BERANI HIDUP

HI AND HOW IS IT GOING?

In this post, I want to share my experience about a club I joined last year. This is not a school based club, because I need to try to socialize outside the school as well. So this club is a great opportunity for me to expand my comfort zone!

As you guys know, I have this hobby of travelling around nature. I LOVE to trek and hike. Apparently, the club I'm going is a nature club called TRUPALA, which stands for Taruna Pecinta Alam (Nature Lover Cadets -- it's a weird translation). This organization was founded about 40 years ago, and it was orginally a PALA club of a high school, SMAN 6 Jakarta, which happened to be my parents school back then. Sadly, this organization was no longer a part of the school since 2004. But because the large number of members this club has through the years, the club still manage to exist and in 2014, they were in a search for new members.

My mom and dad actually are members of the club. They are so proud about the club (especially my mom) for a lot of achievments this club has made. I met a lot of their TRUPALA friends in my entire life, and sometimes my parents also took me and my brothers camping and somehow introduce me to the beauty Indonesia's nature.

In one of my post, I told the story about my first experience of hiking a mountain. Well, after that, my parents decided that I need to be educated if I want to keep doing this as something that I love, because mountaineering is not something to belittle. People die hiking mountains. And to have knowledge is essential to keep being alive. Therefore I ended up signing up as the new member of Trupala!

We had a lesson every week for a month. There are a lot of new things I learned. I learned about navigation, the right way to pack, survival, first aid, and of course mountaineering. Every meetings started with a physical warm up. Then we had our indoor theory lesson, after that we had our outdoor practical lesson. It's very fun because I get to get new friends, either those in my age or those in my parents age. Both companions are very nice to have.

At the end of the month, we got to test our ability and knowledge in the real terrain. We went to Mount Kencana to have our final test.

This trek, is a huge different to the Papandayan trek I had for the first time. If I had a lot of fun in Papandayan, this time...well, fun is not just the word.

If you want to eat, you cook by yourself with your own ingredients. If you want to sleep, you build your own bivouac. Yes, you're not sleeping in the tents. You also need to cross a freaking lake with your carrier on, with only a rope to rely on. We also need to find our own way to the top of the mountain by doing our own navigation with the map and compass.

One night we need to sleep alone in a little single bivouac we built when it was raining so hard. You're cold, you're scared, your clothes you have to wear again the next day is wet and full of mud, it's just disgusting...

The last day, we had our survival test. Our food and water were all taken by the comittee leaving a bottle of water for all 6 of us, so we have to find our own food. We were shown how to make a trap for the animals. We went around finding herbs to eat, and we also told to build a natural bivouac that would fit all of us.

When we summit, we were yelled at. We also got to do punishment for not working together well. We were told to do push ups with our carrier on. On our way down, we need to do rappling and it was very different from rappling at the climbing wall.

But at last, we all finished the test. We got our member number (mine is 02/2014). People were singing for us when we got to the last camp. I don't say it was fun, but it doesn't mean I didn't have a great time! Me and my 2014 friends finally did it and I was proud of us.

It has been a year, and I always try to make time to go to the events Trupala make. I also got the chance to do some activities with them such as caving the Sipahang Cave in west Java, which were always a good new experience for me. I'm still in touch with the friends I make in all generation. I also went to Rinjani with two of my friends from the 2014s, and we wave the Trupala flag on top of that very mountain.

It was always the good feeling and the important new lesson you get in every expedition. And one most important thing I learned is that we don't dare to die, but we dare to live.

Kita bukan berani mati, tapi kita berani hidup.