Festival Budaya

By Gisele Henriques

On December 22 I received a text message from Sunspirit, a national NGO working in Meulaboh, about a cultural festival happening in Bubon District — “Festival Budaya.” In the four months I’d been living in Meulaboh I hadn’t attended a single cultural event and I knew I couldn’t miss this opportunity. Immediately I agreed and rode all the way to Peulanteu village (Bubon District) on the back of the Sunspirit moto. I had no idea what was awaiting me, but I had a grin from ear to ear in anticipation.

As we pulled up to the village I saw crowds gathering. Suddenly, the moto became trapped in a rush of people trying to fit into a narrow little street. I peered from the top of the moto to see what was holding up the flow. It was a huge open back truck loaded with little girls dressed in gold and red with flowers hanging from their hair. I realized I was in for a treat; this was really a festival. I later learned that it was the first of its kind in the area in thirty years.

This “Festival Budaya” was organized by Sunspirit in an effort to revive the rich cultural heritage of Aceh as a means for building peace and reconciliation. Sunspirit is a Jakarta based NGO run by activists who, moved by the tsunami disaster, decided to open an office in Aceh. Their focus is organic agriculture. The project in Bubon aims to build peace through livelihoods initiatives. They organize farmers in the post-conflict zone to improve agricultural production and believe the best way to keep the peace is to ensure that people are able to meet their basic needs so they don’t have to resort to violence.

The three day festival (I was only privy to day one) brought together the twenty villages participating in the Sunspirit projects. People of all ages—all with varied cultural expressions—performed. The opening act was a series of masks which, according to my source, pre-dates Islam in Aceh and represents the sprit of the forest.

My favorite performance was the fisherman dance. In this dance a group of men sat shoulder to shoulder and swayed back and forth to the rhythms of Islamic chanting and a solitary drum. At first their sway was slow, then the pace quickened and they swooshed back and forth as if imitating the ebb and flow of the ocean. Every movement was coordinated precisely. Watching this expression of their connection to the sea was deeply moving, especially given the reason why many of us are in Aceh.

I asked how the location was selected and it turns out Peulanteu village was a center of GAM activity. The villagers selected the site in full consciousness of that fact, as if wanting to accentuate some truth about their freedom to choose and their vision for peace in practice. As if in choosing a major GAM stronghold to celebrate the first cultural festival of its kind in thirty years they were making a political statement; which was soon affirmed by the election results.
Throughout the night I couldn’t help but wonder why it had been so many years since Aceh had a cultural festival like this. Suddenly, the tremendous impact of the conflict and the fear it instilled in so many became clear to me. Fear has a way of working itself into the most mundane aspects of life: fear to gather, fear to express oneself and fear to attract attention.

I left at midnight overwhelmed and amazed by the richness of Aceh’s cultural expressions— a culture that had somehow eluded me, even though I had been living here all this time.

To find out more about Sunspirit, email them at forjusticeandpeace@gmail.com