News Reporting: Color Story

Dugderan Festival: Trash and Traffic Jams On the Way!

As usual, welcoming Ramadhan month is a must for every people, not to mention Semarang people. People in Semarang has a unique festival in order to welcome the fasting month called Dugderan. Dugderan comes up from the words "dug" means "the voice of Bedug" and "der" means "the voice of fireworks". For this year, the festival is held in Simpang Lima Semarang.

A lot of people coming, many of them are from students, especially Elementary School students.They bring those paper-made big doll, and then ride on the pick-up cars, and then walking surrounding Simpang Lima. There were a lot of people watching the festival itself, plus those 1000 students who are joining as the participants of the festival. How hard it is to be in the condition of this hot weather!

The hot weather can be compared with how it is so crowded! However, the performances from each region of Semarang could make the spectators feels relieved and it makes the condition of the festival more fun. Many shouts, many smiles even many instrumental sounds are heard loudly. It also, of course, followed by a long traffic jams surrounding Simpang Lima.

All participants even bring kembang manggar on their hands and waving it like crazy when they do the kirab. However, this situation makes the condition after Dugderan worse. Why? Because there are many trash caused by kembang manggar which were thrown everywhere. It makes the condition of Simpang Lima surrounding, for example Pahlawan Street, becomes awfully messed up. It was fun, the festival, however, the condition after the festival itself makes the fun felling of the festival gone.