BYU-Hawaii’s Indonesian Student Association celebrated its country’s independence nation the same day as the Indonesian team won the badminton victory at the Olympics.Liliyana Natsir and Tontowi Ahmad made their country proud by winning Indonesia’s first gold medal of the 2016 summer Olympics for double badminton, according to Google. Members of BYUH Indonesian Student Association gathered together to celebrate the medals and their 71st Independence Day on Aug. 17 by playing some games with a little adaptation.Garry Mocodompis, a sophomore from Indonesia studying business, said the games the association played are generally meant for children. He said other Independence Day activities include flag raising ceremonies, visiting memorials, and a game for teens and adults where they climb to the top of a tree to get a prize. Dixie Johnson, a sophomore majoring in international cultural studies from California, joined in the celebration and compared her first Indonesian Independence Day with the American 4th of July. Johnson said, “It’s really cool seeing how different and unique we are, and also how similar we are as well. The games were so fun and interesting.”Johnson said the game she found most interesting had a papaya hung from a string. The papaya had pennies stuck into it from top to bottom. The object of the game was for contestants to take as many pennies out of the papaya as possible. They could only use their teeth. Unfortunately, the sweetness of the papaya did nothing to mask the sharp metallic taste of the pennies. The chapter’s Vice President Airi Wahyu Perdana, who organized the activity, explained the original game is not played with a papaya. It’s played with a watermelon dipped in car oil. By the end of the game, every contestant’s face would be greasy and black.Mocodompis said, “The purpose is you want to get people’s face dirty. But [here at BYUH], we are not that mean.”With only three papayas to play with, students had to team up and have two people vigorously plucking at one “pennied” papaya at the same time. Johnson said her biggest worry wasn’t a messy face. She said all she was thinking was, “I hope I don’t accidentally kiss someone!” Johnson said she would love to teach the game to her family. “My family is really big, and we like to get together and play interesting games like that.”The papaya coin game wasn’t the only game with a little variance. In one game, kerupuk is hung from a string and the competition is to see who can eat it the fastest. With no kerupuk readily available, the Indonesians settled for bagels instead.Another activity was one similar to a piñata. Players closed their eyes and swung a stick trying to burst a plastic bag of water. In another, players tied a pencil to a string and attached it to their waist so the pencil hung down like a tail. In a relay race, the players ran to a bottle of water, squatted over the bottle and tried to swing their pencil ‘tail’ into into the bottle. Johnson said it is important for students to be able to appreciate the traditions and celebrations of other countries. Of the Indonesian Student Association, she said, “The Indonesians are some of the nicest, most accepting people I have met since I’ve been here and I encourage everyone to join their club.”
Writer: Kelsy Simmons
