Alam (Nature) Islamic School in Banguwangi

The Banguwangi “Alam” (Natural) Islamic School: “The Character School”

 On the way back from Bali and Banguwangi, at the far end of the island of Java, I visited this very special alternative Islamic school.  It calls itself (in English) the “Character School,” specializing in “leadership, religion, language, and science.”  To say I was greeted warmly would be an understatement.  As I got out of the car, I was surrounded by somewhere between 35 to 40 students, even on a Sunday, a holiday for most schools here.  The staff member driving the university car remarked, “you are famous here, like a movie star.”  But what was overwhelmingly touching was the way each student gave me a “selaman” greeting, taking hands to their heads first and then to the heart.  I was speechless.  My friend and colleague, Habib, had arranged all this, because he has taken an interest in this school from the start.  We then proceeded to open the boxes of books that I and others had donated.  I saw the headmaster brush away tears from his eyes as he held a Qur’an I had given.  (I did not get a chance to tell him that a friend in Bosnia had given it to me after she came back from the Hajj.)  After opening the boxes, the teachers and headmaster asked me to give a little speech (this is done regularly here in Indonesia, and public speaking is an emphasis at the school.)  I don’t know what I said, but I wanted to convey how happy I was to share these English-language books with them, and that I would like to come back and hear them tell me in English what they have learned.  

Habib told me on the long trip through East Java afterwards that, “The School makes the students more creative, more independent, more innovative, since they learn by themselves, not because of the teachers.”  It is an alternative to the madrassahs and “pesantrens” (special Indonesian boarding schools that have traditionally taught reciting the Qur’an and only recently added a fuller curriculum).  What distinguishes this school is that it is open to all students, regardless of their ability to pay.  In fact, it is famous in the media for being the school where parents can pay with vegetables.  Each Monday the students bring vegetables from their families to cook for the week.  The students even cook by themselves.  When students do not have money to pay, they are welcome to come, and the school tries to find sponsors for students who cannot pay.  The school does not need expensive facilities like big buildings, and does not even need classrooms. The teachers are motivators, not teachers.  That is why they spend less money.  The group with the student leader sets the lesson plan, and the group evaluates the plan.  On the exams, their grades are not so high, but above average, but the advantage is they are more self-confident, and have more facility in English and in Arabic.  When they continue their study to senior high school, they can work as tutors because they have acted as mentors to other students in their elementary school.  Their skill in mentoring is more important than the scores on their subjects.  They become trained as trainers; from the beginning they are sent to other schools to be mentors to students of the same age.  When they graduate from the school, they are really self-confident mentors.  Even in everyday life, they feel everybody should have an opportunity to be a leader in the group.  Not only in learning, but also in praying. They have to be ready to be imams.  Class is community-based.  Every week the leader changes.  

Of course the school, taking children aged six to twelve, is Islamic and at the same time stresses  “generous character” open to global insights.   It is inclusive, open, not exclusive, and welcome to the poor.  Not fundamentalist.  In their studies, the teachers and students try to strike a balance between religious education and life skills that will be useful in religion, society and the nation.  As Habib has often said, Indonesia is still a feudal society, so the emphasis on independence and creativity is hugely needed in a country and culture where innovative thinking is not prized, and people expect to follow orders.  I hope that in the future I and others of like mind will be able to contribute in some small way to this school.   “Selaman.”

The Thousandth Day

Last night I was invited, along with Fr. Joseph, the director of the St. Joseph Retreat House, to attend what is considered the three-year of thousand day anniversary of the death of a spouse.  Some say this is old Javanese custom, commemorating first the fortieth day, then the hundredth, the one year, and finally the thousandth day since the death of the loved one.  As we arrived in the large music studio where Mrs. Cecelia Tolus and her husband have conducted their teaching in all kinds of musical instruments, we were led into a room where an altar was decked in flowers, and where somehow it smelled funereal.  There was no body, however, only a picture of the husband, and three pictures beside his, one of his mother, one of his brother and one of his sister, all of whom had also passed away.  Our only ritual act at this point was to take flowers from trays arranged in front of the photo, and put them in a box to be taken to the graveside this morning.  After a time of chatting among the guests, some two hundred of them, a group of us remained for a memorial Mass.  All these people were there to support Cecilia, who told us that she was both happy and sad that night, and her face really showed it.  Cecilia, now one of my good friends here in Bali, had already shared with me at her house some thoughts she had written, in which she put into writing much of what she has been learning from the words of Neale Donald Walsch, that death is not the end, and that with every loss there is something of a gift to be discovered.  The priest who offered the Mass told an interesting story (translated for me by Fr. Joseph) that when he left the seminary in Malaysia he was told he would be working among the Bataks (I think that’s the right ethnic group but there are so many!) who are people of the “long house.”  They have always made their houses one long house, where people can come and go and be connected.  Now, they are making separations, putting up walls, changing the character of their life together.  All this relates to the point made so well in a book I have been reading about Java that I will quote it here.  The book is A Shadow Falls in the Heart of Java by Andrew Beatty, an English anthropologist who lived over several years in a small village in east Java with his family.  Here are his words about leaving the village life and returning to what was once “normal” :

"In the village, daily life was shared.  You grew up with people, attended their weddings and prayer-meals, shared their misfortunes, helped dig their graves.  And at every waking moment they were around: tending the next field, sweeping the yard, sitting on your doorstep in the evenings.  As you fell asleep you could hear their coughs and murmurs through the wall.  Their presence was the inescapable condition of your existence.  I was always we. In death or life, nobody was every really alone.  If you moved to a different part of the village, our old ties fell away but there would be others just as strong.  It wasn't depth or continuity that counted but the sustaining presence of others, like Frost's silken tent.  One could drift between families and neighbourhoods, marry and remarry, but the gentle embrace of the community was constant.

In the West,--or perhaps simply out of the village--you pursued your 'own life.'  Of course, you had friends and relatives and at regular moments your lives overlapped with theirs, but your path was separate.  An individual destiny, with goals and obstacles, life was 'what you made of it.'

We knew what it would be like to return to the isolation and boundedness of the nuclear family:  an adjustment of shape; a shock for the children; separate lives.  . . .  We had nothing to go back to, no jobs or settled life, nothing planned: it was too soon."

Those are Andrew Beatty's words, but as I end my Indonesian journey, I can relate to them in my own life, and, to my surprise, even as I look toward leaving here, I also contemplate returning, and making a place for myself that is not separate.