Academic turns to ecofriendly transportation

By Ridlo Aryanto

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Although they have already grown up, the three children of Iwan Nusyirwan, a lecturer at the School of Philosophy, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, are still very fond of singing this famous children's song, Naik Delman (Riding a horse-drawn cart).

They love singing the song because traveling by a horse-drawn cart is very much a part of their experience. They go to university in a two-wheeled buggy with their father as the coachman. Well, is Iwan also a coachman?

"Well, well, well, I am still a lecturer. But for the past seven years I have used my small two-wheeled buggy to go to the campus more often than my old automobile," said Iwan, chuckling.

Obviously, Iwan, a 1974 philosophy graduate of Gadjah Mada University, is not making any headlines at all. When he travels in his small two-wheeled buggy, he said, he can interact more easily with his social environment.

"If I drive a Mercedes, I feel there is a greater distance between me and my social environment. Boxed inside a car with the glass covered with a protective film, I will be alienated from my surroundings."

As a two-wheeled buggy is not commonplace, many of his colleagues in the campus find it strange to see him park his buggy and Sumbawa pony in the campus parking ground. "Many friends used to call me a senior lecturer deserving pity. Others drive a Mercedes, but this one rides in a buggy," he said, laughing heartily.

Things have changed now. Today many of his students ask to be given a lift in his buggy. Besides, in his spare time, he enjoys a pleasure ride along Jl. Malioboro with his family. "As the buggy is enough big only for two passengers, we must take turns," said Rindangmateati, 19, one of his children. Iwan also often takes his wife in the buggy for a housewives' gathering in Kotagede, south of Yogya.

His students have nicknamed him "the man who tends a horse". Every day, on the way home from the university, he cuts grass that he can find between the campus in Bulaksumur and his house in Minomartani, just north of Yogya.

"I have the sickle with me every day. I usually cut grass around the UGM valley or somewhere close to my house," he said. For Iwan, who is also a graduate of the Yogyakarta Plantation College, agriculture is better practiced than learned as an academic subject.

Iwan, who is also secretary-general of the Yogyakarta chapter of the All-Indonesian Judo Association, has his own reasons why he likes to collect the grass by himself. Previously, he had hired two persons to tend his horses. When they were already well-experienced in looking after horses, they were "hijacked" to work for someone else. After this bitter experience, Iwan decided to look after his own horses. He now has three horses and is assisted by his housemaid, Mbak Inem, to look after them.

When asked whether he, as a lecturer in a highly prestigious campus, was not ashamed to cut grass outdoors, Iwan quickly shook his head. He said he would never feel ashamed as long as what he did was for the good of the horses.

"Besides, there is no rule prohibiting a lecturer from cutting grass, is there? As long as what I do is not against any social norms, let alone state laws, there is no reason for me to feel ashamed."

Apart from using a buggy himself, Iwan also nurtures the hope of seeing his fellow lecturers also do the same. He argued that taking your family in a horse-drawn buggy going to the campus once a week could be an effective antipollution campaign in the campus.

He noted with disappointment that usually the campus was made a pollution-free area only once a year during the observance of Earth Day or Environment Day. Even then, he noted, only few complied with the call for a no-car-for-a-day campaign.

Iwan, who also has a masters degree in public health from the School of Medicine at Gadjah Mada University, said that his hobby of traveling in his buggy was closely related to pet-keeping, a hobby he had begun 10 years earlier. That's why sometimes Jacky, his pet gibbon or Empeng, keeps him company when he rides in his buggy to see a horse race or a buggy race in Prambanan, Klaten.

Iwan's dream of having a buggy as his private vehicle was prompted by the victory of Kancil (one of his horses) in a buggy race in Prambanan about seven years back.

Kancil's success and his desire to preserve increasingly rare traditional vehicles encouraged Iwan to start his hobby. At first he met the owner of Kancil and bought it for Rp 850,000. As the horse was small in stature and would never be strong enough to pull a large-sized buggy, Iwan had a two-seat buggy built. "It was then early 1994 and I spent only Rp 600,000," said Iwan.

Iwan is not Javanese but he understands well the classical philosophy about the symbol of prosperity for a Javanese male, as manifested in the concept of wanita, kukila and turangga, namely that a man will be considered a real man only when he has got a wife (wanita), a bird (kukila) and a vehicle (turangga). In its development, turangga, which constitutes a basic value of masculinity, has undergone a functional change into being a symbol of prestige for the Javanese nobility. "Clearly, riding in a pretty horse-drawn buggy has raised the dignity of Javanese nobility," said Iwan, who was born in Padangpanjang, West Sumatra, on Jan. 25, 1946.

Iwan knows that sawdust or straw on which a horse sleeps and urinates is a good growth medium for edible, pricey mushrooms. A kilo of fresh mushrooms can pick up Rp 7,000 to Rp 18,000, he said.

In fact it is mushrooms that led to Iwan's craze for a horse and a buggy. Back in 1989, he grew mushrooms at home. As he had no horses then, every time he would like to sow new mushroom seeds, he had go to Prambanan to collect horse dung from horse- drawn carriage owners. Realizing the important role that a horse played in his side business, Iwan bought Kancil and two Australian horses, named Rosswell and Macarena respectively. These three horses now occupy a stable which used to be a carport in his house.

Iwan spent Rp 25 million for the purchase of these three horses. He is lucky as he does not have to spend a lot of money for the fodder and the maintenance of the horses.

"At most I will have to buy a mixture of rice and bran to mix with the grass. Rp 1,000 a day will be enough for the fodder of the three horses. The dung will be recycled and used as the growth medium for mushrooms, and no longer will his neighbors complain about the disturbing odor.

Iwan also runs a course at home on how to cultivate mushrooms. Six classes, each consisting of a little more than 10 persons, have completed the course but Iwan and his course participants have yet to be able to fulfill the increasing market demand for mushrooms in Yogyakarta alone.

Iwan said he was concerned to see that andong, a horse-drawn four-wheeled carriage, has given way to taxis in Yogyakarta, a region which used to be famous as an andong city. Now you can only travel by andong in Prambanan Temple area, around Malioboro and Parangtritis coast.

"Today, people are complaining about the traffic congestion in Malioboro. In that case, why doesn't anybody try to make Jl. Malioboro or UGM campus a special zone for andong," he said. "How beautiful life will be if this dream can materialize some day," Iwan said, pulling the reigns of his pony. Whirrrr...... clip, clop, clip, clop, clip, clop.