AND ON TO PULAU SAWU

Apart from Kefamenanu we also visited Pulau Sawu, an island some 180 km west of Kupang. To get there we managed to get seats on a Missionary Air Service operated Piper Cup-like aircraft. About an hour later we landed at the dirt strip on the island, after making a few overpasses to get a few cows off the runway.

Captain Cook visited the island too, on his 1768-1771 voyage, if I remember correctly an inscribed boulder refers to the visit. It was then an isolated part of the world the Endeavour could have easily missed, although Cook had more accurate updates of the map produced almost 200 year earlier.

  
Eastern hemisphere of Mercator's world map, 1587.
                                       

                                           

Dry dusty heat is what I remember. And palms… everywhere palm trees. Lontar palms (Borassus flabellifer) they are. We later learn that they are tapped and the sap thus obtained is, especially during the dry season when not much else grows, the main food of the population. The slow growing lontar does not only provide the food, but is truly multi- purpose, as nearly all parts are used. The trunk for building houses and bridges, the leaves for roofing, baskets, hats, mats, bags, water buckets, musical instruments, and its fibre is turned into rope.

The evening of our arrival the district head had organised a welcoming party for us where we were introduced to the traditional dances, the local food and the products of the looms, as nearly everybody was dressed in ikat. 

At that party we came up with the idea to do a photo shoot of models wearing ikat. The models were selected at the party and we asked our host for help conveying the idea to the community, especially of course the families of the models.

The next afternoon with the sun already casting fairly long shadows, our models arrived. Now imagine this: the girls, from a very isolated region where the only car was a government operated Toyota Kijang—another one stood on blocks next to our guesthouse waiting for spare parts—were asked to strike poses evocative of a fashion world not only thousands of miles away, but virtually in a different dimension.

After a while they were getting stroppy. And then finally they had had enough. This is it, they said, we are going home, we have to help preparing the evening meal… And off they were.

Later, from Jakarta, we sent several complete sets of the pictures we had taken of the traditional dancing, the food and the photo shoot to the district head with the request to distribute them to those shown in the photographs. I hope it did appease the girls a bit… no longer girls now, mothers and probably grandmothers.