Indigenous knowledge is key to better managing water in Indonesia

Almost every day we went to the rivers to play or to find food such as frogs, prawns and eels to take home for our family to eat. My older brother was better at catching them than me. He was always the first to catch something and by the time we went home he would have plenty of frogs and prawns wrapped in palm or banana leaves. We loved hanging out at the river and in the nearby forests in the clean air surrounded by the meditative sounds of flowing streams and bird song. We learnt to be hunters and gatherers by doing and we learnt to appreciate the beauty of our natural surroundings and the food that nature provided. One afternoon we saw a wild pig lying by the riverbank. Quickly and quietly my brother, who was about 10 at the time, approached the pig, grabbed its legs and jumped into the river with it to drown it. For several minutes there was a struggle as the pig tried to survive, but my brother won the battle. We came home proudly carrying the dead pig for our family to eat that night.