Student's Basic Leadership Training


   So last 2 weeks ago as I'm currently writing this, I had an unforgettable experience on a school program in which i would never forget. It's called the Student's Basic Leadership Training. In Indonesia this type of training is actually pretty common for students in Junior and Senior Highschool.This type of event is usually only held for 10th graders, however 11th, and 12th graders can also join if they haven't done it before.
 Preparation
    So the night before the event or the program I actually organized a lot of my equipment, beverages, and also some of my medicines in my bag. Fun fact I actually carried 3 separate bags (( 1 backpack, and 2 bags) for this specific training. The first bag/ backpack is the main bag, that was where i put all of my clothes, foods, and also some medicine, the second bag was where I organized all of my utilities for showering and cleaning myself and the third was a little bag that holds my pencil case, pen, and books. Come to think of it these collections of bags that I brought were actually pretty useful when in case of emergency.
Day 1
    All of us were told to arrive in a military base called Pusenif(This is an acronym for "Pusat Persenjataan Infanteri" or "The Headquarter for Infantry Arming" )at 6:30 am in the morning.  To compensate for this time I actually woke up at 4: 30 in the morning to check all of my  equipment, utilities, and other things that I needed to bring for the training. The mistake that I've done was that I actually took a cold shower before going there which at first is fine but when we were gathered at the military field I started noticing that my nose is starting to get a bit runny. Like I said we were gathered at the field in a form of rows of our own classes. I arrived there at around 5:30 so it was pretty early. The downside of coming early is that you have to wait for your friends to come and waiting for them took around an hour or so. Eventually everybody arrived and we all did the morning ceremony or the opening ceremony. After the morning ceremony we were all sited and we were all waiting for our own barrack and team placement. As for me I actually got placed in Team C which was placed or ordered to sleep or have the same barracks as team D. It was a good thing that Team C is mostly filled with my classmates,so It wasn't hard to get a long as I have already known them before.

    So after we were each categorized into our own teams and barracks, we were all ordered to go to the main hall. At first in this main hall we were greeted and given some presentations surrounding the topic of Pusenif itself. After that we were told to eat the food that has been prepared for us. To be honest the food itself is actually a bit delicious more than I expected even though it was cheap. Before we eat the seniors and soldiers lined all of us and sited us down. They made us pray and then we eat. The eating itself has to be really fast so we have to stuff our mouth until it's very full and to make it more digestible, we also have to drink water while all the food is in our mouth. Luckily I already knew this, so I was very quick in terms of adapting to it. After we all it we were told to grab our bags and handover our cellphones and watches so that it doesn't distract us while we were doing the program. After that we were told to quickly go into our barrack and change our clothes to the specific sportswear that we were told to bring anyways. Lucky me, since I have already prepared everything neatly and organized I can quickly change my clothes and be done with it, while the other were scrambling around trying to find their own place and roughly changing their clothes. So It was pretty calm for me to handle the situation.

After that they gave us more materials in the hall about our beloved countries and etc. It was actually pretty boring because the materials or the knowledge that they were giving (the soldiers) was based on basic thinking which needed no explanation what so ever. But anyways I did manage to survive through 4 long presentations which took around 8 to 10 hours. The good part is, is that there were some breaks to do the prayer at the mosque for each presentation that was done that day. While dong the brake you can actually talk and drink in the mosque which was very relieving. Due keep in mind that these breaks were full of rules such as always travel in your line, always greet our seniors,etc. We did that for around 4 times that day and we also ate 2 more times that day which was the same scenario to summarize it if you were wondering. The surprising fact is that, that day was the day where all male students got the same bald haircut. It wasn't a shining bald we still have hairs left but it isn't as long as it used to be.

So by the end of day 1 we were told to take a bath and go to sleep afterwards. However they actually limited the time for us to take a bath  so it was gradually and insignificantly hard to take a bath and clean yourself up but I managed to do it because I have already prepared everything in my other bag that i used to store my bathroom utilities. After taking a bath I went back into my barrack specifically to my bed and started cleaning up and arranging my drawers. This is because I knew that they would  force us to actually wake up early. So it was very crucial to manage all your stuff in your drawers by arranging its placement. After that I went to sleep, dumb me I actually wore my other sportswear and in that night they actually sounded the horn (its a sign for all of us to wake up). We all hurried and ran towards the front door and we were all categorized to each of our own team. Since I wore the wrong attributes I actually got punished along with the 50 to 60 other students. They told us to do push ups, sit ups,etc. It was actually pretty hard some of us gave up during the process but I didn't because I am mentally strong, so I kept on pushing my limit to the roof. After around 60 of us have done it we eventually were told to get back to our barracks swiftly without breaking the group arrangement or line.
Day 2
So after Day 1 officially ended with the night punishment,etc. I eventually wore the right attributes and slept with my shoes on and all of my attributes worn already. But then they rang the bell again we were told to go to the mosque and the prayers before the morning prayer. It's a good thing that I've already worn my attribute so I can just jump off the bed and run towards the entrance. The whole prayer thing took around 1 and a half hour to finish, after that we were told to sleep again because it was technically still 2 o'clock in the morning. But we got alerted again when they rang the bell at 4 o'clock in the morning. We were all told to do the morning prayer, due keep in mind that the non-muslims were gathered in their own group to pray with each of their own mentors. After doing the morning prayer, we were told to do the morning warm-up those included things such as doing push ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks,etc. It's a good thing that we did it all together because if one person made a mistake back then all of us would eventually be punished. After we did our morning warm ups we eventually got back to the main hall just outside of the girls barracks in order to line up and have breakfast. The scheme was pretty much the same eat fast, and don't make some noise plus you can't lean your body to go after the spoon but you have to let the spoon and the food come over to your mouth. So after breakfast was done, we were gathered in the main field to the basic training for the line of march .
   This was where things got really excited because we actually got a nice instructor, he was funny and nice at the same time, he specifically knew when to be serious and when to have some fun. We did the line of march training for the whole day and took some breaks here and there. We eventually finished at 4 in the afternoon. After that we were told to take a break, clean up, and prepare our candles for the night event. After that we were told to gather again at the main entrance in line with our own teams/groups. We took a walk into the National Heroes Cemetery. The walk itself took around 40 minutes to complete because we were going through alleyways which were very narrow and could only fit 1 line of people. We eventually arrived there and were told to make a circle and to put our candles on the floor. This circle was made in a concrete parking spot in front of the cemetery. After putting our equipment and tools we were told to the evening prayer. After doing so we got back and were told to be lined again into our own team. Since it was very obvious that this is a night expedition , they explained us some basic rules such as if you saw a ghostly figure do not attack it, just walk away,etc. For this "night expedition", the girls got to go first so we boys waited for around 3 to 4 hours some of us took some sleep which I also did because it was a very tiring day, before we all did this we were told to put on some dark cover for our faces by rubbing a black pill and putting it all over our own faces. We were also told to memorize specific message and we could not tell it to anyone except for the soldier waiting on the entrance. So we waited and it was eventually my turn to do it I got paired up with my friend Rino and Adli. Before we go we were told to put our messages in a certain pile so that we didn't have to carry them around. There were several post during that day in the first post we were told to squat walk towards a jar and ask permission to the dead in order for us to take a certain name written on the paper, the name itself was random and the jar was filled with worms. After doing so we did a smelling test in the next post to recognize specific ingredients we did it and the next post there was someone waiting for us he told us to tell the message to him but of course being smart this was not the soldier that was waiting for us at the entrance, so we didn't even give him the message and we walked away. In the next post we were told to do a taste test I actually ate too much of chilly so when I ate it my whole went nuts and I kinda had water running down my eyes indicating that it was too spicy for me to take. My friend Adli was so kind to offer me a coffee that he bought earlier during the break.

   We've eventually done the night the night expedition, it was hard but it was also fun at the same time by the end of day we were told to light up our candles and morn about our parents, family,and friends. It wasn't heartbreaking but it reminded me of some things about them. We also burnt our names that we took earlier at the first post and also the candles that we brought earlier by burning it in the fire that the soldiers made for us. After doing that we walked back to our barracks to clean up, have some sleep, and do the night prayer. After dong so I put on my official attributes and went to sleep with it and my shoes on.
Day 3
   To my surprise for this morning they didn't ring the bell or anything. They actually had our seniors walked into our rooms and woke us up with some shouting but of course being ready I wasn't scared and plus they were not good actors sooo yeah, their acting was pretty horrible. But none than less i did eventually got over it and we had some extra time, I spent it mostly for cleaning up my bags and putting all of my stuff where it used to be. I also had some talks with my friends, It was actually pretty nice and cheered me up a little. After taking that we did breakfast and headed straight towards the field. The captain gave us some instructions to do some outside game activities such as throwing axes, crawling under a fence, climbing up over a spider web rope and also going through it without hitting the ropes, and finally it's the game where you have to put some certain amount of water inside a gallon by using a PVC pipe tied to some ropes and controlling it only with the ropes that were tied to it. All of these were not a team effort except for PVC one and going through the spider web styled rope. My team did it all surprisingly good, I even managed to get over the spider web rope which was very hard for some students to do.

   After doing that we did the midday prayers and have some lunch, and eventually we did the some line of march training and made our own signature song for our own team. After doing so we took the afternoon prayer and prepared to go home. We did some demonstrations in front of our teachers and parents before going home. After that we were given our phones back and a certificate for doing the training. We were also told to go home after that, so we did. I arrived back at home at around 6 o'clock sharp in the evening. In a sense it was fun and it also thought us some basics of survival.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Edu Passion

Aspiration Day

Me