Mentawai Round II (part 3: the jungle)

Greg and I wanted to do one last thing before we left Mentawai. We wanted to go to the jungle. We'd seen and hiked through a lot of what appeared to be jungle, but it was actually all carefully cultivated banana trees, durian trees, patchoili, peanuts, sweet potatoes, taro, giant sago palms and so forth. Greg really wanted to see a 'canoe' tree, from which the dugout canoes are made, and I wanted to see plants and animals. We found out that our ferry would leave in two days time, so we scheduled a hike for the next day. We left in the morning, discovering that our 'guide' was actually our good friend and 'guide' that accompanied us throughout our whole trip.

We left in the morning and hiked through ladang and then through swampy ground where we had to balance on an infinite number of tiny bridges and fallen trees. We stopped to chew on sugar cane, then finally walked through an area where the forest was being cleared for planting and into our little corner of natural forest. We could hear a chainsaw the whole time, but our little bit of forest was beautiful. The canoe tree was as big as a redwood, and there were amazing plants and vines everywhere. We had a tarzan moment, then ate what I think was hearts of palm, which, contrary to common belief, only involves cutting a shoot off of a very prickly tree and carving into it with a machete. Eventually we headed back.

When we returned, later than we'd anticipated, we found that our boat had been canceled but that a cargo boat carrying a load of kopra, had room and was leaving in an hour. We made it on the boat and made our way back to 'civilization.' We immediately ended up on a car trip to Bukkit Tinggi for the day, then left the next day for Malaysia.

Mentawai Round II (part 2: Children)

The next part of our trip was a little more business. Twelve elementary children had been told that they would not pass the school year in the village of Mongan Poula on the grounds that they had not attended their religion classes. The Baha'i children, we were told, usually joined the Catholic classes at the school, but this year had been told that they had to be the same religion as the teacher and therefore could not attend that class or the Muslim or Christian classes being offered (Catholicism and Christianity are separate religions in Indonesia). The village head saw this as being a village problem, since the village children were not passing and called a meeting. We attended to see if we could help out, and Soesi was able to convey that since the Baha'i Faith includes all religions, that it should not be a problem for Baha'i children to be a part of any other religious class. The school head, various teachers, parents, and representatives from all the religious communities came to the meeting, where it was eventually decided that the children could take a Baha'i test for a passing grade. What's really bizarre about the whole event is that it turns out that the school only has any of the religious classes on paper - none of the teachers ever shows up, and none of the students have every attended any of the classes. The whole event was pretty strange, but it seems like the real issue is the status of the Baha'i Faith. Many people in Mentawai were Baha'is and were forced to change their religion when the corrupt and uninformed police force learned that the Baha'i administration was banned up until 7 years ago. Thus, many people are waiting until they feel like it's safe to re-enter the Baha'i Faith (the school head included). Mentawai has the highest percentage of Baha'is of any island in Indonesia, and the Baha'i Faith is not one of the five options for classes taught at government schools. Several Mentawaiians that we talked to were of the opinion that if the Baha'i Faith could be taught in the public schools, they would know it was safe. The school head told us that what was needed in the village was a chance for people of different religious groups to get together and talk.

We also met with the Baha'i children and parents. Soesi gave each child a little prayer book on behalf of the National Spiritual Assembly, which they totally loved. The children immediately began reading and memorizing prayers without being told - I was surprised. Given the way the children generally acted, I figured the prayer books would be in the mud within minutes. Greg also did a unity activity with both the parents and children.

Later on, representatives from the three communities we visited came to one location to consult upon another educational issue - they bought land to build a home where Jr. High students could come to live, making it possible for them to attend school above the Elementary level. Currently students have to walk or take a boat for 2 or 3 hours to get from their villages to the Jr. High school.

It's amazing to me that the people are facing these issues head-on even though they were persecuted as a religious group in the past. It was nice to be able to visit and be encouraging of their activities, particularly since they've been left to feel so alone and devoid of communication with the rest of the Baha'i world. There are so many Baha'is there - we met them everywhere we went. This picture was taken when, as we were walking along a path, we heard someone call "Allah'u'abha!" which is the Baha'i greeting. It means "God is most Glorious." We couldn't figure out who was calling to us, until we looked up and found a man high above us in a coconut tree.

Mentawai Round II (part 1: North)

Our third wedding anniversary found us squished onto a ferry out of Padang. Greg had been really sick the day before, but promised his stomach would hold out. He spent the night on the bench at the back of the ship, alternately getting rained on and inhaling the engine fumes. I found a more protected spot sitting wedged between people sleeping in the indoor hallway between the bunks. There had been a problem obtaining tickets so we didn't get a bunk, but we were going to Mentawai anyways!

When we finally got to Pokai, a long conversation ensued about what our plans would be. We had planned to go to a very remote village on the West side of the island. We were told that it was too dangerous to go by sea, and that we needed to go up the river for two days, then hike through the jungle. However, it was raining hard and apparently the river was flooded. We would have to wait until it was less flooded, but still had enough water to go up; then we would have to wait for it to dry out so we could hike up the mountain. We only had two weeks, so it wasn't looking good. Then we found out that there had been a problem in the Elementary school in a village I'd been to before but we hadn't planned to revisit. So we decided to visit the same places I'd been and not try to get out to the West coast.

We started by going to the Northern village of Labuan Bajau, stopping on the way to visit some families in their ladang (farms). Previously, we had found many people away from home because they were at their ladang. What we didn't understand was that people's ladang are often really far away from their homes. Since they grow the food they eat near these alternate homes on their land, many people may spend only a few days in a month in their 'actual' village home. Obviously, this is not the way things have traditionally been done. The government relocation act some time ago forced family groups to move out of the mountainous interior to the coast to live in larger villages. This made it easier to introduce institutions like a police force and schools. But it meant that the people could no longer have enough land to grow food and changed their living situation, since they were now in single-family homes. It also meant that people had to learn to live near the shores and begin fishing. Because of this situation, many people are registered as living in a town and send their children to school in the town, but the parents may only spend one week in a month actually living in the town. Parents who can afford to send their children to school may leave them in the village alone the rest of the time, leaving neighbors or older children to take care of the younger ones. In any case, we thought we'd visit a few Baha'is that we'd missed on our previous visit by going out to their ladang. We got out of our out-rigger dugout canoe at a tiny inlet behind some mangroves. The family there was spending every moment making kopra by scraping out the inside of ripe coconuts, roasting them, then bagging them to be sent down the coast where it was made into either coconut oil or soap. It was a smell that Greg and I became very familiar with throughout our trip. After drinking delicious coconut water and eating smoked fish, we set out to invite the 'neighbors' to come down for the evening when we planned to share a letter from the Universal House of Justice. Several hours of hiking through the jungle found us lost. A man materialized who turned out to be a Baha'i and helped us find our way. We arrived exhausted at a little platform house where we were again served green coconut water and the best papaya I've ever had. The man residing in the house was thought to live in a village in an entirely different area, but only spent small amounts of time there. We could see right away that this was a problem for creating a sense of community, something very important in the Baha'i Faith, and also a problem for communication, since getting to his remote house was not an easy task. And of course, there are many others in the same situation.

The next day we boated further down the coast to Labuan Bajau where Greg and I swam in the incredibly clear water off the powdery white-sand beach. We saw dolphins doing flips when we arrived. We attended a school awards ceremony that lasted nearly a whole day, and we studied the letter from the Universal House of Justice. Even though the Local Spiritual Assembly of Baha'is in the area was registered with the National Spiritual Assembly of Indonesia, they had somehow failed to receive the very important letter and were very happy that we'd brought it to them. They clearly had great faith in this world institution, and it was wonderful to see how everyone took the message to heart.