Our ‘Forum Partner’, Lian Gogali, is the founder and chair of Institut Mosintuwu, a grassroots community organization based in Poso District, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. For several years, Institut Mosintuwu has been actively initiating and organising festivals, such as Festival Mosintuwu which started in 2015. They believe that the rural area needs a space to meet and learn together. Festivals become a platform to not only accommodate a meeting and learning but also to celebrate the culture and Poso’s biodiversity.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, it was almost impossible for them to hold their usual festival programmes. Responding to this situation, In 2021 they initiated an online festival called Festival Molaolita, using their community radio platform and Instagram Live. Molaolita or storytelling is an oral tradition in Poso. There are different types of storytelling, by singing or reciting fairytales, called Mobolingoni. In recent years, Mobolingoni is rarely found or practiced in the community. This decline is a huge loss, as traditionally this form of storytelling was an important tool used by their ancestors to explain ecological phenomena and their relation to human beings.
In the spirit of preserving local knowledges and traditions, Festival Molaolita was held from 29 October to 13 November 2021, partially supported as Institut Mosintuwu’s ‘Forum Partner’ Programme. The event invited 29 storytellers from 13 villages. Storytellers’ ages ranged from 7 to 75 years old. One of the stories shared, told about a village that had been shaken by heavy rain in Bancea, because they laughed at a frog. A geologist found that this folklore actually has routes in a massive earthquake that split the village, which is located on a fault line.
To quote Lian Gogali, “Storytelling is not only an act to preserve the tradition, but also a space to archive the memories of past tragedies to remind us to become aware and wise in arranging a development project”.
Below you can see the documentation of the event:
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