Small miracle in Central Java’s Bebekan

Helping can be fun: Sarah Diorita (right) sits with the children’s playgroup in Bebekan. Every Wednesday morning, Sarah and her mother Elisabeth organize a playgroup for around 30 kids up to the age of four. Courtesy of PAUD Elisabeth D. Inandiak, first came to Java years ago as a young French writer for Actuel.

The monthly magazine no longer exists, but it was her vehicle to Central Javanese culture and mentality.

Elisabeth, who hails from Lyon, moved up north to the French capital at a young age to become a writer. Sent to Indonesia, she then fell in love with Yogyakarta and its people.

Through serendipity, she immediately felt at home. Here she met and married an Indonesian whom she has since divorced. However, they had a baby girl named Sarah Diorita who is now 19.

Their daughter recently married 31-year-old famous Indonesian musician, Eross Candra, the guitarist of Sheila on 7, also born in Yogyakarta like Sarah. He composed the music for the film Tiga Puluh Hari untuk mencari Cinta.

With her mother, and then with her husband, Sarah lived on the southern slopes of Mount Merapi.

She grew up and attended school in the special municipality and province of Indonesia. Later Sarah, a brilliant pupil, garnered a place in the business section of a prestigious university after graduating from high school. Nevertheless the tall, slim adolescent had doubts about university.

In true Javanese style, Sarah, a charming blend of France and Indonesia, and a recent top photo model, asked her husband and mother for permission to plunge straight into the world of business. They agreed.

The young bride opted for the ecological path to help those less privileged citizens. Here Sarah followed her mother’s principles. The project that concerns Sarah and her mother revolves around the village of Bebekan.

They have established a complete rescue plan together with the villagers since the earthquake in 2006 and installed a “Visit Bebekan” program.

In an extract from the travel brochure about this village, in the administrative area of Bantul, we can read the following description: In Central Java, 40 minutes south of Yogyakarta, behind the curtain
of blooming sugar cane fields

running towards the Indian Ocean, the village of Bebekan arises as a smiling island floating on a sea of rice fields.

The Giri Gino Guno Center owes its existence to two tragic events. In 1942, the land owner, Mr. Gino, was deported by the Japanese army to a forced labor camp in Sumatra.

On May 27, 2006, a powerful earthquake destroyed 95 of the 100 houses standing in the village of Bebekan. Supported by aid coming from a network of friends around the world, and by Carrefour Indonesia, the inhabitants of Bebekan have turned this unfortunate past into a real utopia.

The French mother and her daughter are not alone in their efforts. They received help from Asep Surya Widjaja, a member of the Search and Rescue Team (SAR) who rushed to the spot shortly after the earthquake.

He has remained active in the project until now. The three joined efforts in the innumerable voyages from Sleman to Bebekan in a tiny jeep transporting quantities of important commodities such as
buckets and nails, besides small packets of food.

The roads were a nightmare to negotiate as many were destroyed. Their principle is “small is
beautiful”, to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.

Carrefour, the French company implanted in the region, was willing to offer funds for the construction of the community center, while Asep’s team and Elisabeth provided logistics and a pragmatic approach.

More importantly, the surviving villagers also helped themselves, in true gotong-royong style, to rebuild their destroyed homes despite many injuries and deaths.

Four years later hardly a trace of the catastrophe remains, except for several graves. The small
miracle produced a better designed village of Bebekan on the flank of the hillside, amidst a bamboo and teak forest.

The community center promotes encounters between culture and agriculture, education and micro-economics.

A library, within the precincts of the traditional dance pavilion, complete with computers, jostles the gongs, drums and gamelan brass-bells.

Giri Gino Guno means hill of great value and benefit in Javanese. On the top of the hillock, in traditional wooden houses, two artists’ residencies and guest rooms are partially surrounded by a garden of medicinal plants. These buildings overlook the verdant rice-fields of Bantul.

The trip to Bebekan is quite hair-raising over the ring-roads on the outskirts of Yogyakarta, and then onto the smaller roads, winding their way through verdant green rice-fields, past the caves where Diponegoro settled his headquarters in the jungle-covered hills to fight a liberation war against the Dutch (1825-1830).

In mid-July this year, the peaks of all eight volcanoes surrounding Yogyakarta were wreathed in swirling clouds of mist, but it never rained. Sarah, accompanied by her husband and her mother, were in Bebekan to direct a children’s playgroup — an activity Sarah partakes in every Wednesday morning.

An imposing joglo house serves as the community center, where about 30 excited kids, aged from one to four years, were sitting around with their mothers, waiting for Sarah and Elisabeth to unpack their material for the morning’s program.

Soon after, the children joined in singing, dancing and drawing pictures, even creating paper art. The mothers had a good giggle, while elder siblings also joined in the fun.

All around, the rice-fields twinkled in emerald green prior to harvest time.
 

Visitors can stay in Bebekan for the novel experience of living in a genuine village in Java.
For more information, visit www.bebekan.blogspot.com or contact the organizers of these short stays at giriginoguno@gmail.com
Rooms per night start at Rp 120,000,
excluding meals.