by Amelia Hapsari

At the first production meeting, many people came. A classroom for 30 students was filled, and people were jamming at the windows to see what was going on. I showed a documentary on the sea gypsies of Thailand from National Geographic with Indonesian subtitles. I motivated them to imagine that the community would be able to produce something like that. I introduced the idea of being a producer, and what would be the responsibility and the opportunities that the producers were entitled to. I saw many pairs of eyes full of excitement and curiosity. However, there were not many fishermen there. People who came were those who owned cargo ships, children, women, and schoolteachers.

At the second meeting, some fishermen came, but they were very quiet. I just wanted to collect as many ideas as possible and to ask them what the community wanted to be videotaped. As the initiator of the project, what I had in mind was to make a story about how destructive fishing practices have threatened their subsistence. However, in the presence of other community members who had better social and economic status, the fishermen themselves were not comfortable to express their opinions.

As arguments started to come up, Nawir, a rich owner of three cargo ships, expressed his disappointment with the village head, who was allegedly supporting the destructive fishing practices. However, Haji Songke, the person who was in charge of the village development was there, and he disagreed with the assumption that the village head did not care about the lives of the fishermen. He said that it was the community of Balobaloang that did not care about the village, because many people refused to pay tax on land use and property.

The meeting ended with some ambiguous atmosphere. There were not huge arguments or fights, but days after the meeting I started to realize that the power relation of this small community was very complex. I also learned that the community was divided among those who were strongly against destructive fishing practices and those who were not directly affected by it.

Other meetings were arranged very casually. The community was used to my presence with a camera because they have asked me to videotape different occasions that happened in the community, such as wedding, soccer game, and rituals for newborn babies and their mothers.

I tried to invite fishermen without inviting other influential members of the community. One meeting was at a fisherman’s house, and he was very upfront about the problem and he expressed his disappointment with the police that was stationed in the area but chose to live in the island whose majority population lived from dynamite fishing. Another fisherman was also there and he also contributed to the discussion. I did not say that they were the producers anymore so it did not feel as formal and threatening. They were used to the idea of a journalist interviewing the subject rather than producing a video. This way they were still participating in a discussion, without worrying about the responsibility of being a producer.

Producing a video is a huge leap in imagination for the people of Balobaloang. They always feel that they are less educated than people who live in Indonesia’s major islands. Although most of them are literate (thanks to the literacy program from the government that has reached even this remote island) and well-traveled due to their sailing experiences or their schooling experiences. However, for most people it was their first time seeing a video camera. It was their first time to see themselves appear on camera. It was their first time to see someone making a video. I could not blame them if they were somewhat suspicious with the idea of producing a video. They were afraid that I would make money out of their images. They kept asking whether I would sell the video in America, or whether I was actually making a video about a primitive tribe. One lady asked me whether I think they were primitive people.

Therefore the concept of participation did not materialized as perfectly as theorized by Freire and other scholars of participatory communication. The fishermen never mapped their oppression and brainstormed their own ways to liberation in the perfect scholarly sense. However, what happened after those meetings was very important. One fisherman came to the house where I was staying very early in the morning and reported that a dynamite was going to explode. I was escorted there with a fishing boat to capture the image on tape. Weeks after that, a member of the village government helped me to get an interview with a crew member of a dynamite fisher. He also showed me the damage that dynamite fishing has done to their mosque, which I would not have known otherwise. The same person also brought me to the island where the majority population lived from dynamite fishing and helped me to interview a person who did dynamite fishing before but currently stopped using dynamite.

These people understand participation at a level that is imaginable for them. Some people who were excited about the project before did not participate as much as they would have wanted because their family members were involved in dynamite fishing or because they relied on the dynamite fishers to get loan. However, they genuinely tried to participate in a certain level, and they clearly wanted to make efforts to stop destructive fishing practices.

Without no doubt, the video was very meaningful for the community when the video was finally able to be viewed by the provincial head of marine police department and the Bupati (which could be compared with a mayor, except the fact that this mayor governed a vast area with hundreds of little spread islands). Without the video, these people might never have been able to tell their Bupati their feelings and their problems directly. Because Bupati and the police were confronted directly by the camera that acted as their presence, they had to give their response to the people. Without the video, the community might never have been able to get a direct response from their authorities. It was such an inspiring moment for them to see their Bupati speaking directly toward their problems and to address their needs. They took his words very seriously and they felt there would be a hope. Unfortunately I was never able to meet the local police officer who was in charge for their area. He was always unavailable when I visited the island where he lived.

The issue of destructive fishing practices is by no mean a simple issue. It relates the local economy with a global market of fish. It involves stakeholders from the local dynamite fisher until allegedly high rank military generals, because the materials that are used to make dynamites would not be available if they are not smuggled or sold illegally. Bigger problems such as foreign trolls that scoop out fish more than the whole country ever export every year are also contributing to the whole situation.

Therefore, general opinions believe that although Indonesians have maintained their marine resources well, foreign companies would come and steal the resources with higher technology and capital ability to bribe governmental and law enforcement agents. Due to the complexity and the scope of the whole problem of marine resource management, many stakeholders believe that whatever they do will not matter. They say even if one island of dynamite fishers decided to stop, when other destructive fishing practices are not resolved, the coral reef would be destroyed anyway.

After I completed the shoot, my work is by no means done. If the world is a big unfinished fabric and we the people as storytellers contribute one thread everyday to the unfinished fabric, I see my work as that one thin thread in the huge fabric with many stories in it. I can care less whether the thread is so thin that it is almost invisible at the more and more uni-colored fabric that the world creates today, but it will still be there. It will make a different color, and it hopes to tempt others to put another color there. It will also motivate me to put more threads so I can mark a more visible pattern at the unfinished fabric.

Although I perceive the participation achieved as unable to meet the ideal goal of Marx and Freire, however similar their hope with the hope of the fishermen. So far the achieved impact is only the dialog among different stakeholders with different positions in the power structure that the video has made possible. However, ideas travel far beyond imagination and time. What has the camera captured and what has been transferred into a video at this stage can not define fully what the real impact of the video on the community because the video has just begun its journey.