Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine March 2014 | Page 104

102

Explore | Interview

INTERVIEW

BUTET MANURUNG

INTO THE
WILD
Interview by Adele Chong
Photography by John Aubrey

Fighting for literacy on behalf
of remote jungle communities
throughout Indonesia, activist,
educator and anthropologist
Butet Manurung is as close to
a modern-day Indiana Jones
as you can get.
Jungle bears, huts and gun-toting bad guys.
To the neighbouring diners who gleaned these
provocative details from my conversation with
Butet Manurung, we might as well have been
discussing the plot of a new action-adventure
film. It so happens that my lunch guest does
know a thing or two about surviving the big,
bad outdoors and, indeed, the fact hasn’t
escaped cinematic attention.
A respected name in NGO circles, Manurung
is better known as a key co-founder of Sokola
Rimba, a non-profit organisation that initiates
educational programmes targeted at indigenous
and marginalised communities. A volunteer-led
endeavour, Sokola has successfully introduced
countless literacy programmes throughout
Indonesia, its reach currently spanning eight
provinces. Adopting a unique approach that
embeds education into the existing fabric of
a community, Sokola also champions selfadvocacy, staying true to Manurung’s
description of the organisation as a
‘school of life’.
At the time of our meeting, a movie named
after the organisation had just been released,
based on the events that inspired Manurung’s
personal crusade, building her cachet. Shifting
between real and cinematic accounts of the
harrowing tale that set her on her fated path,
the impassioned urgency in Manurung’s voice
upon mention of her work transports us
somewhere wilder, well beyond the safe
urban backdrop of the café where we sit.