Earth Hour: It’s Your Call
To celebrate Earth Hour, everyone who has concern in the making of better world in the future was turning off their electricity, last night. It really means something if everyone did it collectively. The action really saved an amount of energy, as well as reducing glass house gasses. The movement also followed by corporate and commercial building and districts. As it is regarded as voluntary action, we couldn’t expect that every city corner will be left blackout for an hour. A few spots wouldn’t have significant difference. Surely a few people would (always) have the wisdom not to follow the invitation. For everyone, it’s your call!
Picture was taken in M.H. Thamrin Street, Central Jakarta, during Earth Hour action, March 31, 2012.
Meeting Point
Maghrib is the sacred meeting point of the day and night, between professional and social relationships, between moment scattered and moment gathered. In the month of Ramadan – for Muslims – maghrib become a meeting point between the fulfillments of earthly with heavenly needs. The meeting moment – only during Ramadan – marked by increased activity of buying and selling.
Various elements are gathered in certain point during Ramadhan sunsets. Some muslims spend their evening breaking their fast in places that occur only in Ramadhan. The ritual is driven by economic motives. Transactional moment not only become a moment of buyers and sellers to meet each other. But also a meeting moment of many aspects.
People buy, products are sold and goods are consumed. Prices are observed to spike, too. when they all converge at places where they can celebrate their renewal of faith. These meeting points become a silent metaphor for the convergence of religion and trade, of spiritual and the worldly, and of light and the dark.
Photographs by: Hermitianta P. Putra
Music : Correo Aereo - Fiesta Llanera
Hundreds of villagers are passing the village road in a hurry. They’re sharing various expression, breaking the silent morning in Terong Village, Dlingo, Bantul, Yogyakarta Province, Indonesia. Just a few moment before, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake shook the region.
Panic villagers are following the village authority instruction to go to a meeting point. They’re heading to a field where other villagers are already gathered. A few are injured in the head an legs. Some others covered with dust, presumably the earthquake had his house brought down.
In the gathering field, paramedics are hurrying. They’re taking injured villagers out of the ambulance and send them into medical tent full with screaming girls and groaning old man. Inside the survivor tent, an old woman give a stiff gaze to a crying mother, whose husband was buried under their home. Babies and childrens cry. Many older villagers remembering the scenes of 2006 earthquake that killed thousands people.
It was a simulation scenario for earthquake disaster treatment that implemented in Terong Village, Dlingo, Bantul, Yogyakarta Province, Indonesia, last January.
Terong Village has a vulnerability to natural disasters such as earthquakes, landslides, and hurricanes. Such training is expected to provide knowledge for citizens to suppress the number of casualties in the event of actual disasters. In the catastrophic 2006 earthquake, the death toll from the village is 7 people and 40 others injured. (mit)
My early months when I worked for Radar Jogja, a local newspaper in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, were quite memorable. In November 2008, I assigned to cover a rally about education regulation in one of national college, Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga. Actually I was late for the initial act on the street, precisely on a T-junction near the college. The demonstrators, mostly college students, had already come back to their college. But my friend and a police intelligence told me that I should wait. Probably there would be a greater act from the demonstrators, they said. And they were right. A few hours after, the police forced student college to finish their act and go home. But the college students were provoked. They started to throw stones to the street from inside the college fences. Then they negotiated that the police should go away first. The police fulfilled the college students request, and decided to wait near the T-junction in case for another chaos. And it happened again. The college students performed another act. They burned tyres in the middle of the street, causing traffic jam. The police managed to disperse the act and caught a suspected provokator student. But then many college students got angry. They started to throw stones wildly onto the police. The traffic on T-junction had to be cleared as stones were falling from the sky. A KOMPAS photographer were injured on the forehead. As a newbie, I had all the guts to get closer in order to get the close up shot of the riot. I didn’t even know that my friend had already become a victim during the riot. And I didn’t even use my helmet to cover my head, just like my other friends did. I was young, brave, and careless at that time. But that was my first lesson. I should protect myself. Something bad could happen at anytime.
Sleeping Ugly
A person sleeps near a road-post in Old Town District, West Jakarta, Indonesia. It’s almost 7 in the morning but he still covered in a blanket and gives impression like a moslem-dead-man wrapped in a grave-clothes left on the sidewalk.
SAJA (Sekolah Anak Jalanan, School for Street Children) is a free-of-charge independent school in Penjaringan, North Jakarta, Indonesia. The school made for street kid established in 2001. The students are mostly children from under-privileged families. From the start, SAJA mission is to build independent individuals under an equal education framework. It is funded by NGOs and private donation. Now it has 117 pre-elementary and elementary students from around neighborhood.
