Pride Day August 2019

Today was that time of the year when LFP team and Cipaganti village stay together to celebrate lorises: Pride day! And it was the first time for me…

Kids holding #saveJavanslowloris fliers with our loris mascotte. Photo credits: Wawan Tarniwan

My first Pride Day

As it was my first Pride Day as Field Station Coordinator, I felt excited to experience the Pride Day. Since it is a huge event, it required a lot of organization, many meetings with the Kepala Desa (Municipality office) and a lot of planning, so we started organizing it in early July. Some of the activities for the Pride Day actually started the 1st of August with all the sports tournaments, and the days before the Pride Day there were the finals of the games we organized in the village (futsal, traditional badminton, volleyball, and many more!). Unluckily, some days before the Pride I got ill and I needed to go to the hospital for a few days, so I missed all these finals 🙁 although all the other members of the team managed to be there. But luckily I got dismissed on Friday night and I managed to be there for the last preparations and for the Pride Day, that I now describe you in detail!

Marco during the final of futsal tournament. Photo credit: Dendi Rustandi

This year’s main novelty

The main novelty of this year was that we introduced a new competition between the six Rukun Warga (RW, community) in Cipaganti: the cleanest RW competition! We asked, together with the Kepala Desa, each RW to clean their roads and rivers and we went there to evaluate which was the best RW two days before the Pride Day. This initiative is in line with the new coffee programme that started this year. We aim to raise awareness on the importance of the environment in the villages, especially to farmers promoting Wildlife Friendly practices. Waste management and pollution control are major aims of LFP that is working together with the Kepala Desa and local farmers for this. Villagers worked hard to win the competition but only one RW can win…well..actually two! Because LFP jury gave the same score to two RW that did an amazing job in cleaning their roads: Cikati and Cigunung. Well done to both!

Villagers of Cipaganti collaborating in collecting the trash cleaned from the roads of their RW. Photo credit: Aconk (Dede Ahmad)

All the other activities

This year we decided to give more time to each RW for their shows, and each RW had several performances planned! And also lorises seem to enjoy that as you can see in the picture! We also had traditional music! And there were also many games!

Loris mascots (Helene and I) dancing during the exhibit of one of the RW. Photo credit: Marco Campera

1. Panjat pinang – a team consisting of several people climb a big bamboo pole. The pole has a height around 6-8 m. The pole is covered by something slippery, like oil. There are a lot of gifts at the top of the pole. The person that can reach the top win the games and can take the gifts. But the kids and adults did a lot of team work to try to reach the top and they shared the gifts…well done doing team work guys!

Boys helping each other to reach the top of the bamboo to get the prices during Panjat pinang game. Photo credit: Wawan Tarniwan

2. Balap karung – A racing game. The racetrack consist of starting line and finish line. There’s a rice sack at the finish line on each track. The participants stand in the starting line. On the referee mark, the participant must run to the finish line, to take and wear the rice sack (put both of their legs/lower body in the sack). After that, the participants must race to the starting line and back to the finish line.

3. Balap kerupuk – kerupuk is one of the common Indonesian snacks. Several kerupuk were hanged up with certain distance on top of their head. The participants must finish the kerupuk as fast as possible, without using their hands.

4. Balap kelereng – A racing game where the participants must race from starting line to checkpoint line, and go back to starting line. While doing the race, the participants must hold a spoon with a small marble on it in their mouth. If the marble dropped, the participants must start over from the starting line, or the checkpoint if they already past the checkpoint.

5. Memasukkan benang ke jarum – a racing game where the participants try to race from the start line to finish line. The participants must insert a thread into a small needle while doing the race.

6. Tarik tambang – a contest of strength between two teams. There’s a rope with a team on each end. The team then try to pull the rope. The team that got pulled loses.

Women playing tarik tambang. Photo credit: Wawan Tarniwan

Education in between games and prizes!

In between games, we did education sessions, with questions and LFP prizes for correct answers to both kids and adults. We asked questions about loris and wildlife in general, with specific questions for the animals in Cipaganti. We also prepared a quick experiment to show how soil without trees is quickly eroded. We prepared one bottle with just soil and one bottle with soil and small trees and we passed water on both of them. We showed that passing the water in the one with just soil is depleting all the soil, while if there are trees only a few soil is depleted. We let them think about the importance of trees and keeping the forest. In line with the coffee programme, where we now plan to plant more trees in coffee plantations to increase connectivity and increase soil and coffee quality. At the end, we had the awards, with prizes for the top three positions of each game. And we also awarded the winners of sports competitions completed the previous days. It was a very long day, from 7 am to around 6 pm, full of games for kids (mainly) and adults! I enjoyed it, especially the Balap karung that I tried and I fell after 3 meters…Thanks to all the team, the volunteers, the villagers, and of course our lorises for this amazing experience!MICHELA BALESTRI