“Just over the low-slung roofline of the strip malls lining Jalan Piere Tendean along the swollen brown bay of Manado, the volcanic island of Manado Tua rises up like a witch’s hat against the sultry sky. More than a few employees of the warren of stores in these malls look at this beacon that sits within Bunaken National Marine Park (BNMP) and feel the tinge of bittersweet nostalgia that accompanies thoughts of home.
Upon visiting any of the five islands within BNMP – Bunaken, Manado Tua, Mantehage, Nain and Siladen – one is struck by two things about the 20,000 people who call these volcanic outposts home. The first is their unyielding warmth. Whether through an impromptu invitation to the home of a village leader for a fish fry, or the earnest handshake and smile of a passerby, the people of these islands show an easy friendliness towards visitors. Perhaps less pronounced – though no less significant – is the dearth of teens and twenty-somethings living among the schoolchildren and the middle-aged of the islands. These missing young people have heeded to the irresistible siren song of the mainland, with its endless rows of watch and DVD kiosks and abundance of western clothes packed into harshly lit department stores.
And so it continues to unfold from Kenya to Cape Town, from Bangalore to Bahrain: urbanization and its accompanying torn social fabric. The reasons for rapid urbanization in the developing world are many: the effects of global warming and industrial growth have left previously productive agricultural land infertile; a globalized world has increasingly rendered the local craftsman or farmer irrelevant; the effects of war have forced millions of people from the countryside to seek shelter in cities or refugee camps. In an insular place like BNMP, options suddenly appear limited when the glowing lights from the strip malls, clubs, and traffic in Manado beckon from across the waves.
Is it useful to consider initiatives meant to reverse the flow of young people from places like BNMP? Or is stemming the tide unrealistic, even counterproductive at this point? Has the value ascribed to working in a city like Manado supplanted the value of intact family networks? Does the intrinsic value of an intact social fabric wrapped around a healthy and well-managed ecosystem even matter? It does, and through RACI, those who have felt impelled to leave places like BNMP for the promise of more opportunity will be able to return to rebuild that which has been lost: healthy communities.”
“Waves: People of Bunaken” will soon be available on our online store and at select bookstores in Tokyo, Boston, Cape Town and London.
