cm choki2, and we boiled it with one big tin, so it became…chocolate soup. It was nice actually, counting on how desperate we were.
Once, we tried to cook salad. So we collected every clean-looking leaves and boiled it with our precious water. Turned out it was as bitter as don’t know what. :(
Hehehhehe it was so sad………….
At the end of second day, we gave up and shared the instant noodle. Honestly, it barely helped :)
That was all about food, about water, ... We ran out of water once, and what we did was stayed up all night to collect rainwater. Everybody was awake and having fun, I don’t know how but we were always happy. To make the water drinkable, in look and taste, we would throw in a pill of black Norit (to purify the water but the water will turn black in colour) or Nutrisari. :)
We had those performers who kept us laughing. They impersonated the seniors; we even had our own song. :) I remembered Michael and Idris the most for their performances.
Others
I guess we had to go to native’s house and befriend with them, asked them some questionnaires about environment things and made a report (what a damn thing to do in the jungle!)
The Last night
It was a cold bloody night. We had to be separated and walked to the jungle on our own, and reported to every senior we met on the way. Report means you have to shout your details to their face. Name, number, group, again, military procedure.
Stunts and series of pushup all the way. We got used to it at this point.
So, along the way, punishment, series, encountered with cow, snake, bugs, then we were gathered together beside the lake. It was freezing. We were ignored, until about two a.m, and again, M.I method.
I was paired with Ishak, and I think the senior who M.I us was out of mind. We had to sit half soaked in the lake while listening to what he said, answered questions, we were shivering. So, after what felt like hours, we were rush to one point, we had to cross the river by scaling through a rope, with position like roasted pig, with backpack. It was quite easy and I had to move fast to warm myself. Actually, I moved fast because the seniors kept shouting to go faster, because somebody was catching up. I didn’t know the one who catched up was me, I thought I was the one being shouted at.
So, again, wet and cold, we were rushed like sheep to run through the water. It was like endless nightmare, and damn hard to run through the water, I kept falling down until a guy grabbed my hand and we ran together. Duh…. :”))
Apparently, at the other side of the lake, every seniors was waiting for us. So, we were officially member. With small ceremony, we were served with sate kambing and all those heavenly food we longed for. Those fierce militaries became very friendly and human indeed. We were treated specially and blended in well. :)
Extras
On our first night, our group was lost. We reached a cave, which we didn’t know what it was. So we spent sometime resting and hanging around there until we moved on. After the orientation, we were told that it was a closed area; It was a haunted cave, as it was used as an execution place in Dutch occupation.
It was good not to know.
We were not allowed with any kinds of luxury. So for accommodation, we had to combine out ponco/raincoat, and spread it half a meter above the ground, so we could slip in and sleep. The ‘sleeping bag’ was indeed plastic used for body bag. Uhmpph… but that thing was very useful indeed. Trash bag was and is still used until now for the inner layer of the backpack, to protect the things inside.
There were always one or two nights when the senior would wake us up in midnight and asked us to move. Packed everything, included the hard built ‘accommodation’, stuffed everything in backpack (in the dark) and everything had to be inside backpack, no hanging things, no plastic bag. Then sleepy, tired, angry, we had to walk few kilometers before they allowed us to camp again. We didn’t camp after that of course, we were just lie everywhere comfortable :), but sunrise under the sky was magnificent. When the weather was bad, we hardly sleep, even if we already built a wall around us with backpacks, it would still damn cold anyway. Other than weather, we also couldn’t sleep when we did the search and rescue exercise. We had to camp in a very steep area, I remembered that we kept sliding down while sleeping. Mhe-he..!
MEMBER
After became a member, I could follow every activities and used all facilities.
Rock Climbing
It was so-called thing I was good at, although I also like the other section; I was advised to concentrate on this section more. Well, I was slim back then …. :)
So, sometimes, we practiced on the wall behind my faculty. I don’t like artificial wall, so I didn’t do it much.
The first trip I went was one-day trip. Can’t remember much now. It was a not so tall but hard route rock.
The second trip was to Citatah, we had to take bus at night and reached there in the morning. First route was quite tricky; we needed to count on the crack on the wall to climb. I have never used the magnesium powder, because my hands are never wet. It was a ‘dirty’ track, as there were many plants around. In the past, my friend Ridwan broke his leg because he fell from this rock. Lucky, I didn’t have many difficulties.
When I reached the top, I had the most amazing view I’ve ever seen that time. It was sunset, and the sun was upside down, because there was like a cloud above it. Everything was orange and it was quiet. I stood against the wall and there was a wide rock below me, so I could sit for a while. If only I had this thing behind my yard, I would climb it everyday to see the sunset, therefore, I would never grow fat! ;)
So, we called it a night. Next day, I had to climb without route. So, I would be the one who opened the way. It was for my practice. Rifky, a kind senior was giving me good mentor and guidance. So I carried all the safety props, hammer, all shape that I could put along a way and began to climb. Every time I found good point, I would plant in the hook that matched. Finger points, cracked points, I learned a lot that day. Until now, I’m very thankful esp for Rifky and Ridwan for their special guidance to make me better.
Too bad, and I seriously regret it until now, I didn’t put enough time on that. I was too busy with study and family etc, so I abandoned the next big project, Parang. It was a magnificent wall with almost flat surface. They spent I think about two nights there. If only I have the chance to do this sport again with those supports that I had, I strongly would. :’)
Mountaneering
Ladies Team, peak of Cikurai
Tati, Icha, Yenny, Grace and me.
It was five of us, all ladies, scaling the second highest mountain in West/North Java? I was told that it stood at 2800 metres high? Not really sure, but this is a perfect cone shape mountain.
We reached intercity terminal at night, and spent half the night there waiting for bus, so we slept at mushola. That was how safe was Jakarta. All girls, slept in stranger place. How I miss that time.
So we had long journey with big bus, and reached there in the morning.
We rode with ojek until the starting point. The team leader, Tati, started to navigate (ups) and we were out in our way. It was a long journey, and I must say there was nothing to see along the way. All dense jungle. The higher it was, the colder it became. So every break was only about few minutes, back to back without releasing the huge backpack. It was getting very cold that my can of coke tasted the best up there, out from natural fridge :D.
Then it was, one of the girl, Grace, kind of feeling unwell. She was having breakdown and confessed that she had pneumonia history. So, hand to hand, we had to..ugh..carried her backpack too. The journey was not totally smooth, there was a vertical route which we had to climb and one time, we had to walk by a huge tree that collapsed along the route. Route means half a metre to one metre wide path. Path is soil without grass because many people had passed it. On one side, or two sides, would be steep valley. Once, we dropped Grace’s backpack while we were scaling the vertical way, and it stopped at the edge of the valley, man! 80 litres backpack!
We took good eight hours to reach the top. By the way, we met another group of climbers. We didn’t go to the top yet, as it was already nighttime. So, we camped below the peak and spent the night there. I swore I heard the sound of ocean wave, I don’t know whether it was possible, but it was quite strong. We had hot soup and good meal. After the bonfire turned dim, it was very very dark. Scary? Uh, a bit.
Before sunrise, we eagerly left everything behind and climbed to the peak, and whew, it was the most beautiful scenery there (I will say this sentence again and again in my life hopefully :). We were looking above the cloud, high above the ground, to another mountain in front. The coolest thing was, the shadow of Cikurai was reflected at the other mountain as a perfect cone shape. We stood there speechless for a while.
The other group turned out to camp in the peak, they prepared breakfast and invited us. They were all guys, but very kind and friendly. We had roasted monkey nuts. It was very nice. Hey, everything tastes good up there!
When we reached the starting point, we took ojek down again. Journey down was scarier than anything else. Rode the motorcycle, sometimes to nowhere as it was the edge for the mountain before turning to right or left. Then, the ojek insisted of carry me together with Yenny as we were the skinniest, with two backpacks on the right and left hand side. We fell once. Ouch.
Although it was painful the days after, it worth every muscle. ;)
Environment
We had a few days trip to Thousand Islands (Pulau Seribu).
This trip was merely to conduct survey about the life of the native and maybe took further step to make it happened.
We gathered in Muara Angke dock and took a boat trip. I remember it was noon to nighttime. We had bad weather at night, the boat rocked like kora2, up and down. All the water went in and soaked the boat. I only sat in the middle of the boat with Handy, both pale-faced. Everyone in front us was either lying down or throwing up to the sea. The water level in the boat reached a dangerous height, and l reached my safety point, had to kneel down on the boat side and emptied my stomach also.
After that, the ocean started to calm down. We reached the island at midnight. Pulau Pramuka (l remember!) and all of us slept at the school hall. It was quite a developed island.
We went and stay in another island the next morning (I forget!), and begun our mission. Went from house to house, talked with the native about their ways of living, their times and purposes with the main island, their living structure and even their washroom.:) We learned that government has built a toilet complex for them, but they still preferred to do it traditional way; they built their washroom out above the sea, they said it provided good view to do their business. For the record, we had our own washroom then :).
I’m planning to dive in Thousand lslands in January 2006, don't tell me.... :)
Of course we will go to another island (l hope), we have 110 islands to choose from. Thousand lslands is actually consists of 110 lslands only, not even close to a thousand :).
It was fasting month for the Muslim, most of Kapa's members were Christians that time, but there was no such problem like racism or fanatics. So we were ‘fasting’ with them, we had breakfast at dawn and dinner at twilight, for lunch, we roamed around the island looking for warung. Apparently, the natives had multiple religions also, so no problem.
Everyday, after completing our tasks, we would go to neighboring island, to learn a bit about the cultures. I remembered there was an island dedicated for the deaths, so they would leave the deceases there. If I’m not wrong, without burial. Because of respect, we didn't visit that island (Thank God!).
We visited a turtle conservation, while we watched the turtle being taken care of. Any sizes, I had nice pictures of that, but maybe in Handy's or Kapa's camera. :)
We also do some shopping, simple fishing kit; kite string, hook and bread for bait. We would sit at the edge of the pier and fishing. The water was very clear. They managed to catch some small fish, small grouper (yummy). When a fish was caught, it would die slowly and painfully (snif) so Dedih used umbrella to knock them out. Cruel...but fast. FYI, I only watched, didn't take part as I was afraid of fish back then.
Strolled along the beaches, played with water and....slept. Ocean air always knocked me out, no insomnia. Morning, noon or night, if l lied down, there was it.
End of journey, we happily bought dried seaweed back. We were accompanied by flying fish on the way back along the boat, lots of them. I wonder why I’ve never seen these flying fish outside Indonesia. And there were dolphins too. Nice.
New student’s Orientation
So it was my turn to be a bad guy :). Too bad I only made in on Thursday, they had been in site since few days before. So with few other friends, we departed on Thursday night, catch bus to Tangkuban Perahu, the Orientation site.
We met the rest of the group at one point there and moved to the main camp.
Main camp for seniors was a big tent with generator, so we had electricity, bonfire, kitchen and a lot of place to sleep. I remember D.B, Tri, Handy, Ison, Uni, Nina and many of them. On the first night DB showed me around the beach, he almost lost his slipper in the dark. I only met older members like Horis and argh..,can’t remember names. They were die-hard adventurer and cool. :)
So we had to station at ways passed by the students, gave them briefing and orientation, scolded them and gave them series. Hmmm :) any smaaall reasonable mistakes was enough to land them few series. Sometimes we took the post in pair or alone. Senior’s task was tougher, we had to keep contact with each other, made sure we delivered all the learning points well and catched up with student’s positions and conditions. Because I went there last few days, I missed taking care of water sport and rock climbing, so left Search and Rescue (Errrrgh..), Survival, Environment, M.I and few other programs I can’t recall.
On the days at site, we slept in tent, proper tent of course. But we were also soaked with rain one day, I remember sitting in the rain, with raincoat, but it was still freezing and cold, waiting for students in our post.
So, that night, the bonfire was full of hanging cloths, hehhehehhe…
Bonfire was always fun. First, the challenge was to light it up, wet weather, longer time. During that time, others would cook. As seniors, we knew what was good for meals ;). Hot soup was favorite, yummy. Forget about instant noodle, we were happily load our backpack with potatoes, veggie, coca cola, can fruit (great!), chocolate, and by the way, we had fully supplied by the main camp anyway. Before that, we built our tents.
After the bonfire was up, everyone became housewife and hung their wet clothing. We gathered eagerly to warm ourselves. We had meeting, small talk, jokes, stories and planning around the bonfire. The guys took turn to patrol ourselves from wild animals. We always had few members who camped near the students and we would deliver some food for them. In the morning, after packing etc, we burned all the rubbish before we turned off the fire.
One day, we rested on the empty house above the hill. From there, we saw Bandung. It was sparkling with light down there in the city and million of stars above. Guess mountain is the best place to see stars, everything was so clear. It was beautiful and romantic…… :” )
The Last Night
Whew, because the path was long, we were stationed alone. It was quite scary I must say. Standing alone in the darkness, complete darkness because we would only shine our torches when a student approached. And my cheap torchlight was died, so I didn’t have anything to light up the surrounding. The wind was strong and because I had to stay at one point, I was shivering. When I was a student, exhaustion and walking erased all the fear and cold. After a while, it was ok, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Every time a student passed by, I would asked them to shine their torch in their face, otherwise, how would I see them ;)…
So, few hours, we conducted the MI process, I was paired with someone (:"( I can’t remember) to brief two students.
We finished everything when the day came. So the students were rushed to run down Tangkuban Perahu hill and we officially did small ceremony for them.
Triathlon
I almost missed it, lucky I didn’t.
It was like a fun gathering, every section of Kapa took part. Kapa was divided by four sections; mountaineering, rock climbing, water sport and environment. I was in rock climbing team. I think it was only three or four of us in this team who participated.
Gathered around, socialized and there we went.
First round was running around the campus. Then we proceed to Poltek Lake. We had four lakes in campus; Balairung, Poltek and two nameless lake we liked to use for jogging.
In Poltek Lake, we did kayaking. It was fun as we tried to push each other down to water (sportive attitude ;p).
After that, we proceed to the Faculty again, and did the wall climbing.
We enjoyed hanging around as much as doing the activities.
My team came at second place, close behind mountaineering. Not bad at all, considered about the number of people was very far apart. And of course (cough) we gave way. ;)
Those were mostly my big activities in Kapa. We also did small things like small gathering, reunion, bonfire in campus etc. I remember I was locked in the campus’s toilet at 4 a.m because we had the longest meeting I had ever attended. Too bad the toilet was located in another building, and no one was around to help. Lucky, I could take out the hinges and the whole door away. Spending a night in toilet was too much of an option.
We had few cancelled rafting trips, simply because the season was dry, and the water level was not high enough.
I didn’t active much in Kapa after that. The main reason was because everything was changing. Riot. We lost our shop and dogs. Racial tensions. I became hesitant to travel and preferred not to worry my parents more. Then there were more class demands and relationship.
So there was it.
I always have a regret not to do more. It was the best time to learn and to experience things I might hardly have the chance to do again. Sigh… :”(~~~~~
1996 is not so far away, but I don’t remember many of the details.
I had wonderful journeys with Kapa, too bad I didn’t write it down and now I forget most of the details. So instead of properly arranged, I will write whatever comes into my mind for my future reference. :)
Kapa is an organization in my Faculty, focusing on outdoor and fun activities. We had mountaineering, rock climbing, caving, kayaking, rafting, river crossing, and environment. At my time, the proportion was almost always female : male = 1: 4. Nowadays I heard they have more female…(and there goes all the fun? ;p)
I had been eyeing to join Kapa since my first day in campus. Although it was quite hard as I didn’t have any close friend to suffer together, I’m glad I didn’t back out.
PRE MEMBER
The Orientation
Divided by one-week class and one-week site orientation.
CLASS
It was an interesting paRt of the journey. I had to spend one lonely week in campus. Holiday time, nobody was around, and I had to attend class everyday.
I met some new friends, the classes was quite interesting. I remember CPR class, Environment Class which we had to perform a short drama :) (what is the connection with Kapa?)
Navigation class was the worst; I always suck in Navigation, until now. Why we have to count our life with that small little circle thingy that moves in whatever way it likes?
Lucky, the task was completed in-group.
There were many other interesting things to learn, I still keep the manual handbook. Like what we have to do if we encounter with wild animals, what could be eaten in jungles, knots, survival tips etc. We also had indoor practices like wall climbing, and if I don’t remember wrongly, we had our water class also.
Last day on class, we had to stay until pass midnight before we had another program. We didn’t know what to do, so we slept, talked, played paper airplane, read novels. We had known each other quite well; there were about thirty-five of us. Around 2 a.m, we were called one by one, the seniors called it M.I, it is a method to approach and put some ideology when your mind is flying high because of exhaustion.
So we had all the groups divided. There were seven groups; each group consisted of one female and four males. I had a great group with Willy, Handy, Ucok and Deddy. We had to prepare all the things we need for site orientation.
SITE
JATILUHUR
It was a long journey, we traveled by army trucks. Before that, we had to stand in the sun for about one hour with big backpack consisted of 5 litres water, rope, food, clothing etc. My cheap backpack broke that very moment, so Kapa lent me one. A lot of scolding, as usual, like military. :) We were introduced to seri. One seri means ten-time push-up with backpack. They were very generous with that I must say. :)
Water thingy
We had to cross the lake by swimming. The props were raincoat and dry leaves. We needed to fill the raincoat with leaves and tied them all together with plastic rope, that was it. I was the first one. Hell, finish first, rest first, dry up first, right? :)
When I was swimming, clinging to the raincoat to keep me floating, the seniors did their job, scolded, asked me to report, which group I was in blabla, it was good to keep me out of breath. Half way, water started to come into the raincoat, so I had to swim faster and reached the edge safety. Ha, I had a lot of time to dry everything in my backpack while waiting for the others. I think it was raining the night before, because there were a lot of laundries anywhere from everybody. :)
Next, we had to handle a traditional fishing boat and drove it to the other side of the lake, I thought everything went well, until I looked back and saw I was forty-five degree away from where I started. Then, we had to do the same with one-seater kayak, kayak was easier to control, but it was tedious to climb back to it after we did the accident drill. So, we had to climb from the back, moving while sitting and put the backside first inside the kayak, then the legs. Although everything was done under pressure, it was fun. Just pretended to be deaf and everything would be fine. :)
Next, we had to march the river as a group with rubber boat. It was hard to coordinate with about six to eight people on the boat; we had a leader to give the command. Left, right….Then the scenario, the boat would be upside down and we made it back up, alone. So, we had to stand at the edge of the boat, pulled the ropes attached to the boat and put all the body weight in our back until the boat flipped. Of course, when it flipped, we were turned upside down in the water.
It was a wet day, but the most fun part of the journey. :)
Climbing thingy
Rock climbing! The wall was divided into three. One for girls, one for boys and one for jumaring (hope it spelled correctly). Jumaring is the type of climbing when you use a tool hanging on the rope. So it is attached to your harness and you climb step to step by pushing it up. Just like those monkey toys or those climbing ondel2, :) I don’t know how to describe it. It was the hardest thing to do, arm strength was majorly needed, which was hard for girls.
Manual climbing was much easier for me. I finished the wall quite fast because the longer I hung up there, the more tired I was. That time, I also volunteered to be the first. So, the day supposed to be over for me, but the senior asked me to try the boy’s wall. It was more difficult and took longer, but I also finished it.
Rock climbing is easier than artificial wall climbing. We can use any kind of help, the crack, plant, root, the uneven stone protruding can provide good helps. With wall, everything relies on the points, and the scenery in nature is much stronger motivation to reach the top. Nice.
It was also my favorite day, the day I became black in color :)
Search and Rescue
For me, it was the toughest part of all. We had to navigate, and looked for victim, and the route was very steep. I remember we had to lie flat on the chest to avoid sliding down. The problem was with our backpacks. So we formed human chain, and transferred all the bags up to the ‘hill’ before we climbed ourselves. The guys were helpful; those sloppy, ignorant bad boys and easy-going guys were gentlemen in Nature. Hehehhehee :) Really.
The navigation. Arggghhh. We had to follow clues. Hmmmmm..Wild Amazing Race.
Survival Thingy
We had to survive for two or three days with one pack of instant noodle shared by five of us. The seniors took our food away. For me, I was quite ok; all the tiredness killed my appetite. But poor boys, they were hungry!
We did find some survival things, like jack fruit. One jackfruit shared by seven groups, I had one, one seed, but it was good. :) We also found a bunch of banana, and drool ourselves thinking about pisang bakar, so we heated up the fire and try to roast the banana. But, damn banana! It was not ripe enough and full of rocks! Don’t know what kind of banana was it…so with little ceremony, we threw it away.
One of my friend, managed to hide choki2, those long chocolate candy. He shared it with every group. Each group got about one fifth part of the fifteen cm choki2, and we boiled it with one big tin, so it became…chocolate soup. It was nice actually, counting on how desperate we were.
Once, we tried to cook salad. So we collected every clean-looking leaves and boiled it with our precious water. Turned out it was as bitter as don’t know what. :(
Hehehhehe it was so sad………….
At the end of second day, we gave up and shared the instant noodle. Honestly, it barely helped :)
That was all about food, about water, ... We ran out of water once, and what we did was stayed up all night to collect rainwater. Everybody was awake and having fun, I don’t know how but we were always happy. To make the water drinkable, in look and taste, we would throw in a pill of black Norit (to purify the water but the water will turn black in colour) or Nutrisari. :)
We had those performers who kept us laughing. They impersonated the seniors; we even had our own song. :) I remembered Michael and Idris the most for their performances.
Others
I guess we had to go to native’s house and befriend with them, asked them some questionnaires about environment things and made a report (what a damn thing to do in the jungle!)
The Last night
It was a cold bloody night. We had to be separated and walked to the jungle on our own, and reported to every senior we met on the way. Report means you have to shout your details to their face. Name, number, group, again, military procedure.
Stunts and series of pushup all the way. We got used to it at this point.
So, along the way, punishment, series, encountered with cow, snake, bugs, then we were gathered together beside the lake. It was freezing. We were ignored, until about two a.m, and again, M.I method.
I was paired with Ishak, and I think the senior who M.I us was out of mind. We had to sit half soaked in the lake while listening to what he said, answered questions, we were shivering. So, after what felt like hours, we were rush to one point, we had to cross the river by scaling through a rope, with position like roasted pig, with backpack. It was quite easy and I had to move fast to warm myself. Actually, I moved fast because the seniors kept shouting to go faster, because somebody was catching up. I didn’t know the one who catched up was me, I thought I was the one being shouted at.
So, again, wet and cold, we were rushed like sheep to run through the water. It was like endless nightmare, and damn hard to run through the water, I kept falling down until a guy grabbed my hand and we ran together. Duh…. :”))
Apparently, at the other side of the lake, every seniors was waiting for us. So, we were officially member. With small ceremony, we were served with sate kambing and all those heavenly food we longed for. Those fierce militaries became very friendly and human indeed. We were treated specially and blended in well. :)
Extras
On our first night, our group was lost. We reached a cave, which we didn’t know what it was. So we spent sometime resting and hanging around there until we moved on. After the orientation, we were told that it was a closed area; It was a haunted cave, as it was used as an execution place in Dutch occupation.
It was good not to know.
We were not allowed with any kinds of luxury. So for accommodation, we had to combine out ponco/raincoat, and spread it half a meter above the ground, so we could slip in and sleep. The ‘sleeping bag’ was indeed plastic used for body bag. Uhmpph… but that thing was very useful indeed. Trash bag was and is still used until now for the inner layer of the backpack, to protect the things inside.
There were always one or two nights when the senior would wake us up in midnight and asked us to move. Packed everything, included the hard built ‘accommodation’, stuffed everything in backpack (in the dark) and everything had to be inside backpack, no hanging things, no plastic bag. Then sleepy, tired, angry, we had to walk few kilometers before they allowed us to camp again. We didn’t camp after that of course, we were just lie everywhere comfortable :), but sunrise under the sky was magnificent. When the weather was bad, we hardly sleep, even if we already built a wall around us with backpacks, it would still damn cold anyway. Other than weather, we also couldn’t sleep when we did the search and rescue exercise. We had to camp in a very steep area, I remembered that we kept sliding down while sleeping. Mhe-he..!
MEMBER
After became a member, I could follow every activities and used all facilities.
Rock Climbing
It was so-called thing I was good at, although I also like the other section; I was advised to concentrate on this section more. Well, I was slim back then …. :)
So, sometimes, we practiced on the wall behind my faculty. I don’t like artificial wall, so I didn’t do it much.
The first trip I went was one-day trip. Can’t remember much now. It was a not so tall but hard route rock.
The second trip was to Citatah, we had to take bus at night and reached there in the morning. First route was quite tricky; we needed to count on the crack on the wall to climb. I have never used the magnesium powder, because my hands are never wet. It was a ‘dirty’ track, as there were many plants around. In the past, my friend Ridwan broke his leg because he fell from this rock. Lucky, I didn’t have many difficulties.
When I reached the top, I had the most amazing view I’ve ever seen that time. It was sunset, and the sun was upside down, because there was like a cloud above it. Everything was orange and it was quiet. I stood against the wall and there was a wide rock below me, so I could sit for a while. If only I had this thing behind my yard, I would climb it everyday to see the sunset, therefore, I would never grow fat! ;)
So, we called it a night. Next day, I had to climb without route. So, I would be the one who opened the way. It was for my practice. Rifky, a kind senior was giving me good mentor and guidance. So I carried all the safety props, hammer, all shape that I could put along a way and began to climb. Every time I found good point, I would plant in the hook that matched. Finger points, cracked points, I learned a lot that day. Until now, I’m very thankful esp for Rifky and Ridwan for their special guidance to make me better.
Too bad, and I seriously regret it until now, I didn’t put enough time on that. I was too busy with study and family etc, so I abandoned the next big project, Parang. It was a magnificent wall with almost flat surface. They spent I think about two nights there. If only I have the chance to do this sport again with those supports that I had, I strongly would. :’)
Mountaneering
Ladies Team, peak of Cikurai
Tati, Icha, Yenny, Grace and me.
It was five of us, all ladies, scaling the second highest mountain in West/North Java? I was told that it stood at 2800 metres high? Not really sure, but this is a perfect cone shape mountain.
We reached intercity terminal at night, and spent half the night there waiting for bus, so we slept at mushola. That was how safe was Jakarta. All girls, slept in stranger place. How I miss that time.
So we had long journey with big bus, and reached there in the morning.
We rode with ojek until the starting point. The team leader, Tati, started to navigate (ups) and we were out in our way. It was a long journey, and I must say there was nothing to see along the way. All dense jungle. The higher it was, the colder it became. So every break was only about few minutes, back to back without releasing the huge backpack. It was getting very cold that my can of coke tasted the best up there, out from natural fridge :D.
Then it was, one of the girl, Grace, kind of feeling unwell. She was having breakdown and confessed that she had pneumonia history. So, hand to hand, we had to..ugh..carried her backpack too. The journey was not totally smooth, there was a vertical route which we had to climb and one time, we had to walk by a huge tree that collapsed along the route. Route means half a metre to one metre wide path. Path is soil without grass because many people had passed it. On one side, or two sides, would be steep valley. Once, we dropped Grace’s backpack while we were scaling the vertical way, and it stopped at the edge of the valley, man! 80 litres backpack!
We took good eight hours to reach the top. By the way, we met another group of climbers. We didn’t go to the top yet, as it was already nighttime. So, we camped below the peak and spent the night there. I swore I heard the sound of ocean wave, I don’t know whether it was possible, but it was quite strong. We had hot soup and good meal. After the bonfire turned dim, it was very very dark. Scary? Uh, a bit.
Before sunrise, we eagerly left everything behind and climbed to the peak, and whew, it was the most beautiful scenery there (I will say this sentence again and again in my life hopefully :). We were looking above the cloud, high above the ground, to another mountain in front. The coolest thing was, the shadow of Cikurai was reflected at the other mountain as a perfect cone shape. We stood there speechless for a while.
The other group turned out to camp in the peak, they prepared breakfast and invited us. They were all guys, but very kind and friendly. We had roasted monkey nuts. It was very nice. Hey, everything tastes good up there!
When we reached the starting point, we took ojek down again. Journey down was scarier than anything else. Rode the motorcycle, sometimes to nowhere as it was the edge for the mountain before turning to right or left. Then, the ojek insisted of carry me together with Yenny as we were the skinniest, with two backpacks on the right and left hand side. We fell once. Ouch.
Although it was painful the days after, it worth every muscle. ;)
Environment
We had a few days trip to Thousand Islands (Pulau Seribu).
This trip was merely to conduct survey about the life of the native and maybe took further step to make it happened.
We gathered in Muara Angke dock and took a boat trip. I remember it was noon to nighttime. We had bad weather at night, the boat rocked like kora2, up and down. All the water went in and soaked the boat. I only sat in the middle of the boat with Handy, both pale-faced. Everyone in front us was either lying down or throwing up to the sea. The water level in the boat reached a dangerous height, and l reached my safety point, had to kneel down on the boat side and emptied my stomach also.
After that, the ocean started to calm down. We reached the island at midnight. Pulau Pramuka (l remember!) and all of us slept at the school hall. It was quite a developed island.
We went and stay in another island the next morning (I forget!), and begun our mission. Went from house to house, talked with the native about their ways of living, their times and purposes with the main island, their living structure and even their washroom.:) We learned that government has built a toilet complex for them, but they still preferred to do it traditional way; they built their washroom out above the sea, they said it provided good view to do their business. For the record, we had our own washroom then :).
I’m planning to dive in Thousand lslands in January 2006, don't tell me.... :)
Of course we will go to another island (l hope), we have 110 islands to choose from. Thousand lslands is actually consists of 110 lslands only, not even close to a thousand :).
It was fasting month for the Muslim, most of Kapa's members were Christians that time, but there was no such problem like racism or fanatics. So we were ‘fasting’ with them, we had breakfast at dawn and dinner at twilight, for lunch, we roamed around the island looking for warung. Apparently, the natives had multiple religions also, so no problem.
Everyday, after completing our tasks, we would go to neighboring island, to learn a bit about the cultures. I remembered there was an island dedicated for the deaths, so they would leave the deceases there. If I’m not wrong, without burial. Because of respect, we didn't visit that island (Thank God!).
We visited a turtle conservation, while we watched the turtle being taken care of. Any sizes, I had nice pictures of that, but maybe in Handy's or Kapa's camera. :)
We also do some shopping, simple fishing kit; kite string, hook and bread for bait. We would sit at the edge of the pier and fishing. The water was very clear. They managed to catch some small fish, small grouper (yummy). When a fish was caught, it would die slowly and painfully (snif) so Dedih used umbrella to knock them out. Cruel...but fast. FYI, I only watched, didn't take part as I was afraid of fish back then.
Strolled along the beaches, played with water and....slept. Ocean air always knocked me out, no insomnia. Morning, noon or night, if l lied down, there was it.
End of journey, we happily bought dried seaweed back. We were accompanied by flying fish on the way back along the boat, lots of them. I wonder why I’ve never seen these flying fish outside Indonesia. And there were dolphins too. Nice.
New student’s Orientation
So it was my turn to be a bad guy :). Too bad I only made in on Thursday, they had been in site since few days before. So with few other friends, we departed on Thursday night, catch bus to Tangkuban Perahu, the Orientation site.
We met the rest of the group at one point there and moved to the main camp.
Main camp for seniors was a big tent with generator, so we had electricity, bonfire, kitchen and a lot of place to sleep. I remember D.B, Tri, Handy, Ison, Uni, Nina and many of them. On the first night DB showed me around the beach, he almost lost his slipper in the dark. I only met older members like Horis and argh..,can’t remember names. They were die-hard adventurer and cool. :)
So we had to station at ways passed by the students, gave them briefing and orientation, scolded them and gave them series. Hmmm :) any smaaall reasonable mistakes was enough to land them few series. Sometimes we took the post in pair or alone. Senior’s task was tougher, we had to keep contact with each other, made sure we delivered all the learning points well and catched up with student’s positions and conditions. Because I went there last few days, I missed taking care of water sport and rock climbing, so left Search and Rescue (Errrrgh..), Survival, Environment, M.I and few other programs I can’t recall.
On the days at site, we slept in tent, proper tent of course. But we were also soaked with rain one day, I remember sitting in the rain, with raincoat, but it was still freezing and cold, waiting for students in our post.
So, that night, the bonfire was full of hanging cloths, hehhehehhe…
Bonfire was always fun. First, the challenge was to light it up, wet weather, longer time. During that time, others would cook. As seniors, we knew what was good for meals ;). Hot soup was favorite, yummy. Forget about instant noodle, we were happily load our backpack with potatoes, veggie, coca cola, can fruit (great!), chocolate, and by the way, we had fully supplied by the main camp anyway. Before that, we built our tents.
After the bonfire was up, everyone became housewife and hung their wet clothing. We gathered eagerly to warm ourselves. We had meeting, small talk, jokes, stories and planning around the bonfire. The guys took turn to patrol ourselves from wild animals. We always had few members who camped near the students and we would deliver some food for them. In the morning, after packing etc, we burned all the rubbish before we turned off the fire.
One day, we rested on the empty house above the hill. From there, we saw Bandung. It was sparkling with light down there in the city and million of stars above. Guess mountain is the best place to see stars, everything was so clear. It was beautiful and romantic…… :” )
The Last Night
Whew, because the path was long, we were stationed alone. It was quite scary I must say. Standing alone in the darkness, complete darkness because we would only shine our torches when a student approached. And my cheap torchlight was died, so I didn’t have anything to light up the surrounding. The wind was strong and because I had to stay at one point, I was shivering. When I was a student, exhaustion and walking erased all the fear and cold. After a while, it was ok, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Every time a student passed by, I would asked them to shine their torch in their face, otherwise, how would I see them ;)…
So, few hours, we conducted the MI process, I was paired with someone (:"( I can’t remember) to brief two students.
We finished everything when the day came. So the students were rushed to run down Tangkuban Perahu hill and we officially did small ceremony for them.
Triathlon
I almost missed it, lucky I didn’t.
It was like a fun gathering, every section of Kapa took part. Kapa was divided by four sections; mountaineering, rock climbing, water sport and environment. I was in rock climbing team. I think it was only three or four of us in this team who participated.
Gathered around, socialized and there we went.
First round was running around the campus. Then we proceed to Poltek Lake. We had four lakes in campus; Balairung, Poltek and two nameless lake we liked to use for jogging.
In Poltek Lake, we did kayaking. It was fun as we tried to push each other down to water (sportive attitude ;p).
After that, we proceed to the Faculty again, and did the wall climbing.
We enjoyed hanging around as much as doing the activities.
My team came at second place, close behind mountaineering. Not bad at all, considered about the number of people was very far apart. And of course (cough) we gave way. ;)
Those were mostly my big activities in Kapa. We also did small things like small gathering, reunion, bonfire in campus etc. I remember I was locked in the campus’s toilet at 4 a.m because we had the longest meeting I had ever attended. Too bad the toilet was located in another building, and no one was around to help. Lucky, I could take out the hinges and the whole door away. Spending a night in toilet was too much of an option.
We had few cancelled rafting trips, simply because the season was dry, and the water level was not high enough.
I didn’t active much in Kapa after that. The main reason was because everything was changing. Riot. We lost our shop and dogs. Racial tensions. I became hesitant to travel and preferred not to worry my parents more. Then there were more class demands and relationship.
So there was it.
I always have a regret not to do more. It was the best time to learn and to experience things I might hardly have the chance to do again. Sigh… :”(~~~~~
posted by aping | 11:23 PM
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