What an incredible Wednesday night meeting we had! WINGS members, Avi and Eva, along with their team, took us on a virtual tour of their homeland, Indonesia.
Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country and the largest island country with more than 17,000 islands. Now that's a wow factor! Another fascinating fact that we learnt is that the Indonesian language, Bahasa Indonesia, has several words that are similar to Te Reo Maori. A few examples are:
'Ear’ in Bahasa Indonesia is ‘telinga’ and in Te Reo Maori it is ‘taringa’.
‘Five’ in Bahasa Indonesia is ‘lima’ and in Te Reo Maori it is ‘rima’.
Indonesia's rich culture brings out many inspired works of art such as painting and sculpture, as well as music, dance and more.
A traditional dance was led by Eva. This then turned into a line dance when all 40 members of the audience joined in. It looked a bit all over the place, but we danced like no one was watching.
Then it was time for “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, which was played with a musical instrument called an Angklung. This instrument is made of a varying number of bamboo tubes attached to a bamboo frame. We managed to get a small group together to play that as well.
We know how much Indonesians love their spicy food and we were fortunate enough to enjoy traditional Indonesian food, including their famous, mouth-watering Nasi Goreng (fried rice) dish.
The evening was a fun, informative, highly enjoyable and interactive one, enjoyed by a well- attended audience.
