Sumba
The hidden Indonesian gem where time has stood still.
My girlfriend and I recently travelled to the Indonesian island of Sumba -an Island unlike any other. A mix of religions seems to have blended here, giving Sumba its very own identity, very different from the rest of the country.
After living in Bali for some months, the urge to explore other islands of Indonesia kept growing. So, in typical backpacker fashion, we impulsively booked a last minute flight to the Island of Sumba -the cheapest flight we could find on Skyscanner. We knew that Sumba was a beautiful island of white sand beaches and interesting culture, but not much else. A couple of days before the trip we did however chat with a friend who had been there. This was a hardened backpacker that had traveled to most of Indonesia. Our friend told us that in all his travels, the West of Sumba was the only place that he felt danger. This came as a bit of a surprise, as our tickets where to Tambolaka, a town in the West. How bad can it be? We booked a cheap homestay walking distance from the airport to go find out.
From Bali it was a 1-hour puddle-jump to the tiny Tambolaka Airport, not much more then a landing strip. The homestay was an easy 5-minute walk away. There we sourced a contact for a bike rental another 5 minutes away. We walked into what seemed to be the bike rental place. It was small concrete abode within a gated community, where some 15 people where enjoying the shade of the house’s porch. I tried to communicate, no one spoke English, the men just stared, not even a smile. I was able to get a young boy to call the owner Vincent with my broken Indonesian. While we waited for Vincent, I noticed that some of the men reposed on a peculiar concrete structure -a big slab with some names on it. This turned out to be his family’s burial site. The big slab was serving as a platform for these men to have a snack and smoke cigarettes, no further then 5m away from Vincents Bedroom!
Vincent showed up and proudly showed us a Honda Vario 125 with a broken speedometer. This would do fine.
We drove around for hours, mostly following a narrow winding road that stretched along most of the west coast. A beautiful drive, dividing the coastal views with the palm tree forests and corn fields. No traffic in sight. Just a few kids using the road as a playground and local villagers walking their daily commute. Farmers mostly walking to the fields. Their style varied, some wore jean shorts and branded t-shirts, others barefoot and fully adorned with traditional sarongs. All the men however wore long swords called cabala, hanging off a sarong around the waist. We veered off this costal road onto the first of many the bumpy dirt roads that seemed to spider web through most of the landscape connecting the villages.
The villages were very small and the houses were few. Simple houses built of mostly bamboo with straw roofs. The roofs had enormous centre structures towering well above the rest of the roof. Most houses had entire families hanging out on the porch, all staring at us with stern faces. Sometimes the kids smiled and waved but almost never the adults. When trying to spark small conversations or asking for directions, it seemed like we weren’t welcomed. They always answered politely, but never without the stern look. I think in many of these villages we chanced upon, foreigners had never driven by, or very rarely.
Every few villages we passed, we saw either a large church or a mosque. It seemed that West Sumba was a 50/50 split of Christian and Muslim. These religions appeared to have blended with Sumbanese customs and beliefs. We kept on seeing what we had seen at Vincents house, big family tombs outside the houses, which the Sumbanese peoples seemed to make use of. They used them as driers for fruits and vegetables, as platforms to relax, or even as tables for their meals.
We drove all the way down to Waikuri lagoon, a spot that Charlotte found on google maps. After parking our bike, an energetic kid 7 years old with frizzy hair painted yellow comes up to us and confidently says “ayo” (lets go). The kid turned his back and walked off, we followed. I guess he was going to show us around. I got some portraits of him before some of his friends joined our walk. They playfully showed us the way to a platform you could jump off of about 5m tall, all while running around playing and competing for our attention. I challenged the kids to jump off but they where all too afraid, except for the one girl in the group whose only fear seemed to be talking to Charlotte. We jumped off together in to the bright blue lagoon. Charlotte was filming the sight when one kid demanded a photo with her, which inspired the others to want one too. What happened next was what seems to happen in every single place we travel to off the beaten path. All the kids started fighting for pictures with Charlotte, which she laughingly provided.
I was playing with the kids in the the lagoon while Charlotte sparked a conversation with a local man. When I climbed back out of the water he introduced himself. Agil -a school teacher in a nearby town- was spending the day at the lagoon with his family. He was very easy to talk to and had many questions for us, as many as we had for him. He invited us to have lunch with his family. We all sat together on one of the many bamboo platforms that seem to be scattered all over Indonesia and shared baked chicken white rice and vegetables. I tried to communicate with broken Indonesian which the family found super entertaining. “Enak” I said (delicious). It started to rain very heavily so we all took shelter in one of the warungs (small shops that sell either food or drinks) This one was no more then a bamboo structure with a plastic tarp tied over it. I bought the family coffee and we spent the whole afternoon chatting with Agil.
We learned a lot that day. Agil was Muslim, but with a lot of Christian friends. To him religion is something personal and it doesn’t matter what others believe. This seemed to be the general sentiment in Sumba. However in Sumba these religions had blended with their local religion that some villages still abide by strictly: Marapu -an animist religion very connected to nature. He explained the reason for the tombs we kept seeing. In the Marapu faith, it is believed that when someone dies, there are rituals that must be followed. The tombs are traditionally solid stone cut with rudimentary hand tools. These stones are then ceremoniously dragged by hand to the houses, sometimes from many km away. These ceremonies can be very expensive as the ritual sacrifice of animals such as buffaloes and pigs are a necessary part.
We got back to our homestay wondering why West Sumba had a bad reputation. Even though people where not as smiley and engaging as in other parts of Indonesia, the people we met were quite friendly and hospitable, as it turned out. The stern look must be just a cultural thing, I guess.
On another day we decided to go further south to find Mandorak beach. After getting lost through cornfields and villages, we gave up on the idea of using google maps. After asking a few dozen people along the way, we finally found it. The beach had a makeshift gate where a few locals were asking for a small admission fee to enter the beach. Walking down to the beach we found a lot of villagers porched-up on bamboo platforms, a few of which were also serving as shops where some of the locals where selling drinks and snacks. There was no one there besides the locals, but the few people that do wander by clearly inspired these villagers to turn a bit of profit. The beach was beautiful and empty. Just white coral sand and blue waters nestled between two large rock formations serving as a perfect natural harbour for local fisherman to take out their canoes. Solid wood boats hand carved out of tree trunks with bamboo outriggers tied on to prevent the boats from flipping over.
After a walk and a swim we were hungry. One of the bamboo platforms had a woman selling instant noodles. We bought two portions and ate it sitting with the woman’s family on the platform. We tried to make conversation but it was hard with the language barrier. Two men with swords got up on the platform and sat next to us facing us directly. I asked “Apa Kabar?”(how are you), no answer not even a crack on their stern expressions. I persisted with “Bagus?” (Good?); nothing, not even a grin. We finished breakfast, paid and left. How strange, these people did not smile or make any efforts to make us feel welcomed. The two men were even acting a little threatening. A stark contrast to what we experienced with Agil and his family.
Another spot we worked our way to was Retengaro beach. We drove to a hill of the side of the beach where a group of local kids were playing. There was a tour guide there with a family of Indonesians. He explained to us that the kids were from a local village very close, he pointed to a grouping of incredibly high straw rooftops reaching higher than the palm trees along the way. There was a great big stone altar and some young men on horses next to it -local guys from the village hoping to rent out their horses to passers-by. The kids started reaching for my pockets and asking for money. I playfully asked them for money and they laughed and stopped. I took some pictures of them before we drove up to the village. We drove in to the village, where a couple of locals tried to sell us hand crafted sarongs, we bought one. After trying to communicate to a few different people we found one teenager who spoke a little English. I told him that I was a photographer and would take and send him pictures of his family if he wanted. He invited us into his home. The home was a large bamboo platform with no real devisions, just a large area in the middle of the home to make fire, and a few mosquito nets acting as dividers for their sleeping areas. The only thing that was store-bought in that home seemed to be the mosquito nets and a few items of clothing. There was an older woman, two teenagers and a young girl. They seemed happy for the pictures.
Leaving the village we got followed by a few local men, they where not smiling and like the men at the beach where not responding to my attempts to talk. When we got to our bikes three young men where standing next to our bikes. The “free” parking was no longer free, we got extorted for 50k, a small amount (3 euros) but in Indonesia it is about 25x the normal parking price. The men were somewhat menacing, one of them staring at Charlotte very intensely; when she looked away he started laughing, exposing red and rotted teeth, from the beetle nut he had chewed all his life. We paid and left. So here we were once again in a place where the local people seem to want to make money off of anyone passing by, but at the same time these same people are being unfriendly and even menacing to outsiders.
After a few days exploring the West we decided to drive East, to explore a different part of Sumba. A 4 hour drive passing through a beautiful mountain range found us stuck behind a pickup truck full of passengers in the back. The truck turned in to a field where there seemed to be hundreds of people. We wanted to see what was going on, so we followed and parked the bike and waded into the crowd. In typical Sumbanese fashion almost no one smiled. To the few people that did, I would always ask if it was ok for us to be there, knowing that they would say yes. We started seeing groups of people walking buffaloes with decorated horns. These we followed, through a field with maybe 50 of these decorated buffaloes tied of to trees with numbers spray painted on their bodies. The buffaloes where being walked all the way to a raised alter where each in its turn was ceremoniously displayed by its escorting family. Some people would shout and stomp their feet while waving their swords. Others would try to stress the buffaloes, prompting the animal to try and escape. This would demand more men to hold on to the ropes in order to hold the buffalo steady; sometimes it would take up to 30 men. We found a young man who was able to explain what was going on, a young Sumbanese surfer. He explained that someone very important had died, and in Sumba when someone dies, buffaloes need to be sacrificed. This is a favour of one family to another, which is expected to be returned when someone else dies. The more popular and important the person, the more buffaloes are donated and sacrificed. This was the biggest sacrifice he had ever seen; for 3 days, the buffalo parade went on. We got mixed reports on how many buffalos where actually going to be sacrificed, but it must have been no fewer then 60. Unfortunately we couldn’t wait 3 days to witness this holocaust, alas. So after spending a few hours there we decided to keep moving. Sumba can be dangerous by night, as there are many reports of bandits. It was late and we still had a few hours of driving to do.
We explored the east for the few days we had left. We drove around exploring markets, waterfalls and beaches, before making the drive back to Tambolaka. What we visited in the East still felt like the parts of Sumba we had seen so far. Christian and Muslim religions blended with the animist beliefs of Merapu. However, even though most places we went to were untouched by tourism, people were much more welcoming, and seemed as much surprised as happy to see us.
The only two foreigners we met on our whole trip helped us gain some more insight. A French-Portuguese man, Luis was the proud owner of the only Pizzaria in West Sumba; Antonio was the proud owner of a bed and breakfast. Starting a business in Sumba is not easy. Both business owners had incredible stories of dealing with the local people. Luis even told us about land disputes he had with official backing that lead to long-lasting feuds; he even reported multiple death threats. “The people in Sumba are not easy”. Antonio on the other hand had ambitious plans of developing Sumba as a touristic paradise and offering opportunities of employment for the local people.
A proud people, the Sumbanese have their own ways, in many parts not to different than how things where done hundreds of years ago. Tourism like is very likely to grow in Sumba, as in many other “untouched” islands of Indonesia. Yet I wonder if such change would be a good thing. Agil was an educated man in favour of modernisation, with hopes for more tourism and development -same as the very few other Sumbanese men we met that spoke English. It does seem however that the men at our breakfast spot at Mandorak beach and some of the Retengaro villagers are not too keen on the idea of turning their island in to a tourist hotspot.
It’s hard to imagine how buffalo sacrifices and beach clubs merge. I guess only time will tell the future of Sumba.
In the meantime travel to Sumba was an incredible horizon expanding trip and I truly recommend it to anyone. Just stay respectful, and if in a village somewhere a villager is not welcoming, fair enough -it is their home. They don’t owe you anything.
