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‘Gapura’ decorating contests liven up Independence Day
With its special meaning of welcoming residents and visitors, decorating gapura (gateways) has long been a tradition to celebrate Independence Day on Aug
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span>With its special meaning of welcoming residents and visitors, decorating gapura (gateways) has long been a tradition to celebrate Independence Day on Aug. 17, and some communities have joined in the fun to enliven their neighborhood with a gapura competition.
A national gapura decorating contest held by the government has inspired a community unit (RW) in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta to build a massive gapura after seven years of not upholding the tradition.
Decorated in the theme of the country’s motto Bhineka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity), the residents worked hand in hand to build a 6.5-meter-tall and 7-m-wide gapura adorning the entrance to their neighborhood.
Dedy Chaidir, the head of RW 04 in Taman Tanah Abang 03, where the gapura is located, said that initially residents had no intention of taking part in the competition. However, after a local flower shop offered to help construct it for the community, the residents then accepted the idea.
“We had not built or decorated a gapura for the last seven years after an 8-m-tall bamboo gapura we built collapsed because of poor construction,” he told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
The owner of the flower shop Emerys Flower, Sarah Sugandy, said she was encouraged to help build the gapura for her community after seeing an advertisement for a gapura decorating competition in a movie theater.
As many as 25 employees built the massive gapura in around a week with the help of local residents.
To commemorate the 74th anniversary of the nation’s independence, the Home Ministry organized its first gapura decorating contest called Festival Gapura Cinta Negeri (Love the Country Gapura Festival). It offers a total prize of Rp 1 billion (US$70,237.05) for the winners and a chance to meet president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to receive the trophies. Registration for the competition closed on Sunday and a total of 1,793 gapuras from across the archipelago have registered through the official website gapuracintanegeri.com.
Sarah explained that she discussed her design with the residents because there were a lot of challenges to build the large gateway in the densely populated Tanah Abang area.
“Building a gapura in the city is not easy. It needs to be high enough so that cars can pass underneath, but it should not touch the power cables. The ground must be level so that the gapura is stable, and it should not block someone’s entryway. It’s hard to find a place that meets all of those requirements” she said.
Sarah said she used three kinds of national flowers to decorate the gapura, namely jasmine, moon orchids and fake corpse lilies made from washbasins. She also put 34 dolls on the gapura, each carrying a sigil of one of the 34 provinces of Indonesia. She also designed two human-sized ondel-ondel (giant Betawi effigies) on the pillars.
“All the materials for the gapura decoration are recyclable and were taken from the shop’s previous decoration projects, so I did not spend a lot of money on building it,” she said.
Residents of Kalideres district in West Jakarta also celebrated the country’s Independence Day by taking part in a gapura decorating competition organized by the district administration.
As many as 20 gapuras from 20 RWs from five subdistricts in Kalideres took part in the competition. District officials along with the Kalideres sub-precinct police and Kalideres district military commander judged the gateways based on originality, creativity and the cleanliness of the neighborhood.
District secretary Endang Prihatin Rahmayani said the competition was held to enliven the celebration of the country’s 74th anniversary as well as to remind residents of the struggles and sacrifices made by the past generations during the colonial era to gain independence.
“Residents decorated the gapura with patriotic symbols such as Indonesian flags and sharpened bamboo, a common weapon during the occupation era,” she said on Friday.
Lukman Jaya, the head of RW 03, who took part in the competition, said his community spent around Rp 10 million from the community cash to build a permanent gapura at the entrance to their neighborhood.
“We asked our security guard to construct the gapura. It took around nine days to finish,” he said, adding that besides building the gapura, he also placed around 600 umbul-umbul (decorative flags) in the neighborhood to commemorate Independence Day. (nal)
