NOKEN the First Time

Noken is a multifunctional knotted or woven bag,native to Papua Island. Its distinctive usage, which involves being hung from the head, is traditionally used to carry various goods. (NOKEN/Anggit Saranta)

Story by A. Ruwidrijarto (NOKEN Connecting Community)

We love numbers, don’t we. Me? I am happy to have numbers to report. And, because I am bad at counting and memorizing I have been so glad to have Ambon and Dony on the NOKEN team/band. Ambon on melody (content and substance), Dony on keyboard (of laptop and shutter of cameras and button of recorders). And I … on the easiest job for me ever: driver and logistics.

Very easy. With Anggit and Dhika in Bogor set the visits, goals and objectives, I needed only to translate those commands into my toolkit: g-maps. It gave me roadmap, equipped me with strategy (to beat traffic or find the best noodle place), set for me the plan and timeline. Accompanied by g-maps, nothing went terribly wrong, only some littly wrong. In terms of driving, I meant.

Logistics was way way too easy and cheap. Every community we noken about arranged for us with sleeping and eating. Almost always for free. Maybe because they’re happy to have us. They said hi long time no see. They expressed surprised, the good one, that we’re there during this difficult, covid and confusing time globally. They’re all too eager to share all those that they produce, all those knowledge they develop, all those many (mostly crazy) ideas burning. I will hopefully write all those for you later on, but for now I want to talk about my job: driver and logistics.

So, basically we drove, stop, ate, talked, drank some more, camped, sometimes sang, slept, talked some more, laughed (a lot). I did all the driving and most of the eating-drinking. Ambon and Dony did all else. It suited me fine.

Like during the ride from Pagerharjo in Kulonprogo, Jogja to Bombat in Batang, Central Java. I drove, Ambon talked (when he wasn’t sleeping, that is). I remember some of it, in particular about creating a new meaning. I got it: diction. Apparently, we are in the process of creating and giving a new meaning to noken.

As we all know, c.q. wikipedia, Noken is a multifunctional knotted or woven bag,native to Papua Island. Its distinctive usage, which involves being hung from the head, is traditionally used to carry various goods, and also children.

So, in that ride, when not sleeping Ambon said that NOKEN is what we are doing: weaving that connection of products, services, knowledge, and solidarity. Community to community.

We took our noken (the actual Papuan woven bag) to a community, for example in Pagerharjo, and put in it the chocolate, coffee, tea, various root flour, herbs, what have you, and the stories of HOW WHY WHAT from that community. And brought all that in the noken to the Bombat communities in Batang, and shared. In Bombat we put in in our noken big big stories on how a crazy group of youth took over hectares of perhutani areas and turned them into… well…many good and useful things for community and biodiversity. They did it all solely on their strengths of spirit and unity, nothing else. And their crazy parents too, having transformed themselves from …. (i.e.criminals) to social forestry managers and farmers.

A lot of craziness made me happy. Here too I hope to also write specifically, about those crazy people and communities. Thus, Ambon said, we are transforming noken into a verb. The thing we do. We noken here and there. We are nokeners. And we envision that by early 2021 there will be already many nokeners sprung from those communities and their young generation.

I remember imagining upon hearing that of a logo of NOKEN with tiny writing underneath: “A Samdhana Initiative” but it’s run, contributed, developed, played, and enjoyed by the crowd. Like the Wikipedia, Facebook, and Rebel Inc. (this one is a war and defence, nation building game on mobile phones. One of the most popular worldwide today. Just so you know) combined together into a woven act and platform connecting communities, products, knowledge, spirit and solidarity.

That’s a good one, let’s play the game.