At least 3000 visitors attended the Indonesian community cultural day. It was this Sunday in Robinson on the commune of Mount Dore. On the program: gastronomy, music and traditional know-how.
But for some visitors like Hervé, this day is above all an opportunity… a return to the roots.
« My parents didn’t raise me too much in Indonesian culture, it’s more my grandmother or my grandparents, so I don’t speak Indonesian very well. There aren’t that many of us in the territory. It is often said that we are a fairly discreet ethnic group. So this is a bit of an opportunity to meet people from the cultural world.
Perpetuating tradition, thousands of kilometres from the country of origin: this is what the Indonesian Association of New Caledonia is all about.
« We have a lot of half-breeds from Indonesia in our members, that’s why we try to maintain this culture, » explains its president, Thierry Timan. « We will have many new generations who will not know their parents’ culture. We try to organize trips to Indonesia to discover the country, the culture… There, we work in collaboration with the town hall of Mont-Dore on a twinning with Yogyakarta, from where all the former Javanese came in the framework of immigration. The first came to work in coffee plantations, then domesticity and then after the mines.
Workers who have stumped. The Indonesian community in New Caledonia is estimated at between 7 and 8,000 people.