A comic book titled Kitorang Anak Papua Membuat Komik (We Papuan Children Making a Comic Book), consisting of 50 stories, will soon be published as a comic storybook about Papuan kids for Indonesian children.
The 50 stories were created by 50 elementary school children from Mimika regency and the Jayapura municipality who attended a workshop on writing and composing comic stories organized by the Visi Anak Bangsa Foundation and PT Freeport Indonesia in Jayapura in late July.
“The comic book created by the Papuan children will be brought to Jakarta, and launched in November this year,” Visi Anak Bangsa Foundation head Eva Fitriani told reporters in Jayapura.
The comic book uses the specific language and stories of Papua, “they wrote the stories reflecting their everyday life and they created their own pictures,” said Eva.
“I created a story about an Ubi [tuber] who is fighting against fruit-eating animals. Ubi won the fight because he was able to escape by digging into the ground so the animals were unable to eat Ubi,” said Broklyn Wakum, a sixth grader at the SD Jayawijaya Education Foundation elementary school in Kuala Kencana, Timika.
He dug through the soil with his hands, so that was why he remained in the ground and not on tree branches like the fruits of other plants, he added.
“I created a story about a tribal chief who uses the Fu to gather his people,” said Keryn Waromi, another sixth grader from the same school.
According to Eva, Indonesian children read more comic books from overseas due to the limited number of local comic books.
“The comic book created by the Papuan children will serve as an example for other provinces to do the same, so there would be more Indonesian comic books read by Indonesian children,” she said.
Instructors were impressed during the workshop by the Papuan children’s creative writing abilities.
“Papua is the place where I was born and where I have been raised. I feel Papua is my home village,” said Safa Anisa Zen, a fifth grade contributing author from Al Ihsan elementary school in Abepura.