Creative Writing: Final Article - "To Chiang Mai with Love"

Okay, so here's our last post for Creative Writing Course :( We were to write a feature article on topic of our choice, and our group, Alterium, decided to write about a lecturer of Bahasa Indonesia in the Thai Chiang Mai University. The following is our own writing, not yet edited by our lecturer, so grammatical errors and unpolished language may still show up here and there.

Credits:

Specially hearty thanks to my group mates Nurbani Trisna Wardhani and Okky Wicaksono, without whose helps, contributions, and supports this article would not have been possible.

And a final thank for our lecturer Labodalih Sembiring for teaching us creative writing this semester.

Photos by Hesti Aryani.

To Chiang Mai with Love

Alterium

Hesti Aryani’s fiancé has, quite accidentally, led her to find another love of her life, in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

She first followed him to Thailand’s ‘city of culture and education’ settling things for his educational stay. But the two-week visit turned out paving the way to what she’s been doing, and loving, for two years: teaching.

Hesti is now actively teaching Bahasa Indonesia in Chiang Mai University (CMU). The first Indonesian native teacher there.

CMU Language Institute hosts her courses, which mostly about Bahasa Indonesia beginner learning at levels 1 and 2. Held either at 5-7 pm or 6-8 pm on weekdays, enthusiasm is seldom too low, with as many as thirty students could flock to each class.

They also have Bahasa Indonesia for tourism classes on some occasions.

Bahasa Indonesia is taught as an implementation of the government’s promoting Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community 2015. Every Thai university student should master, or at least learn, another ASEAN language for career possibilities in other ASEAN countries. CMU Language Institute makes available courses on other ASEAN languages. Burmese and Vietnamese languages are to name a few.

More recently, Hesti assumed a place in the teaching team in CMU’s English department. The Pekalongan-born had been a student in her alma mater Universitas Gadjah Mada’s counterpart and graduated in 2011.

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Hesti fell in love with the northern Thai city during her first visit. And she fancied studying there too, with her fiancé.

However, while no graduate scholarship was available then, a twist of her life awaited already.

She met with the director of CMU Language Institute, who, apparently, had long longed to open an Indonesian class. Her fiancé, Wahyu Kuncoro, was offered a teaching post for that class in plan, but his full scholarship contract restricted him from working.

“Then the director asked me,” she said. “I really was interested, but I had yet to graduate.”

Another rendezvous and an educationally-attractive CV later, “He [the director] then decided to give me a deadline until November 2011,” a six-month period to finish her bachelor thesis.

Quite sadly, she came home with this excitement to her not-so-excited parents telling her to finish her undergraduate study first.

And she rushed her bachelor thesis all the way from May until August. But the ‘really hard time’ ended up sweet. Her parents blessed her with their full support, because of which and a fiancé’s waiting for her there, she took off to the Buddhist Kingdom.

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The special status as the first native Indonesian teacher in CMU not only had its perks, but also minuses. Preparing the teaching materials was one.

“I couldn’t just teach Bahasa Indonesia, so teaching material preparation was the first snag in my teaching career.

“The challenge was that I only applied what I got from TEFL, Teaching English as a Foreign Language. So I put into use several language teaching methods in my classes,” she explained.

And the language gap she’s trying to bridge was a barrier for her too.

“I hadn’t been able to speak Thai,” Hesti recalled and recounted her first classes, “so it’s pretty challenging for me.”

She was trying to use English as the ‘introductory language’ to communicate with the students. But it still proved problematic. They understood few of the English words. Not too many more.

Substantially, Indonesian words are longer chunks than the more digestible Thai bite-sized words. And memorizing Indonesian words isn’t the thing they’re best at.

On a smaller scale, the sounds ‘R’ and ‘L’, abundant in Bahasa Indonesia, are also hard for them to pronounce.

Plus, as Hesti sees, it’s in the nature of CMU students to try learning languages as new things. Not too much more. She told us how out of her thirty level 1 students, only ten continued to level 2. Let alone to level 3, which was “why we haven’t had level 3, because of the insufficient number of participants.”

But, not everything was in the blue.

Bahasa Indonesia employs alphabets in its writing system, while also sharing similar sentence structure with Thai. These two ease Bahasa Indonesia learning for Hesti’s Thai students.

She also appreciates the politeness of the students, fashioning her classes conducive.

“Perhaps culture in Thailand is more valued, so they respect teachers or lecturers very much, or people older than they are.”

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Those all are surely precious pieces of experience, something Hesti sought from the very start. Then a fresh graduate, she was also after a prestigious, university-bound occupation.

The teaching post answered her with what she had wished for.

CMU is the first provincial university in Thailand. It has also consistently ranked among the Quacquarelli Symonds’ top 100 ASIAN universities in the last few years and is reputed among the country’s elite.

The four campuses have bred notable alumnae, from an award winning writer, a mayor of Chiang Mai, a governor of Bangkok, deputy prime ministers, until the current Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

And she turned down the idea of what she’s doing now is a display of love for her country as a cliché. At first. She admitted that scheme did develop on the way.

      

 “After I in Chiang Mai was proposed offers or works requiring me to promote Indonesia, I felt this was my chance, and I gave time and space to express what Indonesia is.

“So, after seeing various problems that Indonesia had not yet been too popular among CMU students, then from there came an undercover mission, another mission that I personally aspired to glorify the nation.

“It may sound like a cliché, but I think whoever when abroad or in the country meeting foreigners will be an ambassador for Indonesia.

“Whether you like it or not, we have to show our love toward our homeland, that we are knowledgeable about Indonesia,” she told us.

And these words of a teacher of two languages are not meaningless. She has been the spearhead of the openings of both Indonesia Study Centre and Indonesia Day. Again, she was the only Indonesian in charge.

However, as much as she was alone, she was never on her own.

The Indonesian Embassy, though had been rather unresponsive at first, granted Hesti a fund of 150 million rupiahs to spend for her projects. They also supplied reading materials for the Indonesia Study Centre. Meanwhile, Indonesian church missionaries helped her with cooking free food for visitors in the Indonesia Day, among others.

CMU itself has been very supportive toward the Indonesian courses.

“They designed [advertisements] all around the campus, even in the downtown, with giant screen LCD in Indonesian,” she said.

But, most importantly, she had her fiancé with her, who always got her back. He had been encouraging her to be meticulous toward her works.

“He was really helpful when we were holding events about Indonesia, showed up in my classes to be a native speaker, so my students could practice using Bahasa Indonesia.”

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Love is always in Chiang Mai’s air for Hesti.

“I’m happy [to be in Chiang Mai], happy because I feel welcome.

“Indonesians in the educational and Bahasa Indonesia worlds, especially in Chiang Mai and Northern Thailand, are still very few.

“My presence can be very appreciated by them [locals] with how many mass media come to CMU to cover the Indonesia Day event, or other Indonesian events, or just to interview me about my opinion on how to teach Bahasa Indonesia to students in CMU.”

She couldn’t remember even once being despised either verbally or attitudinally.

And in this city, Hesti came to realize that she loves her present job than what she’s been dreaming of doing. She had hoped to be a diplomat, and she was once offered to work in the Indonesian Embassy in Bangkok too. But seeing how things were done there didn’t charm her very much.

“So I decided early to focus on what I’ve been doing, and that is teaching.

“Not yet,” was her answer to her homeland-bound leave. “My fiancé Mas Wahyu has obtained an offer for a doctoral scholarship somewhere, which is not Indonesia, nor Thailand.

“After finishing my graduate study, we’ll be back to Indonesia, one or two months to get married and then I’ll follow him.

“I don’t know where.”

So, will love lead Hesti’s way once and again?

“We’ll see.”