Kalpataru laureate stoical, reserved
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post/West Sumba, East Nusa Tenggara
On a barren hill a kilometer from Katrina Koni Kii's modest wooden house a new path has appeared, formed by pairs of feet stepping on the high grass during the two months since the widow won the Kalpataru environment award in June.
Her remote house up on a hill in the remote village of Malimada, Wejewa Utara, West Sumba, was rarely visited, even by neighbors.
After the Kalpataru, however, government officials and journalists have beaten a path to her door, traveling hundreds of kilometers and climbing the hilly land to meet the ingenious widow in her house, which has no electricity, nor proper road access.
Katrina, often called Mama Koni, rarely leaves her house except for tending her small forest of sandalwood and mahogany she has cultivated herself over a period of 18 years.
Every morning and afternoon she walks barefoot as far as three km to tend her little forest of sandalwood and mahogany trees.
Speaking largely in Wejewa (a local language) through an interpreter, Mama Koni told The Jakarta Post that she had already planted 1,000 sandalwood plants, of which 400 had grown into large trees with trunks 15 centimeters to 20 cm in diameter.
In 1987, after her husband died, Mama Koni had an idea to plant sandalwood, which she heard was precious.
Although she knew sandalwood was a slow-yielding asset, she planted it anyway, for the benefit of her children.
At that time, sandalwood had already become a rarity in Sumba due to intense logging.
She told one of her sons to find the sandalwood seeds in a protected forest about four km from her home.
"No one ordered me to plant sandalwood; I did it from my heart," said Mama Koni, who added she was about 50.
Mama Koni got four seedlings, which she planted about 300 meters in front of her house during the short rainy season. Two did not survive but the other two, which she later sold for only Rp 5,000 per kilogram, grew healthily.
From the two sandalwood plants, she patiently planted others one by one during every rainy season from January to April, clearing away the grass and digging the rocky hill.
Mama Koni, whose lips, gums and teeth are stained red from chewing sirih pinang (betel nut), also planted some rare local trees known as kadimbil and manera.
"I have 10 kadimbil and also 10 manera plants," she said.
The formerly barren hills are much greener now. Moreover, her initiative somehow set a good example for her neighbors, who also planted sandalwood and other trees on their own hills.
If she were to sell the sandalwood at a fair market price of Rp 25,000 per kilogram, Mama Koni and her five children would become rich people in about 10 years, probably.
However, for the time being, she, her three children and two grandchildren, who live nearby, have to subsist on corn and about Rp 40,000 a week from selling kemiri (candlenut).
Despite her modest wooden house, three small hills, a fat pig and Rp 6 million (US$666) in Kalpataru prize money she received from the government, she is still mired in poverty.
Only a month after receiving the prize, she had already spent all the money on the funeral of her baby grandchild and a belis (dowry) for the marriage of her fourth child.
Sumbanese custom requires people to slaughter livestock for weddings and funerals. The amount of livestock depends on the social status of the host: The higher the caste the more the livestock required.
Besides livestock for the wedding, in a marriage proposal, the family of the groom-to-be has to "pay" livestock to the family of the bride-to-be: The higher the status of the bride, the more the dowry.
"I don't have money for buying rice now. My future in-laws requested 30 horses and 15 water buffaloes for marrying their daughter, and I agreed to the condition," Mama Koni said in limited Indonesian.
How much is a horse?
She showed seven fingers, uttering a hesitant "seven hundred".
How much is a water buffalo worth?
"One million three hundred," she said, frowning due to the effort of speaking Indonesian and counting simultaneously.
One Sunday morning, she hired a motorcycle taxi to go to Kilo Sembilan, where the in-laws lived, to deliver three horses.
Her third child, Julius Malo said she had already delivered three horses and a water buffalo the previous week. Do the math -- she still has dozens of livestock to buy, amounting to more than Rp 30 million.
Nevertheless, like most Sumbanese, Mama Koni accepted the demanding custom stoically. To match her stoical manner in enduring life's ordeals, she accepted the honor of the Kalpataru Award from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a quiet way.
"Initially, she refused to go to Jakarta to receive the award in person," S.A. Abbas, the secretary of West Sumba's environmental impact management agency told the Post.
"She eventually relented after we insisted the event was really important because she could meet the President, a rarity even for government official like me," he said.
"When she won the environmental award at provincial level in 2004, she did not even go to Kupang (the provincial capital)," Abbas added.
For Mama Koni, who has never strayed far from home all her life, going to Jakarta was a hassle. She had to take three flights, not to mention an overland trip of more than 100 km to the airport.
West Sumba government officials had to give her a kind of tuber for her to chew on during flights to fend off the nausea from flying because modern drugs did not work for her.
To meet the President she was told to buy a new blouse and a new ikat cloth and sandals, which caused her discomfort.
Judging from all the hassle she had to go through, it was truly understandable that she did not jump for joy and cry in elation upon hearing her achievement at being recognized nationally.
She did not, of course, complain about the award. She looked happy with the trophies. Nevertheless, she did not seem to think they were a big deal.
After all, she has enough headaches caused by the unpaid dowry and the daily problems of survival.