Exiguous Word About Me

I was born in Nopember 9, 1974 at Buttulamba, a remote village of Polewali. It was before a part of South Sulawesi, but then joined West Sulawesi in October 2004 when government of Indonesia affirmed West Sulawesi establishment as the 33rd province of Indonesia. 

I was born in a no have family with 5 sons and 5 daughters. Our father is a hired farmer (Ind.: petani penggarap) and mother is looking after us. However, with the philosophy of simplicity of life within veracity and modesty, our parents have accompanied us growing fruitfully.

Then I spent most of my childhood in Buttulamba. I entered an elementary school, SD Inpress 044 Buttulamba, in 1980 when I was almost 6 years old. Basically I was not allowed to enter elementary school at that time because minimum age should be 7 years, but since there was no play group or kindergarten in or close to my village, I was "temporarily" allowed but not registered as student. I joined the class just for playing and not for "learning" just like other students do. I could follow all the class activities, but all my activities would not be recorded: no evaluation, no score, no examination, etc.

Accidentally, I had best performance among all first grade students. In the first four months (Ind.: catur wulan) examination, I did best work and got best examination score. This 'accident' triggered school management to accept me as formal student. I 'broke' the rule and accepted as a first grade student although my age was not 7 years yet. Finally, I joined all other students to be the first student of the very new elementary school in my village.

In 1982 when I was in the third grade for two months, there were some fourth grade students from SD 021 Bunga-Bunga wanted to move to our school. They were about 20 students. The reason behind this movement is that their previous school is far away from their home comparing to our school. However, at that time, our highest grade is third grade. Negotiation was taken then. In the end, Regional Education Department allowed my school to accept those fourth grade student and add more students from its third grade to achieve minimum 30 students in a class. And the good story is, I was one of 10 students that passed third grade within two months only. In other word, I moved from second grade to fourth grade in a year. That was why, I graduated from elementary school in 1985 and spending 5 years only to complete this 6 years school.