Guiding Right
10 Mei 2010
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Krystyna Krassowska wants to take tourists and locals alike off Indonesia's well-tread tourist paths with her expedition guides. And do it safely and professionally. She talked to Bruce Emond.
Many of us have lost that loving feeling for the job at hand, if we ever had it in the first place. We envy the lucky individuals who get to do what they want in life, those who go it alone to forgo the usual home-work-home cycle to pursue what makes them happy.
Many of us have lost that loving feeling for the job at hand, if we ever had it in the first place. We envy the lucky individuals who get to do what they want in life, those who go it alone to forgo the usual home-work-home cycle to pursue what makes them happy.
Krystyna Krassowska is one of the fortunate few getting up every morning to do a thing she loves although, as in most cases of people going their own way, it's not so much fate as drive and commitment that have brought her to where she is today. She is the founder and director of idGuides, a newly established organization for trekking and hiking tours that also focuses on training expedition guides in the skills needed to lead parties out into Indonesia's great yonder, based on the UK Mountain Leader Training Scheme.
It is the passion of this forthright, friendly woman, who talks about empowering communities and people and also the potential she sees in Indonesia. It is her love, but as in any enterprise, it also takes time, planning and, in the past start-up year, dealing with difficult beginnings and dipping into her own savings to get it going.
"It will take time," she says, carrying a folder full of fliers about idGuides' services. "But we are in it for the long haul."
A self-described third culture kid -- of Polish and Danish parents, she was raised in the UK and also New York, where her father served at the UN-- she was a competitive rower in her youth, representing Scotland in international events. She became involved in expedition activities in college while studying economics and politics at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1995 came to Indonesia for the first time for an expedition to Seram Island in Maluku.
"It was a real eye-opener," Krassowska says, admitting to scant knowledge of the country that was basically based on a childhood stamp collecting hobby.
She was an expedition leader for a while, before swapping hiking boots for high heels and suits in a detour into the corporate world, and could have stayed there for a comfortable existence. Instead, she decided to follow her father's advice to pursue a career in development by going into the field rather than from an office many kilometers away.
"I think during university I already knew I was going to be a development practitioner, and my heart lay in the intersection where communities in fragile environments find themselves, the tension between outside interests moving in and their maintaining their ways and their eco-system," she says.
"My father told me to get my feet wet, get out there as a nondevelopment practitioner and lead expeditions to these places and really see what's going on. The expeditions became a way of seeing these places from the inside out."
She followed his advice and spent most of her time out in the wilds of the archipelago, leading expeditions for filmmakers, scientists and others, with the occasional brief visit to Jakarta to take care of permits. But the expeditions dried up during the turbulent transition to democracy, and Krassowska took a posting in Uganda on a community forestry project for a couple of years before eventually being drawn back to Indonesia.
"I feel at home here, I'm somebody who feels at home in third countries. And perhaps because I learned Indonesian from those early years working with farmers, tracking with hunters and whoever. Because I was able to get by in Indonesian, I had an appreciation for the different cultures, the different ways of being, the calmness and fluidity of things."
She was baffled that the word was still not out about the beauty and diversity of Indonesia, aside from the usual tourist "poster places" of Bali, the west coast of Java and Yogya. Returning for a development job here, accompanied by her partner and his three children, she realized that a major difficulty in exploring the country was the lack of accessible information on reliable human resources to help point people in the right direction.
Although there are many Indonesian blogs and websites with information on mountaineering in the country, expatriates who don't speak the language find it demoralizing to be in the smack in the heart of the world's last great wilderness and not know where to start to explore it.
"You need to have the knowledge of the contacts, the people you can ring up or SMS to arrange something so that you feel trustworthy. I'm not talking about the extremes of everything being perfectly arranged, but trustworthy in that you speak a language that both can understand, that you also can appreciate it may be difficult to set up something."
It is the passion of this forthright, friendly woman, who talks about empowering communities and people and also the potential she sees in Indonesia. It is her love, but as in any enterprise, it also takes time, planning and, in the past start-up year, dealing with difficult beginnings and dipping into her own savings to get it going.
"It will take time," she says, carrying a folder full of fliers about idGuides' services. "But we are in it for the long haul."
A self-described third culture kid -- of Polish and Danish parents, she was raised in the UK and also New York, where her father served at the UN-- she was a competitive rower in her youth, representing Scotland in international events. She became involved in expedition activities in college while studying economics and politics at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1995 came to Indonesia for the first time for an expedition to Seram Island in Maluku.
"It was a real eye-opener," Krassowska says, admitting to scant knowledge of the country that was basically based on a childhood stamp collecting hobby.
She was an expedition leader for a while, before swapping hiking boots for high heels and suits in a detour into the corporate world, and could have stayed there for a comfortable existence. Instead, she decided to follow her father's advice to pursue a career in development by going into the field rather than from an office many kilometers away.
"I think during university I already knew I was going to be a development practitioner, and my heart lay in the intersection where communities in fragile environments find themselves, the tension between outside interests moving in and their maintaining their ways and their eco-system," she says.
"My father told me to get my feet wet, get out there as a nondevelopment practitioner and lead expeditions to these places and really see what's going on. The expeditions became a way of seeing these places from the inside out."
She followed his advice and spent most of her time out in the wilds of the archipelago, leading expeditions for filmmakers, scientists and others, with the occasional brief visit to Jakarta to take care of permits. But the expeditions dried up during the turbulent transition to democracy, and Krassowska took a posting in Uganda on a community forestry project for a couple of years before eventually being drawn back to Indonesia.
"I feel at home here, I'm somebody who feels at home in third countries. And perhaps because I learned Indonesian from those early years working with farmers, tracking with hunters and whoever. Because I was able to get by in Indonesian, I had an appreciation for the different cultures, the different ways of being, the calmness and fluidity of things."
She was baffled that the word was still not out about the beauty and diversity of Indonesia, aside from the usual tourist "poster places" of Bali, the west coast of Java and Yogya. Returning for a development job here, accompanied by her partner and his three children, she realized that a major difficulty in exploring the country was the lack of accessible information on reliable human resources to help point people in the right direction.
Although there are many Indonesian blogs and websites with information on mountaineering in the country, expatriates who don't speak the language find it demoralizing to be in the smack in the heart of the world's last great wilderness and not know where to start to explore it.
"You need to have the knowledge of the contacts, the people you can ring up or SMS to arrange something so that you feel trustworthy. I'm not talking about the extremes of everything being perfectly arranged, but trustworthy in that you speak a language that both can understand, that you also can appreciate it may be difficult to set up something."
Setting up idGuides, she adds, also means empowering local guides to be assertive in their interactions with clients to instill that sense of trust of them. It's not easy, especially among Javanese farmers instilled with the belief in deference toward those of higher status.
"A lot of our training schemes focus on effectively reorienting the local farmer, the local guide on how to build that trust instantly, by going against their instincts by saying, 'How are you?' and looking that person in the eye. The point is if we were just providing treks we could be any operation, but what we are trying to do is train a network of community guides who may or may not have a lot of experiences, but they have the attributes that they can plan ahead," she says.
"And once they are empowered, we can see there is a light in there and they can communicate. It doesn't necessarily have to be in English or Indonesian, but there are a lot of ways to communicate. It's about building trust and communication."
One of the success stories is Pak Cepi, a former security guard who is now her assistant for expeditions. Krassowska believes there are so many other people out there like him, who have the skills, physical strength and also knowledge of their natural surroundings.
In that way, her company is also a development agency.
"In Jakarta, I would see going back and forth all these security guards. A lot of them are fine as security guards, but a lot of them have so much potential, they're high school graduates and could be used in so many different ways for this country … Right now we have training schemes, and Cepi came in as our first apprentice … It's not easy, because they have to have the right attributes. If anybody has people they would like to recommend, then we're all ears."
Adventure is for everyone, whether old or young, fit or not so, Indonesian or expatriate, she says. The organization provides an array of hikes, treks and expeditions, from a not too strenuous hike along a mountain trail in Sentul, just an hour's drive from Jakarta, to an expedition to the now rarely visited Seram, the place where she first stepped foot in Indonesia's wilderness.
She believes in keeping natural wonders natural – no need to gild the lily with grandiose concrete structures around them – and also putting safety first. Every few months there are stories of hikers lost in the mountains; often they are from student climbing groups who have failed to prepare for the conditions. She says it simply takes proper preparation and having knowledgeable guides, who understand both the terrain and their clients, to ensure a smooth experience.
Krassowska interrupts herself at times, brimming with so much information and enthusiasm that she feels she is getting ahead of herself. Her dream, she says, is for one day tourism to work like it does in Nepal through the tea-house model, where mountain trek programs have helped lift communities out of poverty.
It's the human element, and developing the potential of the people around her, that is at the core of her goals.
"The point is not to say that we can do it and they can't," she says in comparing idGuides with the hundreds of other expedition agencies operating in Indonesia. "But the point is to actually try to empower everybody."
For more information, see www.idguides.org.
"A lot of our training schemes focus on effectively reorienting the local farmer, the local guide on how to build that trust instantly, by going against their instincts by saying, 'How are you?' and looking that person in the eye. The point is if we were just providing treks we could be any operation, but what we are trying to do is train a network of community guides who may or may not have a lot of experiences, but they have the attributes that they can plan ahead," she says.
"And once they are empowered, we can see there is a light in there and they can communicate. It doesn't necessarily have to be in English or Indonesian, but there are a lot of ways to communicate. It's about building trust and communication."
One of the success stories is Pak Cepi, a former security guard who is now her assistant for expeditions. Krassowska believes there are so many other people out there like him, who have the skills, physical strength and also knowledge of their natural surroundings.
In that way, her company is also a development agency.
"In Jakarta, I would see going back and forth all these security guards. A lot of them are fine as security guards, but a lot of them have so much potential, they're high school graduates and could be used in so many different ways for this country … Right now we have training schemes, and Cepi came in as our first apprentice … It's not easy, because they have to have the right attributes. If anybody has people they would like to recommend, then we're all ears."
Adventure is for everyone, whether old or young, fit or not so, Indonesian or expatriate, she says. The organization provides an array of hikes, treks and expeditions, from a not too strenuous hike along a mountain trail in Sentul, just an hour's drive from Jakarta, to an expedition to the now rarely visited Seram, the place where she first stepped foot in Indonesia's wilderness.
She believes in keeping natural wonders natural – no need to gild the lily with grandiose concrete structures around them – and also putting safety first. Every few months there are stories of hikers lost in the mountains; often they are from student climbing groups who have failed to prepare for the conditions. She says it simply takes proper preparation and having knowledgeable guides, who understand both the terrain and their clients, to ensure a smooth experience.
Krassowska interrupts herself at times, brimming with so much information and enthusiasm that she feels she is getting ahead of herself. Her dream, she says, is for one day tourism to work like it does in Nepal through the tea-house model, where mountain trek programs have helped lift communities out of poverty.
It's the human element, and developing the potential of the people around her, that is at the core of her goals.
"The point is not to say that we can do it and they can't," she says in comparing idGuides with the hundreds of other expedition agencies operating in Indonesia. "But the point is to actually try to empower everybody."
For more information, see www.idguides.org.
source: Thejakartapost
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Judul: Guiding Right
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