For those who haven’t watched and are interested in watching the Demon Slayer anime/manga series, spoiler alert. ( you can skip the italics part if you already watched/read it)
For those who haven't watched it I'll do my best to summarize in a way thats relevant to my analogy.
In the show Demon Slayer, we follow the journey of a young Kamado Tanjiro, a coal miner up in the mountains that lives with his small family. The first episode went into describing the warmth of kinship within the Kamado family of 5. Which at that point, since Tanjiro’s father had passed away, fell into Tanjiro’s responsibility as an eldest sibling to protect and provide. One day, as he came home from the market, he found his family had been devoured by demons. Long story short, this event triggered Tanjiro to pursue the path of becoming a demon slayer because he didn’t want other people to suffer the pain of loss he did.
Demons in this universe are akin to that of vampires or zombies as depicted in pop media that consume humans exclusively at night. They die when exposed to sunlight or when they are decapitated. This trait will be relevant to my analogy.
In the Demon Slayer universe, there exists an organization of trained swordsmen bent on ridding the world from the terror of these demons. The so-called Demon Slayer Corps. Among the corps members, there are those of high ranking, called the Hashira. On a chessboard, these would be your bishops, knights, and rooks; basically officers of a military. In the story we are introduced to 8 Hashira’s with unique personalities, backstories, and abilities. All of which they have honed to perfection as they can easily one-slash a demon that can take on 20+ low-rank corps members. The power scaling in this anime is wild. In the story, we see Tanjiro learning from each one of the Hashiras, taking on an apprentice position for a different Hashira every season.
Anyway if you made it this far, there’s a huge chance you’ve seen it already so I don’t see the point of explaining the series in any more detail. I’m now going to start talking about how I can use these terms to describe my situation in Situ Gede.
About me
As you may know from my old posts, I am not exactly new in the cleanup world. I’ve been recording the amount of trash I collect along with relevant data since May of 2013 at the age of 15. I started cleaning up even earlier in 2010, dedicating myself to my personal ambition to clean my school, 14th Junior public high school in Bogor. Since the age of 13 I’ve been exposed to people mocking me, making fun of me, calling me too serious for “caring that much”, at the age of 14 I’ve had seniors mock me, “hey, that's trash right there go pick it up.” while I was carrying a bin back to my class after unloading it at the school's mainbin.
Long story short, I’m no stranger to mockery and ridicule. My whole schtick is essentially, “you litter, I pick it up, you litter, I pick it up, and I will keep doing this hoping more people join me to outnumber you.” I personally believe that people who litter cannot be changed, the only way to neutralize the damage they do to nature is by outnumbering them with the opposite action.
Even though it was tough for me to fit in at school, I was blessed to have a loving family that had enough to go by. Even though we didn’t own a house in 2013, we were allowed to rent a house inside the IPB complex for a cheap price since my mom was a lecturer there. IPB is filled with so much vegetation, since one of its main strengths is in forestry research. As a kid, especially an only child, these jungles were paradise for a young Inosuke like myself to run wild in. Everytime I came home from school, I went out with my dogs to run in the forest. I would either act like some sorta ninja jumping from one fallen tree-trunk to another, or go out in my dad’s woodland camouflage US army jacket he bought in the 90s and larp as a stranded-soldier in my imaginary war; all this alone, no friends, no siblings, just me and my own imaginary world. It was one of the things that made me feel “so me”, in contrast to school life where I was constantly unable to fit in, like an oil molecule amongst H2O.
I realized at an early age that I cannot convince people to clean up the way I do, it's simply not possible. In 2012 (age 14) some people did join my cleanup efforts, but I found out that most of them were doing it for different reasons than me, all of which were unsustainable and they called it quits. For some reason, I can't stop. I simply feel like I am myself when I clean up. That is when I started focusing inwards and made cleanup a journey of self improvement.
About Situ Gede
Situ Gede is a Lake located in West Bogor, Bogor City, in West Java. Etymologically speaking, Situ means lake, so calling it Situ Gede lake is kinda redundant. But since it's weird to hear just Gede (which means big), I'm going to call it Situ Gede Lake because Gede lake feels kinda wrong.
Situ Gede on the surface might seem like a hospitable place during the day, but I kid you not it is legit the entertainment district from DS season 3: Entertainment District Arc. On the surface, Situ Gede is a calm peaceful lake with some of the Ministry of Forestry’s assets which are the 50 hectare research forest on its northern shore; home to many unique species observed by highly esteemed academics from IPB and the likes. On the surface it seems like a very, education friendly environment, perfect to raise children, away from all the city noise and pollution, don’t even talk about the toxic urban lifestyle… Sitting under the tree with the afternoon breeze rubbing your ear you’d be deceived to assume Situ Gede is anything but toxic.
Along the southern shoreline of Situ Gede, lies the Rawajaha Village. In fact there are 3 major villages surrounding the lake, Rawajaha, Nagrak, and Jawa. Out of the 3, Rawajaha is allegedly home to many criminal masterminds. It's common for people to be taken away by undercover police, and return again the next week, and taken again. All of this is low profile arresting, no door-kickin SWAT-like action. It’s as if everything has been orchestrated, as if there is a puppeteer or chess player, intentionally allowing his chess pieces to be taken to play it smooth. But, I think I don’t want to step on that tiger's tail, that's Muzan level shit. I'm barely a proper Hashira, and to deal with that is outside of my interests. My interests involve making sure the forest is conserved, I honestly don’t care who is in power or if the cartel runs the world, what's important for me is that nature is preserved and human activity poses as little pollution as possible to the environment. The world is full of thieves, from those with guns to those with ties. As long as they don’t steal from me and harm nature, I am not going to interfere with them.
My problem is with the lower class demons, the young generation of criminals. These kids are probably in their teens to mid 20s. They have a habit of drinking, yelling loudly profanity, and doing gang wars with sharp weapons commonly known as tawuran. Some are even gross enough to have had sex in the bushes along the perimeter of the lake. I can prove this because I have pictures of used condoms retrieved during cleanups. This is all a problem for me, because my house is located at the perimeter of the lake.
In 2022, Ridwan Kamil, the governor of West Java revitalized a bunch of lakes with the intent of activating them as tourism sites. This involved the pouring of billions of taxpayer money into building infrastructure around the lakes, for situ gede, we had a perimeter overhaul. The entire circumference was tiled for people to be able to jog, bike, and walk around. Along with other additional infrastructure like park-benches at random points around the lake. For some reason, they chose to build a canopy with 10 park benches along the gate of my house, blocking my view to the lake, which I can’t protest since they have the legal right to build on their part of the land.
However, the lack of employing proper maintenance and monitoring after the construction lead to these infrastructures being left to grow wild. If it wasn’t for me and some of my kind hearted neighbors once in a while trimming the bushes and cleaning up the trash, it would be a complete mess. Since the canopy benches are located RIGHT IN FRONT of my house (which is positioned at an elevation relative to the benches), I have the most power to maintain the facility, which I do my best despite the fact I’m not paid to do so.
At night, around 22:00, members of the gang “cifor strongboys” as they identify themselves in social media (kinda stupid since now the police know about you, or maybe it's a distraction tactic, i don't know) gather in front of my house to sit around on the canopy while singing loudly while being drunk, yelling profanities, and chugging alcohol, ciu as its called here. My problem with them is that they always leave their trash on the benches despite there being an obvious trash can right in front of their faces. I always cleanup after them and this dynamic has been going on for 2 years. At this point, I don’t know if they are actually stupid or are they doing a power move on me, i.e., intentional disrespect. Eitherway, I’m not unfamiliar with this level of apathy, 13 year old me learned it in school with fellow students, 27 year old me is experiencing the exact same thing but with a little spice of potential hostility and bloodshed.
I must admit that these kids, although they are kids, are quite intimidating. And there’s power in numbers. I have tried reminding them to keep the noise down at night, and clean up after themselves quite a few times, but they keep at it. If I raise my fist, I don’t want to deal with what comes after, because I know what these people are capable of. I’ve found plenty of weapons stashed in the bushes. They might be moving it around to avoid detection, they might be planning a fight, nobody knows. It’s just unsettling to live in the middle of all this tension while all I care about is forest conservation and plastic pollution mitigation. Well, having heard stories of my dad back in his AMDAL days being chased with a machete by an illegal logger in Borneo, maybe my situation isn’t half as bad. But still, it's quite a lot for someone to live in.
How am I the Hashira, and what am I for situgede?
I have been acknowledged nationally and internationally for my efforts. I’m credited as a “hero” everywhere I am invited. People yearn to hear about Situ Gede and how beautiful it is and can’t wait for me to show them. People in my reels ask constantly “where is this, where is this, it's so beautiful, I want to go there.” Having 103 thousand followers, what I say can make or break the image of this lake; impacting its economic development in a positive or negative way. If you search the location on IG, almost all that pop up are my videos. This is a very huge responsibility on my shoulders.
I have the intent to shine light on the issue I’ve been trying to solve for years, plastic pollution mitigation, and I’ve finally found a spot where I can live and work simultaneously to commence that mission for the rest of my life. In 10 years, I intend to have established a waste sortation system that allows for minimum waste to be disposed of to the landfill, a system that prevents people from feeling the need to burn waste, all while allowing me to cleanup daily as a form of sport which I will be coaching hundreds of students to do so as well. In 5 years I will have established my home sortation station, the concept of which can be implemented worldwide through tutorials I share on social media. In 7 years kids from my paddle club will have entered the olympics, elevating their social status amongst their peers and steering them away from the life of crime. In 8, the major sorting station of situ gede would have employed enough people to reduce unemployment, further proving to society that a life of crime is no way to live.
It's not gonna be easy. But in my short life, I just know this is what I’m meant to do. And if there is anything I learned from demon slayer, every episode is gonna be a roller coaster, and every season feels like you almost died, and you will always end up fighting a harder boss anyways. But in the series, every major battle was followed by an episode of recovering. So, it's to say that just as seriously as you take your training and your battles, take serious also your rest. Because it's a vital element to becoming stronger for the next season where the bosses aren’t gonna be easier.
Also, breathe.
Gomi no kokyu, ichi no kata… tsssssss
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