Guarding the frontier of two countries is about protecting not only the territory which is marked by border markers or longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates, but also the human resources there. The fact that many Indonesian citizens who live in the border of Indonesia and Malaysia gain much more comfort living in Malaysia is such an irony. This irony worsens when they are even not able to sing Indonesian National Anthem due to the lack of knowledge and access for information, not to mention the inaccessibility to educational facilities.

As a teacher of SM-3T program (The Scholars Teaching in the outermost, underdeveloped and frontier regions) in Senior High School 9 Malinau, North Kalimantan, Eko Rizqa Sari agrees on this fact. Two years ago, the school was converted into a public school and now, it still uses the building of with Junior High School 1 South Kayan.

“I felt sad when I saw this school for the first time,” Eko said. “It is a building with obsolete woods. There is no electricity and the teachers are not well paid that it affects their presence. Only the headmaster who has already worked as a civil servant” He added.

According to him, the school is not geographically accessible that it needs 3 days to reach it from Samarinda using land vehicles or 1.5 hours from the regency using a pioneer flight.

Eko, who is also the alumnus of Geography Education Study Program of YSU, fully considers this unbalanced education access and quality among regions, especially those located outside Java island. “While curriculum 2013 is the current debate in Java island, we are struggling with the presence of teachers in our classroomshere,” Eko said. “It needs sudetermined efforts to encourage the students to go to school. After a considerable effort, we can hold a boy scout extracurricular program here,” he added.

“The students wear boy scout uniform here, but they do not understand what boy scout is,” Eko said. After he came to the school as the teacher, the students held a flag ceremony for the first time for the last twenty years in collaboration with PAMTAS from 100/rider. “It is wonderful to see them singing our National Anthem,” Eko said.

A touching moment occurred when some students were not procedurally permitted to take down the flag due to heavy rain. “They were crying when they knew that only students in team 8 who were permitted to take down the flag. They had prepared a lot to do that,” Eko added.

After the flag ceremony, Eko believed that nationalism had grown in their hearts. Therefore, he was so gratitude for having such an experience to devote himself as a teacher in the frontier of Indonesia and Malaysia. (Dedy)