Inspiration and Life Lessons from Travel to Pagar Gunung Village in Mandailing Natal - North Sumatra

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Saturday night, my wife and I were going to the coffee shop for a night out. I accidentally bumped into an old friend at this coffee shop. Nasution (the name of my friend) was one of my work partners when I was an agricultural extension worker in South Tapanuli.

Our meeting brought me to old memories in 2018 when we first met at Pagar Gunung Village which is still around the Tor Sihite Mountains. My trip to Pagar Gunung Village was one that gave me a lot of inspiration, memories and also changed my mindset about life.

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Pagar Gunung Village is one of the villages in Kotanopan Regency – Mandailing Natal Regency, North Sumatra. The location of this village is very far from where I live or where I work at that time. For your information, I live in Medan City and at that time, I was still working as an agricultural extension worker in Sipirok – South Tapanuli. The distance between Medan City to Sipirok is about 8-9 hours by car. Then the distance between Sipirok (my work area) to Kotanopan is about 4 hours drive, and from Kotanopan to Pagar Gunung Village about 1 hour drive. Friends need to remember, I passed the highway in North Sumatra Province which is famous for many bends, damaged roads and potholes.

some parts of the road to the village like being offroad

Coming to Pagar Gunung Village is a challenge in itself, the journey to this village divides the hills. The distance between Kotanopan to the village is only about 6-7 km, but the terrain of the road that is traversed is an asphalt road that has been damaged and some parts of the dirt road are very muddy when it rains with the contours of the road climbing. This experience is also more extreme with the right side facing the abyss. Our car had to maneuver several times to survive and arrive at the village.

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This village is still located in the hills of Tor Sihite with an altitude of about 1000-1100 meters above sea level, and makes this village very suitable and strategic for the development of agricultural crops such as coffee. Our arrival was invited by one of the villagers who wanted to develop the potential of coffee in Pagar Gunung Village and my friend (Nasution) who became our liaison at that time.

Mr. Lubis is wearing a white polo shirt

We met a man named Mr. Lubis, short stature and a little fat but from the face and stature is not like a villager. Dress and talk like people from the big city. After getting acquainted, it turns out that Mr. Lubis is a former chairman of one of the National Banks in Indonesia. Currently, he has retired and all his children are living independently, and Pagar Gunung Village is the birthplace of Mr. Lubis, he also has a family grave site in this village.

Mr. Lubis wants to dedicate his time and energy to building this village. He said he did not have a political mission, but made the villagers able to have steady jobs, the agriculture was more advanced, and the youth in the village were not trapped by the drug industry. For your information, the Tor Sihite Hills are one of the locations for illegal marijuana plantations in Indonesia. In that year, the largest cannabis plantation in Indonesia (which was found) was arrested and confiscated by elements who took advantage of the innocence and poverty of rural communities. Poverty sometimes makes many people do things that are prohibited by law and have the potential to be jailed.

He is not alone, many villagers who want to get up and try to live a better life are working with him. Some farmers who already have coffee plantations but have low productivity are assisted by establishing a better coffee post-harvest system. All coffee harvests will be helped to get a better market and cheaper transportation. The distribution channel really hinders the development of this village. In addition, Mr. Lubis uses his family's extensive land to grow coffee so that the profits can also be used for village development and also provide employment opportunities for the village.

post-harvest development in the village

Seeing Coffee Plants from Local Residents' Gardens

After knowing his intentions and goals, we immediately moved to check the location where the coffee plantation would be planted. The location is not too far from the village and only need to walk about 15 minutes. A vast expanse of hills is planned to become a coffee plantation. My arrival was also accompanied by many people who were enthusiastic about this program plan.

I saw that this land had been cleared but the land was back to being bushy because there was no further cleaning. and I also saw some traces of felling trees, maybe because they are considered disturbing for the coffee plant. I explained to the village community that some trees could be used as shade and protection plants for the coffee plantation.

We spent two days at Pagar Gunung Village, at that time I didn't document much of the activities and enjoyed my discussions and conversations with the villagers more. My meeting with Mr. Lubis also gave me a lot of enlightenment and inspiration. Imagine me, he should be able to live a relaxed life in Jakarta and enjoy his old age with his grandchildren, choosing to return to the village where he was born to serve and build the village. Extraordinary.

That's my story this time, a trip that was very memorable for me and made me remember because of an accidental meeting with my friend. I hope you get inspiration from this story.

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