Wearing rubber boots, I Kadek Somadana (44) carries a bamboo pole with a sickle attached to the end to harvest oil palm fruits and remove old palm fronds.
Meanwhile, his wife, Ni Luh Ernawati (40), pushes a wheelbarrow to carry the harvested oil palm fruits. Occasionally, she arranges the fallen fronds neatly at the edge of the oil palm plantation, which can later be processed into compost.
The one-hectare oil palm plantation is only 50 meters from their house in Tommo 1 Village, Mamuju Regency, West Sulawesi. This village is in the transmigration area, about 84 kilometers from Mamuju. Almost all transmigrant families cultivate oil palm in this village after rice is no longer suitable for planting in the dried-up former swamp.
Somadana manages his father’s oil palm plantation. For almost 15 years, his family has relied on the income from the oil palm harvest. Somadana can harvest about 4-5 quintals of oil palm fruits every two weeks. Each kilogram of oil palm fruit is sold to the collectors for 2000 rupiahs.
“On average, we get around 2 million rupiahs monthly,” he said.
Somadana uses this income to support his three children and his parents, who live with him. While waiting for the oil palm harvest, Kadek works odd jobs when neighbors invite him to be a day laborer.
Some neighbors invite him to transport oil palm harvests or process oil palm nursery seeds. Somadana once worked for ten years as a foreman at Astra oil palm company, managing germplasm.
Despite growing up in a transmigrant area, Somadana is determined to send his children to higher education.
His second child, Made Emilia Cahyati (18), was accepted into Animal Science and Industry, Faculty of Animal Science, UGM, through the academic excellence-based entrance selection (SNBP) path.
Not only did Emil get into UGM without a test, but she also received a 100 percent subsidized tuition scholarship or free tuition from UGM.
Emil herself did not expect to be accepted into UGM. According to her teachers, no alumni from SMA 1 Pangale, Mamuju Tengah Regency, had ever been accepted into UGM.
“Emil, are you sure you want to choose UGM?”
“I’m sure,” said Emil, though she was filled with self-doubt.
However, Emil convinced herself to choose UGM because she could not continue her education at her favorite school from elementary to high school. Even the distance from her home to high school was a 45-minute motorcycle ride through oil palm plantations.
“I took turns with a friend every three days to bring a motorcycle, and we shared fuel costs,” she said.
Sometimes, when a tire got punctured, Emil and her friend had to arrive late at school. If a tire got punctured on the way, she waited for other schoolmates passing by to help push the bike or called her father to pick her up.
Emil was consistently in the top three of her class during her school years. Her interest in mathematics and literature motivated her to participate in competitions and often win.
Emil, representing West Sulawesi, won first place in mathematics at the National Science Olympiad at the Mamuju level in April 2023. She also won first place in a short story writing competition at the National Student Festival (FLS2N) for high school students in Central Mamuju Regency.
Nationally, Emil qualified in the Utsawa Dharmagita Hindu Religion competition in 2021, organized by the Directorate General of Hindu Community Guidance of the Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia for the youth category. She also qualified again in the event held in Solo, Central Java, in 2024.
Although living in a transmigrant area, Emil’s steps to attend UGM were not deterred. She did everything possible to enter UGM without a test by participating in various competitions. According to her, nothing is impossible if one makes an effort.
“From the beginning, I intended to enter UGM because Yogyakarta is famous for its education. Even though my middle school was in a 3T (underdeveloped, remote, outermost) area, and my high school was not among the top 1000 in Indonesia, at least I could get into a favorite university,” she said.
Her grandfather, Made Yarnita (69), looked delighted to see his granddaughter continue her studies at UGM. Although he didn’t know much about education, Yarnita vividly remembered how, in 1983, he took his wife and their three-year-old son, Somadana, by ship from Buleleng, Bali, to Mamuju as transmigrants, along with hundreds of other families.
Registering as a transmigrant was the only choice for Yarnita to change his family’s future. He didn’t have land and worked as a carpenter.
Upon arriving in Tommo, Yarnita was given a 5 x 7 meter wooden house. The roads were still dirt, there was no electricity, and the surroundings were still forest and swamp. Gradually, the transmigrant residents cut down trees, cultivated the land to plant rice, and occasionally worked as casual laborers in other villages.
Now, the remains of the wooden house are neatly stored in front of his son’s house. Yarnita deliberately did not want to sell it as a reminder of his struggle to change his fate so that his children and grandchildren would know how the transmigrants’ early lives were in the past.
Author: Gusti Grehenson