Kijana Page 14

  A fleeting moment of paradise - they did exist!

  Unfortunately there was no Ben Harper or Pearl Jam on the stereo, just some metal gongs hanging from the branch of a sweeping tree on which the local men tapped a beat. These gongs made a dong noise each time they were hit, creating strange, atmospheric music, and giving the event its strange name.

  On the dance floor the local women and men took it in turns to do a traditional dance. Nearly all the dances involved a scarf held behind the head between outstretched arms. The dancers’ heads slowly rotated from side to side, like those clowns in a sideshow attraction, while their feet pounded the dusty ground in time to the gongs. The scarf would then be handed to someone in the audience, who would take the floor and attempt to mimic the dance that had just been performed.

  Some of the surfers looked like they’d seen it all before, doing the dance very well. One of the younger surfers even had his arm around an old lady as if she was his grandma.

  Someone then yelled an order, summoning all the women from the audience onto the floor. Maria joined the group as they formed a circle and proceeded to move in a clockwise direction while they kicked out their legs in a cancan-style dance.

  While this was going on, the Australian guy plonked himself down in Maria’s seat and surrendered the jug of sopi. He’d had his fill. Despite his drunken state, he introduced himself as Dave and explained that he’d helped organise the night with the family that was hosting the evening. He already knew we were the ‘young people’ from the ketch, complimenting us on our boat.

  As he told us what the dances meant, we realised he actually lived with the family in the house. He explained he was trying to earn the community some extra income by organising these dong nights.

  That immediately aroused our interest, so we asked if we could question him on camera. He wasn’t keen on that idea, instead changing the subject. He was curious as to how such young people got to be cruising through Indonesia without any parents or adults. We told him about the Kijana adventure and what we were doing. He asked what Kijana meant.

  ‘It’s Swahili for young people,’ we replied in unison, we’d got so used to answering the question.

  ‘How old are you guys?’ he asked.

  I pointed to Maria: ‘She’s 22, Beau’s 19.’

  ‘I’m 22,’ Josh continued, then, pointing at me, said: ‘He’s 20 . . . actually 21 today.’ It made me stop and think. He was right, it was so easy to forget. I was 21.

  Dave nearly jumped out of his seat in excitement. He called out in Indonesian to an old man standing nearby who came over and listened to Dave explain something.

  ‘This is Samuel,’ Dave announced. ‘He’s the boss of this family.’

  The man was small with a pointy face. He smiled at me and put out his hand to shake mine. The man then pointed to a boy walking towards us and called him over.

  Dave introduced us. ‘This is Rianto, Samuel’s son. He’s 21 today as well!’

  He explained the circumstances to Rianto, who seemed delighted. He made some elaborate hand gestures, then shook my hand affectionately. I introduced Beau, and Josh and pointed out Maria who was still dancing. Dave was still very excited by my news. He continued speaking in Indonesian before turning back to us.

  ‘Are you having a party? You can’t turn 21 and not have a party.’

  ‘Well, this has been a pretty good day so far,’ I replied.

  He continued speaking to Samuel, who was nodding his head.

  ‘We’ll organise a party for you,’ Dave declared. He was speaking so quickly we could almost see his mind ticking over. ‘We can have a few goats and make it a feast for everyone, I know a perfect spot down by the beach. It’ll look great for the camera. You can film that instead.’

  I wasn’t sure what he was more excited about – my birthday or the fact that he’d been able to divert attention from himself. No matter. I was flattered by his enthusiasm. Rianto smiled at me like a brother. It was set.

  The following morning I went to meet Dave at the house, as arranged. Daylight revealed the dry and scrubby landscape that had been shrouded in darkness the night before. I passed several small shacks on the way as I retraced the bus route. It was much further than I remembered.

  As I arrived at the house, Rianto was sitting on the porch strumming a guitar. His eyes lit up when he saw me. The whole family came out and I was handed a cup of locally grown coffee.

  ‘Is Dave here?’ I asked. None of them spoke English but they understood Dave’s name. I was shown into the house, which was almost completely bare. The floors were well-worn, smooth concrete, while a few cloth mats and a plastic chair in the corner were the only furniture in the main living room.

  I was directed through a door to the right, where I found Dave asleep on a bed under a mosquito net. There were a few books on the windowsill and a single bag, which appeared to amount to his total possessions.

  ‘David,’ Rianto softly called. I left the room to let him get up in peace. A short while later he emerged, ducking under a doorway obviously not built for westerners. He was nursing a hangover but still seemed genuinely pleased to see me.

  He finished the introductions he’d started the previous evening. Samuel’s wife, Shysi, I recognised as one of the women who had been dancing the previous night. Another old man with a friendly smile was called Ahmad. He was Samuel’s brother. Then there was Rianto, the boy who shared my birth date; his older sister Empy, who was about 25; her husband Ronny and daughter Aalyyah.

  With the formalities over, Samuel and Ahmad led Rianto, Dave and me towards the beach, where they revealed the location they had in mind for my party.

  It was a special site, Dave told me. Out towards the water lay hundreds of giant clam shells, each half a metre wide and facing upwards, towards the sky. For more than a century they’d been used to evaporate sea water so the precious salt that remained could be harvested for cooking. The men set to work clearing the hardy shrubs around the area, gathering them into a pile for burning.

  While they did this, Dave showed me a half-built traditional hut of about 3 metres by 3 metres. As we inspected the hut, he told me the extraordinary tale of how he had come to be there.

  Dave discovered Nembrala as a much younger man. He was like any of the surfers staying in the village, working in Australia merely to get enough money to travel through Indonesia surfing. He met Samuel and his family on one of his visits to Indonesia. Empy was only 11 years old at the time and bedridden with malaria, fighting for her life. With no local health system and very few doctors, there was nothing Samuel could do to help his daughter. The few doctors who could help lived in the major cities and Samuel could never afford their services, let alone the cost of getting her to them. She was destined to die within months.

  Her plight so touched Dave that he returned to Australia to resume his job as a bricklayer, returning a few months later with money and a stash of medicine. With Dave’s help, Empy slowly escaped the clutches of death and returned to normal health. She was now an adult with her own family. Samuel had thanked him the only way he could – he offered him the site we now stood on. With an ocean view and scrubby surroundings, Dave was in paradise. He now planned to retire and live permanently in Nembrala and the hut was to be his home.

  Samuel and his family insisted they build him a big house but Dave refused. All he wanted was a little grass hut, his surfboard and a horse on which to ride to the surf. Their attempt to convince him to get a motorbike was met with a staunch refusal. They used petrol, he argued, and why buy that stuff when a horse could eat from the surrounding bush. He not only looked like Paul Hogan, he lived like Crocodile Dundee.

  I asked Dave what had led him to his decision to live a ‘primitive’ life, as he described it.

  He explained how he’d become fed up with aspects of modern life in Australia. For instance, he was sick of busting his gut laying bricks for houses, only to see them demolished within a few years because property values had rise
n, and a better house could be built in its place. Such waste angered him.

  ‘You spend your whole life building stuff only to see it get knocked down,’ he said.

  He figured he’d be alive for another 20 years, so he wanted to go out leading a life he believed in. It was an extraordinary story. I wished Josh had been there with the camera.

  We both stared out to the water until I finally broke the silence.

  ‘So, how should we pay for this party?’

  He looked at me sheepishly. I sensed the topic of money was a difficult one considering what he’d just told me.

  ‘Well, I’ve had a word to the guys and they can’t afford to give away any goats. A month ago half their stock was stolen by a neighbour, so I can’t ask them for another two goats. What I was thinking is that you could cover the payment for the goats, and the rest they will cover – vegetables, rice and sopi.’

  He paused to think, then continued, his enthusiasm returning: ‘Agung will bring the dongs, and that reminds me, I’ve gotta find Trent. He’s married to an Indonesian lady and can play guitar pretty good. So if that’s all right with you, I’ll give ’em the go-ahead for tomorrow night, then all we have to do is spread the word, yeah?’

  ‘Sounds good to me. How much is a goat?’

  ‘Twenty bucks or so, not much, but it’s heaps for them. We’ll have them in the morning, so come along and watch them prepare them if you like.’

  On my way back I called into the home-stay to invite all the surfers.

  While I was away, Beau and Maria had been cleaning the boat while Josh had set insect traps throughout the forward cabin. I told them of the plan and we scooted in the dinghy to the three other nearby yachts, inviting them to come along. Sam and Gabby on the small catamaran already knew. The word was spreading!

  We spent the afternoon filming our attempts at surfing, with Josh donning the scuba gear to film the underwater shots. Dinner on board in the cool air capped off another day in paradise. I took a moment to think how far removed this was from the early stages of the trip.

  By the morning it was obvious the bug traps would need some refinement. Josh and Beau had battled it out with the bed bugs all night, with Josh embarking on a bug-swiping spree using a library card to collect and squash them. Beau again opted to use a cup to capture them alive. Josh claimed 12 lives, Beau’s tally was two. They sat in the cup on the galley bench, awaiting further argument on their fate.

  By midmorning we were ready to go. We packed the camera gear and headed along the island in the dinghy to where the clam shells sat in the sun. When we arrived I discovered Beau had with him an empty Mars Bar wrapper which contained the two bugs. He solemnly walked up the beach and let them go in the tall grass. I hoped they didn’t settle in Dave’s hut.

  We made the short walk to where the party preparations had already begun. The women from the nearby houses were already dressed in their best clothes. What immediately struck me was that they all wore the same coloured lipstick. It was an odd sight to see them in the cooking shed, leaning over a searing fire and grinding chilli paste in such delicate attire.

  We all had a shot of sopi to kick-start the day, then followed the men to gather the goats.

  The goats we were about to butcher had arrived the previous evening by motorbike. Ronny had picked them up from a relative who lived 20 kilometres away. The legs of each goat were tied together and wrapped around his stomach, one at the front and one at the back as he rode home.

  The goats were herded from a pen to beneath a tree near the house. Within half an hour the two bleating goats had their throats cut and their blood drained into a bowl. They were then skinned and cut into pieces we could carry. Josh sat transfixed behind the camera as Ronny carried out the work. The best cuts went straight to the women in the shed while the heads and blood were kept by the men.

  A fire was lit and a metal bowl placed over the flames. A drop of oil and some crushed chilli and salt began to sizzle before the blood was poured in. The colour was spectacular – bright red with green specs of chilli. It then started congealing and turned black. At this point it was taken into the cooking shed for the women to use in their preparations. Meanwhile, a goat’s head sat in the coals, sizzling away until Ronny decided it was cooked. The skull was smashed between two large rocks until the brain was exposed. Seeing as I was the birthday boy I was offered first taste.

  ‘Interesting,’ I said as I popped a morsel into my mouth.

  It was the only word I could muster that I thought would not offend. Its texture resembled warm baby food, yet it was sort of tasteless. I eagerly passed the skull to Beau, hoping his newfound bug-saving beliefs didn’t mean he was going to shirk tasting the goat’s brain. He took the skull, possibly out of politeness, and tasted the brain. Always there for me when it matters, I thought.

  Maria declined, saying she’d better go and see if the women needed any help. Josh was busying himself with the camera functions – what a professional – but he was not about to get out of it that easily. I reminded him of what he’d said at the start of the trip: ‘If it’s part of a cultural experience then I’ll try it’.

  He knew he couldn’t get out of it, and reluctantly agreed to a taste. I grabbed the camera to record such a momentous event. He’d eaten crab and fish with Gayili and her children in northern Australia, so it was a logical step to move on to red meat in Indonesia.

  ‘White meat,’ Josh corrected me. ‘It’s a brain!’

  The smile and bravado disappeared as he examined the piece in his fingers. It slowly began its journey towards his mouth. He hesitated backwards and forwards, wanting to do it but not being able to seal the deal. He dropped his hand by his side, laughed one of his nervous giggles, then closed his eyes and popped it into his mouth.

  ‘I’ve eaten brain,’ he yelled, both arms raised in victory. Ronny and Samuel found this pretty funny, if not a bit odd.

  While most of the goat was destined for the evening meal, the back legs were eaten for lunch. Samuel’s wife cut a chunk off for each of us and we washed it down with another shot of sopi. It was delicious.

  I watched Dave sitting among the old men, listening to them and chatting. He really did fit in. He may have been taller, bigger and whiter but they resembled a gang of wise old men.

  ‘They’ve really turned it on for you guys,’ he told us later, ‘I’ve never seen this much food at the one time, except at a wedding.’

  He told us the locals usually only had two small meals a day. For breakfast they would collect palm sugar and mix it with water to make a drink that tasted like honey. It was the same stuff the locals distilled the sopi from. Lunch would usually be rice and a small amount of meat. Dinner was a rare event, so they too were looking forward to that evening’s feast.

  By early afternoon the number of women in the cooking shed had increased. They were stripping beans, tossing stir-fries and pounding more chilli into paste. It was getting so crowded in the small shelter that more fires were lit outside to accommodate large woks of rice which were stirred by women using big poles.

  While this was going on, we helped the younger kids shuttle tables and benches to the party site. A large table was placed in the party area to hold the food and we set up our filming lights for when the sun went down. The metal dongs were already hanging from a tree and two drums rested on a grass woven mat in the middle of the setting. Dave was running around like a mother-in-law, confirming and reconfirming that we would have enough sopi and acting as translator for our questions.

  Soon it was late afternoon. There was not much more to do except wait and hope for a good turnout. The kids asked Dave if we could take them for a ride in our dinghy, so I took them for a quick spin before the crew returned to Kijana to wash and get dressed for the evening ahead.

  We returned to the beach, where the air was heavy with anticipation. The first guests to arrive were Dave’s mate Trent and his wife. In Trent’s hand was a guitar.

  ‘This is good,’ Dave a
ssured me, ‘Trent’s a good guitar player.’ Trent took a seat on the woven mats in the centre of the party area. Ronny sat beside him and started to beat a rhythm on a goatskin drum. Trent began strumming a song and they both began singing what was obviously a well-known Indonesian tune.

  All right! I thought. We had a party.

  Kids crowded around and joined in the music as more guests began to arrive. It was a party in the truest sense. Everyone felt like an outsider, but that only increased the sense of excitement and after the bottles of sopi were passed around, the conversation flowed.

  Dinner was served before dark. I looked around as everyone ate, taking a moment to consider the bizarreness of the occasion. It was my twenty-first birthday, yet I hardly knew anyone. If I was at home I’d have invited nearly everyone I’d ever known in my life, waiting until my old school teachers and relatives went home, before getting plastered with my mates. I never dreamt that I would be in Nembrala, and everywhere around me I would be looking at friendly, yet unfamiliar faces.

  I was heartened by the festive tone of every conversation I could hear. Local Indonesians, barefooted and wearing torn clothes were laughing with yachties wearing leather deck shoes and aftershave. Who cared whose birthday it was, it was just a good reason to get together.

  As it grew darker Josh repositioned the filming lights to keep us illuminated, while Samuel appeared with a clump of hand-threaded leaves which, when lit, burnt like a torch out of Indiana Jones. He dug a hole and propped up the torch with two rocks. While the stark filming lights gave plenty of light, it was the burning leaves that provided the atmosphere.

  The night continued, with more drinking, singing and dancing to the rhythm of the dongs. Later in the evening the festivities moved 20 metres or so onto the beach where a fire was lit and Trent belted out some of his best songs. He was a very soulful singer, even if his voice was dirtier than Bob Dylan with a hangover. There must have been 50 people scattered around the flickering light, sitting on top of the rock ledge or playing with their feet in the sand.