Greetings from SUMBA #17

An update after a while, how is life in Sumba? 🌞 🌅 🐠

Hester Vanacker

Feb 27, 2024

CURRENT LOCATION: Sumba, Indonesia

LOCAL TIME: 20h00

LOCAL TEMPERATURE: 30 degrees

CURRENTLY READING: What a Fun Age - Kiley Reid

Hi there!

It's been a while since I've announced news from Sumba, so this is the first newsletter of 2024. I wish I'd sent out an email sooner, but life on Sumba has been exciting, hot and rainy! So, here we go with this long-awaited (anyone?) update of Hestie’s island life!

Welcome to the new SHF students!

In the rainsy season, the campus is looking as green as ever

On the 8th of January, we had the pleasure of welcoming the new SHF students. 57 excited boys and girls aged between 17 and 23 are looking forward to starting their 18-month journey with us.

Waste management has been a huge part of my job, which includes walking around with trash bins, this goes back to the workshop I am doing on climate change, also thinking about the current waste crisis

Students explain the cause and consequences of climate change, and use their creativity to do so

For me, this also meant resuming my sustainability classes on Saturday afternoons. Teaching is the highlight of the week as sharing my passion for the subject with the students is very energising and fulfilling. We started with Module 1 on climate change, and like last year, I did a workshop with the students where I broke down a very complex topic into digestible morsels. Thanks to their collective intelligence, they managed to organise the cards according to the logic of cause and effect, whereupon they got creative and showed me their (incredible) drawing skills. It’s really nice to see the progress they've already made in such a short space of time.

Exploring Sumba - again and again and again

Sumba is getting greener by the day now that the rainy season has started. In just under two weeks, the island will be transformed into a green oasis, making it appear even more like a paradise. The Sumbanese have been waiting a long time for this, as the rainy season normally starts in November (hello consequences of the climate crisis!), and this time it has only just begun. More rain also means more mosquitoes, lots of snakes (I see a few of them every week) and very muddy roads (hati-hati di jalan licin Hestie).

Celebrating my 25th (!) birthday in Suma :)

I was lucky enough to have a friend from Paris join the foundation as a volunteer. I got to know Églantine during my internship in Paris and she has been helping me a lot with my work here in the area of sustainability. But of course, it’s also great to have a friend nearby. Living the Sumba experience together has been extremely fun and I am so grateful to have been able to share many incredible (incroyabblleeee) moments with her. I made myself her personal guide while she became my private driver (perfect combo jahowww).

It’s really nice for me to show her my familiar places and see the amazement that I also had when I first started exploring the island. From hidden waterfalls and lakes to the best gado-gado and snorkelling, our time together was well spent. Also, thank you for making me practise my French, merci beaucoup ma belle d’être venue!

What does my 2024 in Sumba look like - Many amazing things happening

Snorkelling has been one of my favourite Sunday activities

The first two months of 2024 have flown by and I have been very busy with many different projects. While I mainly focus on SHF, I am also working on some personal projects, especially my PhD. I have been researching the topic of “garment durability”, and with the support of my former internship company, I started my three-year programme in October. I will continue to work on the topic and use the fact that I am living in Sumba as an opportunity to find a unique approach to my work. The island is known worldwide for its ikat weaving culture, a time-consuming process that requires years of practice (I will write a separate newsletter on this topic later)!

As I've been on Sumba for 7 months now (wowww), I'm also slowly starting to build partnerships with other NGOs, climate change activists, other hotels, suppliers, … ... The consequences of the climate and waste crisis are felt here, and fighting them is something I can't do alone (even if I get the idea that I have to do it when I'm overwhelmed). At SHF, I have already been able to attract the interest of various employees who are actively helping me to improve our sustainable performance. With the same approach, I want to expand this network little by little.

Working for a non-profit organisation in Indonesia as a non-Indonesian - Some thoughts I have been having

Before I went to Sumba, I asked myself why I wanted to work in Sumba. I knew why, but was it a valid reason? White saviourism is a big issue and implies that white people feel they have to “save" some “poor” people in a “poor” country somewhere “far away” from home. Whilst these ideas are often subconscious, they are deeply ingrained in society and therefore also present in me. Never in my life have I learnt so much on a personal and professional level as in the last 7 months. The personal and professional cannot be separated and the growth I experience on one level feeds the other.

Kupang with Kini, getting my Kitas (Indonesian 1-year working permit)!

It is sad to see how corruption destroys so many opportunities for Sumbanese and when you look into it, you realise that it is present at all levels. From the local police officer to the head of the village to the president of the country. In an ideal world, SHF would not exist because Sumba would have a qualitative and accessible education system, adequate infrastructure adapted to the island, job opportunities and legislation that helps protect the island’s environment. But the world we live in is not ideal, so how do we approach a project like SHF in a way that actually does something that makes sense for the Sumbanese, rather than what non-Sumbanese think makes sense?

Assumptions are often the reason projects like these go wrong, and to think of something that would help someone in a faraway place just doesn’t make sense, because if you're not part of the community, how can you know? By slowly acclimatising to the local customs, the people, the language and the culture, I'm starting to better understand what might work, but ultimately I'll always be an outsider. So I need to question my approach and regularly reassess my “why” to make sure I'm not assuming I'm helping, but actually working with them to make sure what we do together makes sense. And I am happy to feel that at SHF we are more and more able to find that sweet spot between different perspectives. Truly an eye-opening experience for me to be working and living here in the beautiful Sumba.

Thanks for making it to the end of this newsletter, I hope you enjoyed it!

Talk soon,

Hestie -x-