Indonesian braves jungles, champions literacy

MANILA, Philippines - Forty-two-year-old anthropologist-educator Saur Marlina “Butet” Manurung not only survived the wilds of Indonesia – including an attack by a mother bear – but also the wrath of the Orang Rimba (forest people) who hated her campaign for literacy among their young people.

Manurung, one of this year’s recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, has been teaching indigenous children in her country for years so they can represent their elders before the national government and speak on policies that impact the lives of forest people.

In 2003, Manurung, along with other non-government organizations that advocate forest conservation, founded Sokola Rimba (jungle school).

Manurung used to teach the children how to read, write and count secretly because Orang Rimba prohibits them from getting an education.

“Sometimes we hid in the bush the books but then one day the elders found out and they burned the books and asked us to leave,” she said.

“I have to promise them not to teach again so I can come. I came back but still we do schooling but not with book and pencil, we’re just talking,” Manurung told The STAR.

Since the Orang Rimba are hunter-gatherers, Sokola schedules are flexible and teachers must follow them as they move, she said.

Currently, Sokola Rimba has 14 schools and 18 volunteer teachers mentoring different tribes.

Manurung said Sokola Rimba uses a very unique curriculum, designed to address the problems and needs of the Orang Rimba.

Manurung was born in Jakarta on Feb. 21, 1972. She is expecting her first child with her Australian husband, after three miscarriages.

She was a recipient of the Young Global Leader award from the World Economic Forum in 2009 and the Social Entrepreneur of the Year from Ernst and Young in Indonesia in 2012.

When she was a child Manurung wanted to be like Indiana Jones.

“I think the jungle chose me,” she said. “I kept telling my parents that I want to work in the jungle someday and they said you don’t have any idea what is a jungle. They said Indiana Jones is just a character and I said I will be the real one, you will see and I was sure of that.”

Manurung shared how she was attacked by a mother bear.

“I was walking with the kids in the jungle looking for fruits, checking traps we put two days ago. In one of the traps we found a baby bear. The mother was there trying to have the baby come out of this trap but his hand was already rotten,” she said. “The kids tried to get the baby for lunch and the mother chased us, and the kids already climbed the tree. I could not climb the tree, I struggled to go up and the kids came down and pushed my bottom. I was crying and also laughing because I think I was funny,” she recounted.

She said the kids stopped the mother bear and sent her away.

“They killed the baby bear and at the top of the tree I was crying, I told them not to kill the baby bear. ‘Please don’t kill, it’s just a baby let him reunite with his mother,’ but one of the kids said, ‘Ma’am please don’t say that, if God heard you he would not send food anymore, what’s in our trap, what’s in front of us, that food was sent by God’,” Manurung said. “I have to think the way they think – that is a lesson to me.”

One incident changed the outlook of the Orang Rimba elders on education.

“There was a territorial dispute among the jungle people. The village chief of the Orang Rimba was asked to put his thumbprint on a written agreement. But one of the kids stopped them and said let me read it first. I said ‘Oh my God not now,’” Manurung recalled.

“I hid in one of the trees and I saw the boy reading the agreement slowly, it took him hours to read it. He pointed out some inaccuracies in the agreement. He told them ‘this is not right, this is not the way you said it before. Change this. You are taking advantage of our illiteracy, change this’,” Manurung said.

“They were yelling and the father said ‘you tried to cheat us, don’t try to do it, my son can read,’” Manurung said.

“We might not stay in the jungle forever but we can do this initiative forever because we have the same vision,” she said.