1. Project Description

The problems that are going to be solved from this activity is to reconstruct the indigenous women’s perception about their state of food and nutrition. Malnutrition, especially stunting is high in this village despite their village being surrounded by jungle that provides food, water and medicine all year round. However, their diet patterns have changed since the government food aid project as they are considered as poor people. When the food aid stops, they have formed an addiction to rice and instant foods. Traditionally they do not eat rice, instead their staple food is sago and tubers which is eaten together with wild vegetables, mushrooms, nuts, roots, fruits as well as wild games such as bats, wild boar and gophers. Now after the government “domesticated'' them in houses and created addiction to processed food, the number of malnutrition amongst children and women spikes.

 

1. Project Progress

Due to the situation with the COVID-19, the workshop which was planned to be carried out in July should be postponed by September. The Indonesian government just lifted up the travel ban throughout Indonesia, so people now can travel again with strict conditions. We are also concerned about the safety of indigenous community that we will visit, so we need to make sure that everyone is in good health and properly tested before we go to the village for a workshop. The workshop venue is in a remote village in the middle of the jungle in the Arfak Mountains. Electricity is available from 6 PM to 6 AM, there is no phone signal there and it takes 5-6 hours from Manokwari district to reach this village, when the weather is good.

 

So far while we were waiting for the condition to be better we have focused on designing the workshop. In this 4 days workshop that will be done in Ihyou village, Neney district, Manokwari, West Papua will be followed by 25 indigenous women from Sougb and Atam tribe. The workshop is designed based on participatory rural appraisal (PRA) theory. We will invite the participants to recognize their potentials, problems and strategies to overcome the problems regarding food and nutrition. We have anticipated that some participants are illiterate, so we combine different methodologies in the workshop so it is inclusive, like drawing, cooking, singing, dance etc. As an overview of the workshop flow. First we will ask the indigenous women to trace back their food culture by remembering what they were eaten when they were young and also what their parents and grandparents were eaten in the past and if these foods are still available in the jungle through transect walk. And then we will talk about the nutrition content of jungle foods they have found based on their color. The next step is to recognize their rights regarding food and nutrition and what they can do. The result of the workshop will be written as a recommendation for Papuan People’s Assembly (Majelis Rakyat Papua) for advocacy purposes to the Indonesian government.



Fig. 1. Neney District shows in red dot

 

The workshop will be held in the first week of September, we are still waiting for the head of the village’s confirmation about the exact date. The workshop will run for 3 hours each day, starts from morning to lunch time. After lunch time, the participants need to go to their field which is located in the middle of the jungle to take care of their plants. So we will need to be very efficient with our time.

 

1. Project plan forward

Our local team at the moment is in Ihyou village to prepare for the workshop, including finding potential participants. We expect the participants would come from different backgrounds, like housewives and health workers. Initially we will also be going to do some online sessions, but unfortunately it is impossible to do as phone signal is very unreliable in the village. And also only small numbers of people have cell phones in the village. So, we will focus on strengthening the content of the workshop and we also work together with a local NGO in Manokwari who have been working with people in Ihyou village for the last one year and they will be the one doing follow up and monitoring for us.

We expect continuation in this project and we have talked with our networks about future possibilities to continue our work after the workshop.

 

1. Photos

All photos belong to Risna Hasanuddin