Madobag, Matotonan, Ugai: Nov/Dec 2000
One of those grey days on the coast, low clowds, heavy rain initially overnight giving way to constant drizzle, heavier at times as squalls move from North to South. Not much wind, just pelting rain. Imas has had the boat ready since before dawn. Matias, a face I recognize although I can't put a name to it, squats in the bow huddling under a shredded piece of plastic, clutching a parcel of fresh fish purchased that morning and his cigarettes, plumes of smoke billowing from the space as he gazes ahead waiting for the journey to commence. "No problem if Matias comes along?" mentions Imas, busily connecting the Marina's fuel tanks to the outboard. I shrugged. Not much point objecting even if I cared. And maybe Matias would remember the favour one day. I file it away for future reference feeling as if I had not been away at all.
    40 horses push us along past the outskirts of Muara Siberut, past the Pastoran Complex with its temporary accommodation shed fronting the river where a transient, albeit ever-present, group of refugees from the ravages of tropical illness that has exceeded local efforts in the interior at containment, or accident victims, reside when seeking medical attention. They stoke up the fire in the cooking outhouse. The settlement peters out a little way beyond this together with the overhead powerline.The dark stain running from the waterline a meter or so up the vegetation on each bank further upriver indicates a recent torrent has recently made its way seaward from the interior. Good for swift travel upriver. But the high water has passed and we slow to a crawl a half hour in from the Sabirut/Silaoinan/Rereiket confluence.
    The stream of smoke from the bow continues, intensifying when the rain eases, as Matias lights up his smokes end to end. He notices that Imas, a Minang born and raised in Muara, and hence a Muslim, is also enjoying a cigarette. Matias gets a real kick out of this since it means that Imas has broken his fast: it is the middle of the Muslim fasting month, Ramadam. Imas grins broadly, and perhaps a little sheepishly.
    A couple of hours later the boat slides into the mud. That I had arrived takes me by surprise until I realize that the large bend at which point the southern fringe of the village comes into view, specifically the Samwonwot uma, is missing: the river in flood has cut through the promontory making the southern landing inaccessible. Flashbacks of viciously swift boat trips through a narrow passage bisecting the loop seven years earlier. Matias is briskly out and up the riverbank heading for his hut engaging in some banter with Imas at a distance, the latter reminding the former that he "owes" him. I shoulder my bag and clamber after the rapidly disappearing Matias.
    At the top of the bank a young woman, fishing net and bamboo canister slung over her shoulder contemplates the new arrival. Not exactly the time of year for "orag turi". "Kapa ibara orag turi?", she asks. "Siglenn", calls Matias over his shoulder, although it does little to clarify the situation. I slip and fall heavily. It would be easier to plaster the feet with grease and coat the ground in liquid soap than walk on this surface after a bit of rain. "Tilaish" intones my observer. "Tak belek aku mecca" I affirm with a grin to hide the pain: rocks embedded in the clay to walk on punish those folk who know not what they do, or how to do it anyway. I set off at a brisk pace lowering my centre of gravity so that my weight is diproportionally on my thighs; gives the feet better purchase on the ground, although it'll wear you out if you're not fit. It gets me a little way along the path.
    It's quiet. Well it was always quiet. But it seems different. The first uma on the left is empty, but apparently still as sturdy as ever. Sitobe's uma, however, formerly located a little further down is no longer there. Flashback to a series of ceremonies to transfer the bakkat katsaila and alei katsaila across the way to his son's sapou-become-uma. I wonder what has become of the old man and his wife, my neighbours for 18 months. The little shop where Amril, the Minangkabau expat, eked out a living with his local wife, Rosa, is also missing. Marinus's "hotel" is still there. School has been torn down and replaced. Impressive. The old Social Department hut, often the first quarters for any Government or quasi-government officials, has become the base for a new Minang trader his wife and children, stocked with everything from beer to raincoats, and a fridge running off a generator if you like your beer cold on a hot day. Marinus's cousin, Monis, the Nias trader who had a shop has long gone. Flashback to plans to relocate to Gunungsitoli. Had enough of the Rereiket. Across the way my quarters are long gone. Hansip said he was going pull it down, so he could extend his house in the "proyek" area of the village. The huge Salolosit uma, only held up by a number of strategically placed lengths of bamboo when I left, has long gone. In its place is a half-finished pavillion, to supply visitors with information about the Siberut National Park. It's lack of information speaks volumes. Machete marks and names carved in the beams are the only decoration.
    I lob in at Marinus's place, his two story hotel. Good view of comings and goings from the 1st floor veranda. I see the old man, Sitobe, wending his way over to his son's sapou-now-uma. Must be ninety or a hundred by now. As thin and frail as before, but still defying the odds in a place where death is never far off: his wife died a little while ago, as did his son; his cousin, Teumutekak, father of Barnabus also lost his wife and lives there with his son and his wife. Teumutekak spends his days sitting on the front veranda attaching sago leaves to lengths of bamboo ready to replace rotting sections of roof. A large family once located in two separate uma have now contracted into one. A day or two later Teumutekak recognizes me: "Bulat mauju bat tilei alei...abaraadnekeu" he grins, breaking into a soupy cough. "Yeah, it's been a while". I intimate that I'll have some choice tobacco available later at a more discreet time. No great desire to open the flood gates just yet.
    The rain pelts down as a particularly heavy shower moves through. Next door the Minang shop is a hive of activity. A card game is on, a hefty pile of rupiah growing on the table. Lo and behold it's Amril along with some other expats. He tears himself away from the game to greet me mentioning that his wife is no more. "Someone said you had gone back to your village (on the mainland)". "I'm here on business", he answers vacantly, mind drifting back to the card game, this particular hand about reach its apogee. He's sure well-dressed. Here to buy some gaharu or rattan, enough to pay off outstanding gambling debts. Flashback to Sirosa who had made house and home with the often irrascible and never-one-to-wear-his-heart-on-his-sleeve Amril. She died a few months ago. Was taken very ill, quite suddenly. They had her in a boat heading to the coast, but she died on route.
    A week later an old Sikerei is laid to rest having died overnight. Same suku as Taptapmanai many years before. By midmorning members of his suku are enroute to the graveyard a ten-minute walk away upriver, set back some 100m from it. The body is transported by canoe. The rest of us clamber and squelsh our way to be there in time to prepare a plot. The bush grows quickly, hence most of the graves have long been reclaimed. The only indication is the distinctive bobbolo plant placed over each one. Recent graves in the little clearing have begun to grow over. The mourners, many wailing bitterly, trim away the excess growth from each, talking to the departed loved one, sometimes sitting by the grave, rocking back and forth. The coffin arrives, the Sikerei's wife draped in red cloth with her daughter. The women gather around the open box with anguished weeping, the men arrange the Sikerei's tools of trade to accompany him to ancestorhood. They are pulled back by the men one or two of whom nail the lid in place. Into the prepared hole, quickly covered over.
    The most recent grave is Sirosa's. Since her suku had converted to Islam, nominally anyway, she had retained that orientation. Marrying Amril, an individual and a sasareu, with no family in the immediate vicinity meant she had never really left her natal group, although he had never become a part of it. The grave was distinct from the other with its white mosque-shaped headstone and inset glass-covered compartment giving her name, date of birth, and suku ie. Salolosit. The graves of others who died nominally Christian are bordered by neatly cut lengths of sapling one of which, along with the bobbolo, is inserted into the mound from which dangles a cup. At its foot is a plate and sometimes a spoon. Over the top are placed lengths of the thorny labi palm. One has a crude wooden cross fashioned along with name and date-of-birth, placed there at the wish of the young woman's husband. She died in childbirth, the placenta unable to be cleared from her uterus. The crowd disperses back to the village, grief being left behind in the temporarily cleared grove, the conversation often turning to the subject of money.
    A walk around the village tells a tale of modernity in reverse, or perhaps of the "unmodern" (Brenner 1998), where what was once a cutting of the future-becoming-present is now becoming something else. Probably an overiding concern with cornering power in the era of regional autonomy, "otda". The loosening of central control has paved the way for a strong assertion of local power brokers pushing local agendas, which does not emphasize the former push for centralized communities to the same degree.
    My earlier stay had coincided with a period of frenetic development, with housing being constructed for all families. Paths were widened, trenches dug on either side to allow for drainage, frequent delegations came from the mainland, from Jakarta, and, with their eyes fixed on the western third of Siberut, ADB reps. Sounds of hammering and chainsaws: conservationists' nightmare; developmental heaven. Now most houses stand empty, only sporadically occupied. The bush besieges the once well-drained broad paths, now merely single-file muddy tracks.
    The southeastern corner formerly the focus of wharf- and mosque-building has become, like the stagnant river loop now cut off from the Rereiket river's main flow, overgrown. The mosque stands disused and barely visible from a distance of only a few metres. Several meters away the river bank, once the site of a concrete landing, is overgrown the landing invisible, the stagnant water of the severed loop of river also barely visible beneath the strands of popopou thrusting their way skywards. Perched close to the edge of the bank, the once busy Samwonwot uma is largely unlived in, the elderly couple spending all their time at their son-in-law's (Amansilitolou) sapou that he has extended with timbers from several older houses he once lived in. People are consolidating themselves out in the bush where they keep their pigs. Uma are being built there and others have plans to build there.
    Marinus has some business to attend to upriver at Matotonan. Money is owed him. This trip is yet another in several attempts to settle the account. He hefts his outboard towards the river. Flying along until a fuel blockage sets us adrift for an hour or two. Just shy of Matotonan we pass two abag (canoes) laden with goods from Muara Siberut. Two teenage girls standing in the bow and stern of each with long poles have been pushing their vessels along for the best part of two days. The outboard operator speeds up a tad, we zoom past eliciting shouts of largely feigned indignation from the girls. Broad smiles as the wake rocks their abag. Older folk can get very pissed off with this sort of behaviour, frowning and gesticulating at boats as they draw astern. Pulling into the broad muddy bank and cutting the engine allows the sounds of bells ringing and Sikerei singing, the sounds of people sobbing. A child died early this morning. "Of course" says Marinus, "that's why the engine gave such trouble". It probaly does not auger well for collecting his debt.
    Compared to Madobag the joint is jumping. People constantly moving along the broad well-kept paths. I wander over to a young chap who is home on holiday from Padang where he attends senior high. He likes village life, but does not like the "closed" attitudes of those who live here permanently. And there is more opportunity in Padang. I park myself at the small particularly sparsely-stocked shop, the owners of which are from Nias as with just about all the retailing entrepreneurs in the Rereiket, and with whom Marinus has issues to settle.
    The front room of the house across the path is full of children playing, running back and forth. Some women are gathered in the back, their voices occasionally raised in protest at the din outside. A couple of older girls are playing hopscotch and give the younger ones the odd clip over the ears. A few toddlers are there, getting caught up in the rush. Now and then they teeter on the edge of the door, the house being a half meter or so off the ground. One slips off crashing to the ground, howling in protest, drawing some of the women in his direction. "TILEI", they shout.
    The fad here at the moment for the younger boys is rolling a toy along the ground at the end of a long stick, wheels made of cutdown sandles or thongs. A stick has been fitted in such a way that a loud clicking results from its operation. A couple of girls in a house across the way hurl abuse at and threaten to run down the toys of any boys who venture down the short path to their doorway. Decorated Sikerei wander back and forth with at least two ritual events going on in different parts of the dusun. A few young girls wearing headscarfs and boys wearing long sarongs carry their Al Koran and exercise book on their way to a religious instruction lesson: this village is mainly (becoming-?)Islamic.
    A girl in a house a little further down the way sits and watches all the goings on with a minimum of attachment. A favourite pastime of all those who are not actually doing something themselves. Anyhow everyone at some point during the day gets up and goes somewhere else inviting passive speculation or muted commentary by observing others. The girl eventually wanders across the path to where another girl sits on her veranda crafting a fishing net. As she weaves each row of openings/knots in the web suspended from the roof, her eyes glance up and to the side, or she lifts her head to respond to a comment from a passerby.
    The roof of the house just vacated by her companion is receiving some attention from the latter's heavily tattooed father. He places two long planks side by side which reach half way up the roof, then attaches two long branches of sago-palm leaves to a length of toggoro (the semi-processed bark from which kabits are made) gripped between his teeth and, clinging to the planks, he awkwardly scales them almost to the ends. The branches become snagged under the eaves. There he is, bum sticking out, head pulled down from the pressure of the branches. Fortunately two passing Sikerei put down their machetes and assist in freeing the branches, whereupon the fellow now perches perilously on the ends of the planks, and, scrabbling for handholds, propels himself to the roof-peak where he effects the desired repair to a thinning section of roof.
    Meanwhile the mothers of the children in the house-of-bedlam decide that it might rain and begin to collect their animated charges, preparing to head off home. One mother's 4 year old son is reluctant to leave...well he obviously wants to be picked up. Flashback to little Lajokunen who used to do the same thing, and who died one morning a few years ago. Woke up vomiting, died. This chap's mother attempts to lift him to his feet. Legs limp he refuses to stand. She lifts him by one arm and starts to move off. His legs bump against the cobblestones embedded in the path, eliciting a tantrum. She gives him a half-hearted slap, then proceeds on her way without him. He collapses, screaming, rises, runs after her, then goes down again as he draws near. She ignores him; the other mothers and children step around him. And so it continues until they all recede out of sight.
    Marinus is finding out that his trip is in vain. The girl at the shop who owes him money for a long outstanding debt can't pay him. For an hour he lectures her, actually lecturing the space in front of the shop, facing the path, her sitting at a 90 degree angle to him looking blankly this way and that, eyes occasionally following the movement of a passerby. "You need to pay me first, rather than than the others": she owes a lot of money to a lot of folk. "I come here, I keep coming. How many times have I come here? Waste of petrol, waste of time. I need to make a living too, and pay my debts. Other people depend on me. You keep telling me next month, next month. We have almost come to the end of this (business) relationship...ipakataik." And so on, delivering more or less the same message in different ways over and over, really pressing home the point. No raised voices. None of the other people sitting around bat an eyelid. Not their concern anyway. Marinus goes off to attend to some other business elsewhere for an hour or two, then returns. They go into the back to seek a solution. She engages in animated, although not heated conversation. An arrangement is reached. A beo, much prized on the mainland talking bird, hanging under the eaves is part of the settlement. Could be sold to a middleman for Rp150 000 or so. Afternoon wears on. A Sikerei arrives, sits and begins to write out a letter in Indonesian to give to someone in Madobag, reminding them about a canoe that they borrowed some time back and have not yet returned, plus one or two other things.
    Late afternoon we scoot downriver motoring at full-speed. Marinus is standing in the bow as he is want to do, foot up on the gunwale, almost straight out the front, urinating. Very practical solution which saves stopping. We sweep into a bend, powering through and out the other side coming into full view of a kabit-clad man, his wife and daughter looking our way: boats can be heard coming a long way off. The boat gives a sickening lurch as Marinus rapidly retracts his weapon, almost launching himself over the side. He sits abruptly down. The observers' facial expressions do not change and they follow our progress as we pass by. The man asks, with what is statement posed as a question "Bara ka ulu"? Yep. We motor on to Ugai.
    Around the time that Madobag was finshing off the PKMT housing project, a similar project was under way at Ugai, which is now way bigger than I remember it. And like Matotonan it's a happening place, busy, people constantly moving about, a healing ceremony in progress in one of the houses with several Sikerei going back and forth. The shop, tended by some of Marinus's relatives has been shifted a few doors down, but still stocks the same array of basic items. A mask carved from wood along with a spear catches my eye. I ask about it. The sort of article you readily find in Nias; I'm sure I saw something similar in a visit to Bawomataluo a decade or so ago.The genuine article from the time before people were "developed" says the storekeeper.
    A little more probing reveals that it is actually from Sipora, possibly a replica but "very likely the real thing from the time when battles were fought". Flashback to a recent visit to the Mentawai Wisata Bahari office in the Bumi Minang where a variety of carved objects are on sale, mainly little sailing boats, and carved figures seemingly resembling the Sikerei of Siberut. "Made by the folk at Katiet" offers one of the office personnel. The local MWB representative at Katiet later tells me of his program to introduce craft production to the locals there "as a way to make some money since they don't do well from the boats that come to HT's, and it also reintroduces their culture to them, a culture which, compared with Siberut, they have lost around here".
    A few days later I walk to Ugai with the Village administrative Head. When I left he was the "secretary". But since then the long incumbent Selester had quit government service to work with local NGOs in support of local issues and rights. The current matter is the plan for UNESCO, operating out of their base at Maileppet, to establish a version of their Community Learning Centres in the bush, an educational initiative for the benefit of children who do not live in the dusun to get access to very basic education, preparing them for primary education in the dusun. An uma in each of the areas of Atabai, Butui and Sakalio is to be staffed by a pair of locals, trained teachers who will conduct instruction there. Richard, the rep, spends the best part of an afternoon explaining, clarifying, reaffirming, placating, and, most difficult of all, timetabling the first sessions in the coming weeks.
    The Village Head is neither dismissive nor overtly supportive of the project. He's seen things like these come and go before. Nobody stays around too long. This project has a funding window of 5 years, the first year already being up in April 2001. In 2005 another sponsor will have to be found or the project will come to an end. "They need this out there" he says to me on our return later in the day, articulating a deepening division between those who prefer to live away from the dusun and those, like the Village Head who see this as retrogressive. "Their thinking is backward. They need access to progress and progressive ideas. But 5 years...what then?" In the meeting he stressed that the project needed to be seen to be a local intiative, and not just an "outside" thing, because people tended to see such projects as divisive. For example the question of where the money had gone to pay for the construction of an uma at Atabai just for the teaching program was a sore point for a few. Whereas the Village Head was supportive on the grounds that it would all help to change values whose time had passed, the younger teaching personnel are behind it because distinctive Rereiket values can be reaffirmed and reinforced. Their tone is defiant even militant reflecting a strong pride in local practices mainly those centering on the activities of the Sikerei who have come to be seen by both local and outsiders as repositories of "tradition". Referring to the non-local authorities based in Muara Siberut and on the mainland, they declare them "afraid" to come upriver anymore: "the Rereiket these days is not an area to trifle with".
    Back in Madobag two Czechs, Tom and Yadran, turn up at the Minang shopkeeper's place having attempted to walk the 'great adventure', the trek from Matotonan across South Siberut to Sagalubbe on the west coast. A week of wet weather had made a very difficult journey nigh impossible. They are making an amateur film on digital videocam on local "culture" as well as collecting representative artifacts, paddles, drums, decorative items worn by Sikerei, to take back home for an exhibition. Defeated by the Sagalubbe trail they repair to the well frequented location of Butui, a favoured destination for tourists and former base-camp for the photographer, Charles Lindsay. Having been there a few days a film crew, financed by National Geographic, turns up to make a documentary on tattooing for the cable channel, and are mightily surprised when these two emerged from the recesses of the uma. After some discussion the pair were persuaded to "go elsewhere" for a few days, after all it would not be good for the film's ambience if westerners apart from the target researcher were seen mooching around in the background! There's profit a-plenty in the "primitive".
    Yadran, a former top magazine publisher in the Czech republic who was experiencing New Age-ish hankerings for something more than the bourgeousis life-style of that profession, has been to Siberut before, having spent time in North Siberut where he became somewhat notorious in the Simatalu area having mananged, so the story goes, to lose a bum-bag stuffed with US dollars. The locals got hold of this and, not understanding the value of money (a theme of many a story told by outsiders where the subject is Siberut locals) proceded to use the money as decoration, although nobody actually witnessed it first-hand as far as I can tell. Anyhow Yadran's main concern was that he did not get a tattoo, something he was determined to put right this time. A Sikerei from Madobag, skilled in the art of tattooing, was paid the princely sum of Rp.50 000 to do his chest and upper arms (so that it would only be visable when he so desired), an operation taking three days or so. He left a happy man, complete with tattoos, luad (Sikerei head decoration), and artifacts, a whole boat-load.
    With increasing pressure brought to bear on myself from various quarters to supply capital for chainsaws, outboard motors and the like, a day or two later I follow suit.

Reference Cited
Brenner S.A. (1998) The Domestication of Desire: Women, Wealth and Modernity in Java. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.