Kabar Karim: KARANGTURI HAMLET, BULUREJO, NGUNTORONADI, WONOGIRI

This is where I live. Karangturi is the name of one of the hamlets located in Bulurejo Village, Nguntoronadi Sub-District, Wonogiri Regency. This village is called Karangturi, which comes from the Javanese language, namely the word Karang, which means the area and the word Turi, which is a kind of plant whose flowers (turi flower) can be used for vegetables in pecel, vegetables, gudhangan, and others. So named because it used to grow a lot of turi trees in the past. This hamlet is about 30 km from Wonogiri Kota, 60 km from the city of Solo, and 60 km from the city of Pacitan. The position of this hamlet is quite strategic, which is located on the Solo-Pacitan Highway which is a Provincial Highway. The most famous thing from Karangturi hamlet is the Karangturi junction and the Karangturi bridge.

Karangturi Hamlet has 4 RTs- (neighborhood Association). RT 01 is located on the south side of the highway and RT 02 is located on the north side of the highway where these two RTs are indeed areas named Karangturi. Whereas RT 03 named Sentono is located east of RT 02, and RT 04 named Duren is located on the hill north of RT 02. These three regions unite into one hamlet / one RW administratively. To the south of Karangturi, the Wiroko river flows, the main source of water being in the Tirtomoyo sub-district. The fields are spread out in this village, especially in the north of RT 02.

Karangturi T-junction is the hallmark of this hamlet. This T-junction generally connects three regions. From the west side of the junction is Wonogiri city, Ngadirojo, mostly Nguntoronadi. From the south side of the T-junction is Baturetno sub-district and its surroundings. Then on the east side is the Tirtomoyo sub-district and a small part of the Nguntoronadi sub-district. This T-junction made its position strategically and the traffic in this hamlet was quite crowded for the size of village life. Around the fork in many shops that sell like grocery stores, food stalls, and other businesses. Because of its strategic position, there are many billboards on this T-junction. In this fork in ordinary public vehicles temporarily stopped in this area to board passengers, both from the Wonogiri city area, Pacitan and Baturetno, and Tirtomoyo. Public vehicles that usually pass through Karangturi are Jakarta buses, regular buses and mini buses. In the north of the junction there is a motorbike taxi stand that is ready to take passengers to farther places, usually places where the road is not a provincial road or road. On Karangturi there are also a number of motorcycle shelters.

Karangturi Bridge is a bridge to cross the Wiroko river that connects Nguntoronadi sub-district in the north with Baturetno sub-district in the south. The bridge was built around the end of the 1970s when the New Order (Soeharto era/Orde Baru) government built the Gajah Mungkur Reservoir. The construction of the reservoir at that time caused the old Nguntoronadi-Baturetno road to be inundated, so that the Karangturi bridge was built as a replacement, although around 1.2 km east of Karangturi there was already a small Dutch colonial bridging bridge connecting Nguntoronadi with Batuwarno. The Wiroko River used to be said to be very wide, but currently its size is much narrower. The low position of the Karangturi hamlet near the river causes this hamlet to often experience flooding during the rainy season, and even large floods have inundated the road so that the traffic flow is very disturbed, even cut off. Major floods occurred in the 1960s, 2008, and lastly in November in the Cempaka tropical cyclone. The elevation of the highway on Karangturi also made the flood worse. In the past the road height was lower than my house, whereas it is now higher than my house. During the dry season there are many sand mining activities with trucks on Karangturi on the Wiroko river. The sand is used for development activities.

There are several community facilities in Karangturi hamlet, such as mosques, elementary schools and bus stops. The mosque is called Al-Amin which is located on RT 03 Sentono, the direction is in the east of the T-junction, there is an entrance to RT 03 Sentono to the north and about 50 meters to the mosque. SD N Krapyak (elementary school) is located on RT 02 Karangturi. The name of this elementary school is quite unique. Usually SD uses the name of the village / kelurahan, but this elementary school uses the name Krapyak hamlet which is actually located just west of Karangturi. In the past, Mbah Cokro Utomo was a pioneer of this school which was originally located in Krapyak. At that time the school was in the form of SR (People's School) and Mbah Cokro was a school teacher's mantri (now the same as the principal). Then the school moved to Karangturi hamlet to become elementary school and was named SD N Krapyak. The bus stop on Karangturi is provided for passengers heading towards the west of the Karangturi T-junction.