Gorontalo, NU Online
A small hut covered only in sago palm leaves sometimes serves as a shelter from rain on the route Sri Utami always takes on her daily trip on foot to the school where she is a teacher.
When the rain stops, she still has to walk a distance of three kilometers over hilly terrain and past two rivers to reach the school in the transmigration area of Wonosari sub-district, Boalemo district, Gorontalo, North Sulawesi. <<>br />
During the rainy season, the slippery and muddy paths always force her to take off her shoes and walk barefoot on the unfriendly track.
"These are my only shoes, and I will need them during the dry season," said Sri smiling and wearing a faded black skirt, a blouse with flowery motives and a wornout hijab (head scarf).
Sri`s dress is the only decent one she owns because she cannot afford to buy any new clothes, and more ironically, as a teacher, she cannot even afford to send her son to school beyond junior high.
After finishing junior high school her son could not continue his studies because she and her husband did not have the money to allow him to do so. Now the boy must help Sri`s husband in the field to plant and cutivate crops.
It has only been a year since they moved to Wonosari sub-district in Gorontalo province as participants in a government-sponsored transmigration or resettlement program but it was hard to start a new business in the region without supporting funds.
Due to this lack of funds, Sri and her family must struggle to stay alive, not go hungry on Sri`s teacher`s salary while waiting for her husband`s crop harvest.
Sri knows that she will not make a fortune from her career as a teacher. Her monthly salary of Rp 250,000 is only enough to pay for their daily food needs, nothing else.
She decided to become a teacher when she was in her 20s after graduating from a Teacher`s Training School in 1984 and started her career at Al Jihad Elementary school in Surabaya, East Java, where she came from. Her starting salary then was Rp15 per month.
While working as a teacher, and despite her small salary, Sri decided to study at a university but luckily, because of her good academic performance, she was always able to get a scholarship.
In 2004, Sri got married and she and here husband decided to move to Lampung in Sumatra but their life there did not improve very much. Sri landed a teaching job that paid only Rp 170,000 per month, enough only to buy a sack of rice. But Sri then taught no less than seven subjects.
In 2009, she heard about a governemnt-sponsored program to resettle people in Gorontalo in Sulawesi, and the couple applied successfully to participate in it. In their new environment in Gorontalo , Sri again became a teacher.
The love for teaching was running in her veins. She tried to learn farming once, but she couldn`t do it, she just stood there doing nothing, and she eventually decided she had to stick to her first career choise : teaching.
Her degree in education motivated her not to waste the knowledge she had obtained in a hard way.
Her persistence as a dedicated teacher was awarded by her selection as as one of the seven winners of the Suharso Monoarfa Award (SUMO) in 2010 in the "struggling teacher" category. Along with 34 other nominees for the award, Sri was considered to have shown extraordinary dedication to the teaching profession.
But she continues to have to overcome the irony that after she spent 26 years as a dedicated teacher, she cannot even afford to help her son complete secondary, much less tertiary education. And it was always heartbreaking for her to look at her students while remembering her own son had to stay at home where he was not supposed to be.
Her hopes eventually to gain the status of civil servant working in the educational field had now also vanished as she had reached the age of 46 years, too old to be inducted into the civil service.
Now, she can only hope for her son to be able to continue his schooling and to get a job with a decent salary, so he did not need to end up like his father as a small crop grower , Sri said with tears in her eyes. (ant/dar)
A small hut covered only in sago palm leaves sometimes serves as a shelter from rain on the route Sri Utami always takes on her daily trip on foot to the school where she is a teacher.
When the rain stops, she still has to walk a distance of three kilometers over hilly terrain and past two rivers to reach the school in the transmigration area of Wonosari sub-district, Boalemo district, Gorontalo, North Sulawesi. <<>br />
During the rainy season, the slippery and muddy paths always force her to take off her shoes and walk barefoot on the unfriendly track.
"These are my only shoes, and I will need them during the dry season," said Sri smiling and wearing a faded black skirt, a blouse with flowery motives and a wornout hijab (head scarf).
Sri`s dress is the only decent one she owns because she cannot afford to buy any new clothes, and more ironically, as a teacher, she cannot even afford to send her son to school beyond junior high.
After finishing junior high school her son could not continue his studies because she and her husband did not have the money to allow him to do so. Now the boy must help Sri`s husband in the field to plant and cutivate crops.
It has only been a year since they moved to Wonosari sub-district in Gorontalo province as participants in a government-sponsored transmigration or resettlement program but it was hard to start a new business in the region without supporting funds.
Due to this lack of funds, Sri and her family must struggle to stay alive, not go hungry on Sri`s teacher`s salary while waiting for her husband`s crop harvest.
Sri knows that she will not make a fortune from her career as a teacher. Her monthly salary of Rp 250,000 is only enough to pay for their daily food needs, nothing else.
She decided to become a teacher when she was in her 20s after graduating from a Teacher`s Training School in 1984 and started her career at Al Jihad Elementary school in Surabaya, East Java, where she came from. Her starting salary then was Rp15 per month.
While working as a teacher, and despite her small salary, Sri decided to study at a university but luckily, because of her good academic performance, she was always able to get a scholarship.
In 2004, Sri got married and she and here husband decided to move to Lampung in Sumatra but their life there did not improve very much. Sri landed a teaching job that paid only Rp 170,000 per month, enough only to buy a sack of rice. But Sri then taught no less than seven subjects.
In 2009, she heard about a governemnt-sponsored program to resettle people in Gorontalo in Sulawesi, and the couple applied successfully to participate in it. In their new environment in Gorontalo , Sri again became a teacher.
The love for teaching was running in her veins. She tried to learn farming once, but she couldn`t do it, she just stood there doing nothing, and she eventually decided she had to stick to her first career choise : teaching.
Her degree in education motivated her not to waste the knowledge she had obtained in a hard way.
Her persistence as a dedicated teacher was awarded by her selection as as one of the seven winners of the Suharso Monoarfa Award (SUMO) in 2010 in the "struggling teacher" category. Along with 34 other nominees for the award, Sri was considered to have shown extraordinary dedication to the teaching profession.
But she continues to have to overcome the irony that after she spent 26 years as a dedicated teacher, she cannot even afford to help her son complete secondary, much less tertiary education. And it was always heartbreaking for her to look at her students while remembering her own son had to stay at home where he was not supposed to be.
Her hopes eventually to gain the status of civil servant working in the educational field had now also vanished as she had reached the age of 46 years, too old to be inducted into the civil service.
Now, she can only hope for her son to be able to continue his schooling and to get a job with a decent salary, so he did not need to end up like his father as a small crop grower , Sri said with tears in her eyes. (ant/dar)
