Summing up the study tour

Before we left a lot of us had never been outside Europe, let alone been to what is the definition of the far east; Indonesia. Some of us had heard of Suharto, we had all heard of conflicts and tsunamis in the Aceh region. Most of us knew nothing about the 4th biggest country in the world in terms of population.

As we gathered in Lombok on the 7th of January, we had prospects of what was going to happen, but Stein Kristiansen, our professor caught us of guard. He said “the outcome of this trip lies on your shoulders". "Your curiosity will be the foundation on which the academic outcome will be built.” This were his last words before shipping us of to local health centers and schools to do reasearch. No interview guide and no set focus area. Armed with our own curiosity, an interpreter and a notepad we set out to gather information about the institutions of Lombok. And it was great! We really felt like scientists, and we were welcomed as if we were. Asking every question that popped in to our heads, we had an amazing time in Lombok. Seeing children playing the same games as in Norwegian schools really shrunk the world in the eyes of many of us.

Dancing boogi boogi with the kids.

Before we left Lombok, we sat down and wrote an interview guide together. Stein said he had given us a peak at what field work was about with our work in Lombok. We made interview guides for the local chiefs, for bureaucrats, for teachers and principals. For just about everyone we might encounter. We had little to no knowledge of where we were going. Many of us were a little worried about the standards where we were going. Most of us however really looked forward to get "our hands dirty". We were placed in four different villages as we got to Flores. We had no contact with each other during our one week stay. Some of us lived in traditional villages where the house of the family was referred to as the uterus, whereas some of us had private rooms with our own bathrooms. Everyone however will remember the amazing people we met and the hospitality we were given. We will always remember Nggela, Riti, Wologay and Jeribuu.

When our week in the field was done we gathered in Bajawa to learn about the potential for tourism. Some went mountain climbing, some just explored and some went sunbathing in the national park "the seventeen islands". We saw a clear unrealized potential for development. If they had some competence within tourism, interior architecture and just pure style, Flores had great potential for a more productive small scale tourism industry.

One of the problems of the rural areas of Indonesia is the draining of human resources. If one comes from Flores and take a higher education within for instance tourism in Bali, most people stay in west Indonesia, because there are better financial possibilities. This leads to a draining of the people with the highest academic human recourses. It does not make the matter any better that in Flores, the two brightest boys in each class go to priest school.

The tour came to its conclution in Yogyakarta. Here we had some days with various cultural inputs before we went into the field for the last time. This time students from the Gadjah Mada University (UGM) served as our interpreters. The actual interviews however went on just about as before. But we had dropped the interview guide, since most of our questions were improvised anyways. The culture however was quite different in Java. The culture is definitely worth experiencing and could become a subject to tourism.

We have learned a lot during our study tour. For instance most of us did not even know what the term human resource development meant before the trip. Now we know that almost everything that consider people relates to human resource development. For instance better health-care decreases the level of sick children, which gives women more time. This might give them a chance to start a small kiosk or another financially rewarding form of employment. This again might give her the opportunity to save up enough money to pay for an education for her child. And this basiclly sums up our tour because; "Human capital development is what is done by the society to improve human’s abilities to utilize their potentials for improving their well-being."

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