New friends from Italia. Fabio and Margherita

Fabio and Margherita

Fabio and Margherita are our new friends from Italia. They helped us with our daily routine; doing gardening, cooking, and cleaning the house. Oh, yeah ...! We harvested vegetables too. We did these activities in one day and become our daily schedule. They followed our life routine, woke up at six am morning and started the day without breakfast. We started having food at nine o’clock am with simple food and dinner at six-thirty pm. So, we only eat twice a day. Fabio and Margherita all-out helped us, with no hesitation, with happiness and joy, and although this was the first time we met them, the atmosphere was very mild and friendly between us, what a nice moment!!.

Fabio & Margherita joining in harvesting vegetables

Fabio concentration in harvesting the mustard greens

Fabio & Margherita
Finished harvesting the vegetables

We started the day in the garden, cleaned the grasses, tidied up the poly bags, and prepared a place, for the next to grow mustard greens. At nine am we finished working in the garden, had a break for a while and started to make our meals. We ate together and did chit chat, exchanged the culture and talked psychology matters. And the fact, Margherita and Santosa were the fellows of meditation practitioner, so much knowledge to share with. And Fabio was a smart guy and had the same interest for kung fu and playing Nunchaku, such as me. Lunch and dinner were a good moment for knowing each other like sharing stories and experiences. So from there, my dad came up with an idea to invite them to have a walk around villages, and they made the arrangements to have time to walk for the next day, meanwhile, I stayed at home taking a break and preparing ingredients for dinner, and we agreed with that plan. We took a break after had meals, and then, we had a nap for one and half hour. We started work again at one pm; planting vegetables and watering the crops. After it, we continued to harvest vegetables; mustard green. Fabio and Margherita harvested and weighed into one kilo per bunch. After finished, my dad sold the vegetables to the market at once.

Fabio & Margherita
weighed the vegetables into one kilo per bunch.

We finished our works, between three and four pm, and after cleaned ourselves, we had free time, me and my dad watching television, meanwhile, Fabio and Margherita went to a youth cafe. Actually, the cafe has no name, but I call it like that because that is a place for local people to hang out and most are youths. And we already agree to meet again at six pm to have dinner together.

Margherita & Santosa in one of the villages

Fabio was giving motivation to the students

The next day, Santosa, Fabio, and Margherita woke up early morning, made preparation to have a walk around the village, and I made a lunch box for them. They started to go at nine am and arrived at home at three pm with sweating and tired but stayed a smile on their face. Fabio and Margherita took their rest and cleaned themselves, and my dad sat on his chair; drank a cup of coffee and recounted to me their whole tripped to the village. They visited four different villages and had a chance of stopping by at my aunty house, and she has presented them with a local coffee made by herself, chilled out and had a rest for a moment and then they continued to walk. When they have passed the last village and were heading to go home, they passed the primary school. Fabio wanted to say hello to the students and went into that school. After my dad has had permission from the teacher, they allowed going into a classroom. In the beginning, the students confused and asked my dad, what for and what the tourist did here? And then my dad explained to them. The students made the same reaction in the Indonesian language, “oooooohhh ngono taah...!!” Then the lovely moment happened. Fabio gave motivation to the students for how important to learn English and different languages are. By learning different languages, we can visit the world. After the students heard and paid attention to Fabio speaking, and Santosa has translated it, the students started to give big applause and had passion with a big smile on their faces. When I heard that story from my dad, I immediately went to Fabio’s room and said to him, a good job sir, very nice. For me, that was a beautiful moment. Thanks to Fabio and thanks to Margherita too which that have recorded it through a video.

On the last day, one day before they moved to the next spot and started their journey, Fabio and Margherita offered to cook dinner and I answered, yes please, I wanted to try Italian cuisine. Fabio and Margherita went to the market by themselves to find ingredients, and by the way, just a few in the local market, able to speak English, but they could manage it and brought many of ingredients back home. Fabio and Margherita started cooking at six pm, they cleaned, washed and cut every ingredient such as carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions. They planned to cook spaghetti and chicken livers, and before it, I had cooked yellow rice; the ingredients are, turmeric, coconut milk, ginger as big as the tip of the thumb, and one-kilogram rice then cooked together. Simple and delicious. Come back in the kitchen, they prepared and cut onions and vegetables to make a sauce of spaghetti. I looked and paid attention to how they cooked it, but I thought if only by watching them, I could not remember every step of cooking. So, I had an idea to record it, what the recipes and techniques are. So in early, I become a viewer and student, and the next, I turned out to become a cameraman. We finished to make dinner at eight and we already starve. A soon as the dinner readied, Margherita brought it to the table and we first eating the spaghetti as the main course and followed with the second dishes was yellow rice and mushroom chicken liver sauteed ones. We enjoyed the dinner together but my dad can’t stand to add chili sauce on his plate. After our stomach fulled, I brought the desserts, sweet potatoes, bananas, and rice cake. We closed the night with finished our meals, enjoyed the dessert with chit chat. After dinner, Fabio and Margherita had a walk in the village enjoying the night mood. After went home, they took sleep early because the next day at five am they had to chase the train to go to another city.


So, I thought that was all of my experience with Fabio and Margherita. I could story about our new friends based on what I did and felt; warmest event together with them. Thanks for them have given us such a wonderful memory and friendship. Grazie mille ...!!

Author,

Kusuma Atsarak Santosa.

I thought they were lost in my village at Wonosari and met with me and my son with their plan for traveling.

Category: Traveling

Watch their video here:
https://gprosfarmer.blogspot.com/p/travelers-mementos.html
Video number 5

I thought, they were lost when they made a plan to come to Indonesia and made a decision to come to my village. I felt, they were disappointed when come and stay in my guest house. They were like confused. What could I do here? I was confused, too, what I would show to them here is. Finally, I made a decision that I will show, how, me and my son lives here. How do our genuine lives here? Yes, we found the activities finally.

With brought a hesitate feeling, I explained one by one how our village is in before. In the past, our village was a tourism village destination. A lot of Chinese local tourists and local citizen came to my village just for praying in the temple or just traveled and looked around because it was very crowded at that time. And, now become a kampung, just ordinary kampung. But, sometime become a tourism village again, it depend to the big days like, new year or Eid day "Muslim big day."

I thought hard, how making them happy when they were staying in my guest house. I suggested to my son that you had to cook some of Indonesian cuisine and invite them, he or she, to join when you are cooking. Well, finally, my son decided to cook Indonesian curry and lumpia for five day's dishes. I said to them that we usually cook a lot at once to live for five days or one week. And for another day, my son would cook Chicken claws, cooked with sweet soy sauce. But unfortunately, they rushed to leave, went to another place before my son cooked it. They stayed only four days of their planned that was 12 days.

In four days, they filled the days with cooking, one of them name is Ingrid gave a donation to me by buying a cement to plastering the floor on upstairs and gave a gift the seed of flowers. And the last, we went for a walk and sightseeing some near village of my property. My son and I have made a video memory about them as memento for us. See you again, guys.

Love and compassion,
Santosa Laksana and Kusuma A. S

Let's share a moment

My week in Santosa's house is now finished. I need to continue my travel and discover other people. But this week was very rich in sharing. It's the thing I'm searching in my journey, share little moments, when people bring me in a place just to take a tea, to see a beautiful landscape, or when they cook for me. And I found what I wanted here. 

Santosa showed me many places around, and was very happy when I met new people like his brother. With his son, Kusuma, we shared really good moments in the kitchen ! He is very talented, he likes cooking and I showed him 3 recipes from France. He cooked me very good dishes every day. I ate new things, different tastes, and we just made a real exchange of our two cultures. I will always remember him enjoying the cake !

They are really good people who want to show you what it is to live in Indonesia and will do a lot of things for you. We talked a lot about life and how to be confident. Hope they will apply my little advises. With Santosa's brother we also had a discussion about tourism in little villages in Indonesia. They really want to see more tourists, they want to show them real life, also be kind and just share. Really simple exchange. So if you're thing is sharing, don't hesitate !

Fanny, Kusuma, and Santosa.

Written by Fanny Clm.

Website: https://hudrume-voyage.com/