Kijana Page 19

  The sacrifice began at about noon. Thousands of people gathered around the clearing that was lined by rice huts. In the middle of the clearing was a large and intricately decorated rice hut. It was here that the chief’s coffin lay. Near this hut was a pole. A buffalo was led into the centre of the funeral area and tied to the pole while a man commentated over a loudspeaker, rambling on and on. His enthusiasm appeared to rub off onto the crowd, for the atmosphere was electric.

  The crowd then hushed as the slaughterman approached a beast with a sharp machete in hand. With a whip of the blade he slashed the neck of the unsuspecting animal, sending the crowd into raptures. The buffalo reared up on its hind legs, gushing blood from its neck like a burst water pipe. It sprayed everywhere, some of it onto the crowd, who watched in awe. A few seconds later and the beast lost balance, toppling sideways with a thud. The next buffalo was then led to the pole, cruelly forced to stand lashed beside the body of its dying friend.

  More than a dozen times over, this was repeated, with the beasts often landing on the other dead buffalos. Pretty soon the dusty ground was converted into a dark brown mud from the many litres of blood that had been spilt.

  Then, as another buffalo entered the arena, something triggered a commotion. The man leading the beast appeared to have a sudden change of heart and gestured that he wanted to take the buffalo away. Other men attempted to take the reins of the buffalo from the man, who I presumed was the owner, but he pushed them away. Another man dressed in a uniform stepped in. They discussed the problem for a moment between themselves. The owner was shaking his head and was visibly upset. While this was going on the fellow on the loudspeaker decided to put in his two bob’s worth.

  A man, who appeared to be a friend, walked over and took the distressed owner’s arm, leading him away. The crowd seemed to approve of this and his buffalo was tied to the pole.

  Moments before the deed was to be done, the owner reappeared from the crowd and approached the slaughterman. With what looked like tears in his eyes, he took the knife from the slaughterman’s hand and proceeded to cut the buffalo’s throat himself. It reared up in anger, for the cut wasn’t deep enough, with only a small dribble of blood spurting out. The buffalo thrashed around, and the crowd roared while the man tried to make a deeper cut. He made a real mess of it. It took three other men to lasso the buffalo around the horns to hold it still so a decent cut could be made. As it fell to the ground, the owner returned the knife and walked off. This was enough for me. Beau and Josh were also happy to get away from that repugnant scene.

  Back at Paulus’s house, Josh logged onto the computer to update the web with our most recent photos. Two emails greeted us. Both contained good news. The first, from the office, had the news we’d been waiting for – the tapes were waiting for us in Plan’s Makasar office. We were free to leave.

  ‘Borneo here we come!’ I declared.

  The second email was from Mum. It said that Maya had left a message asking me to call. She had some ‘good news to tell me about’. My mind went into overdrive. Suddenly, the buffalo massacre was pushed to the background as I wondered what the ‘good news’ could be. Maybe the office had called her and agreed that she could join Kijana.

  We hurriedly packed, then thanked Paulus and his family for their wonderful hospitality. His final act of kindness was to direct us to a van heading back to Toraja.

  It took an hour to get into town where, luckily, we were able to find the bus returning to Makasar. It was leaving in an hour’s time, giving us just long enough to find something to eat and buy a couple of celebratory Bintang long-necks for the overnight trip.

  It may have been my fourth trip on that winding road, but that made it no easier. For ten hours we jolted and swerved our way down from the hills until, in the early hours of the morning, a loud screeching sound woke us from our awkward half-sleep. The noise came from the rear axle dragging along the road. We piled off the bus to discover a wheel had fallen off. We were thankful it hadn’t happened on a hair-pin bend near Toraja.

  We were even happier when we realised we were within sight of Kijana. We grabbed our gear, carrying it the remaining 200 metres, then waited until the sun rose and the early morning longboats started work. After five days away, we were back home aboard Kijana.

  At 9 a.m. we took our dinghy ashore to surprise Maria, who was over the moon to see us. We paid the hotel, then dropped into Plan for the tapes and to say farewell. Finally, I stopped at a phone while the others went to prepare the boat.

  ‘Hi, it’s me,’ I said, when Maya answered the phone.

  ‘Hello,’ she replied. Her voice was fresh with excitement, unlike our last conversation.

  She asked how it had been at the funerals.

  ‘Great,’ I replied, then realised that it probably sounded odd to describe such an experience as ‘great’. ‘I mean, really good filming.’ I went on to tell her about the dead grandmother and the caves, and the thick Torajan coffee. She laughed when I told her about the wheel falling off the bus.

  ‘How are the birdies doing?’

  ‘They’re fine,’ I told her. She was such an animal lover I didn’t dare tell her that our newest crew members hadn’t handled our absence from the boat as well as we’d hoped. One was dead when we got back and the other was so close to death that I had to put it out of its misery.

  ‘Mum said you’ve got something exciting to tell me.’ I was jumping out of my skin.

  ‘I do,’ she said. Her voice bubbled in a way I hadn’t heard for a long time. ‘The other day Mum and I were shopping, and we passed that same pet shop, so I went in and the same Quaker parrot was sitting on the front desk chewing a pen. It was so cute, it didn’t fly away or anything. Anyway, Mum bought it for me.’

  ‘Wow,’ I managed to say. I had to force myself to respond, to try to hide my disappointment.

  ‘So now we’ve both got birds,’ she cheerfully added.

  I was totally blown off-course. This was the ‘good news’? I covered my tracks by asking some questions.

  ‘Is it a girl or boy?’ I asked. She wasn’t sure, but she was going to get one of its feathers DNA-tested.

  ‘I’ve called him Luis anyway.’

  It was a challenge to sound enthusiastic, but the more I asked about the silly bird, the more I enjoyed hearing her tell me about it. He was green and about the size of a budgie, she told me.

  I felt stupid for thinking that maybe she’d been given permission from the office to join me. Surely the office would have told me first. But as I listened to her talk, slowly my disappointment turned to relief. I knew I loved her, but being so far apart it was easy to forget why. Without knowing it, she’d just reminded me why. It was, as she’d said, good news.

  CHAPTER NINE

  GOODBYES

  IT FELT GOOD TO BE MOVING AGAIN. AT FIRST we hesitated raising Kijana’s sails. It had been more than a month since we had been on the water, causing us once more to forget the routine of life at sea. But by the second day everything was back to normal and we were making good progress towards the city of Balikpapan on the east coast of Borneo. It was there Maria would leave us, flying first to Bali, then back to Darwin to meet her brother. Knowing their time was limited, Beau and Maria stayed close. During dinner she sat between his legs, and Josh and I even coerced them into a kiss in front of the camera.

  It was tropical sailing at its best. On studying the chart, I determined that if the wind remained constant we’d arrive in the next four days. After Maria left, we’d then continue another two days’ sailing north, and enter the delta that spreads out along the coast from the Mahakam River. Thirty miles inland, nestled on a bend in the river, is the town of Samarinda. The Mahakam, which stretches inland into the centre of the island, would be the launching pad into the wilds of Borneo in our search for the Punans.

  I spent most of the days leading up to our arrival reading books about Borneo. I became familiar with the names of the main rivers, the cities where we could deck ours
elves out with supplies, and studied every map I could find, comparing locations of reported villages and the rivers that led to them.

  Of everything I read, I was particularly taken by one account of an encounter with the Punans. It was written by two brothers, Lawrence and Lorne Blair, who explored the region in the 1970s. They trekked for almost a month into the remotest parts of Borneo accompanied by guides carrying their film gear. They eventually came across a group of Punan families camped at the junction of two rivers. The following excerpt, from their book Ring of Fire, describes their discovery:

  The older men and women came cautiously down to the bank to greet us. They wore vivid loincloths, were latticed with tattoos, and great clusters of earrings dangled unashamedly from their long earlobes.

  At first they were aloof as we squatted together in the strangely empty longhouse, but as the evening wore on the population silently expanded. Sinewy, exquisite, bare-breasted women crept in like does to peer at us from the edge of the circle, their wide-eyed babies cradled on their backs peering over their shoulders.

  There were about thirty-five families here, each with their individual compartments opening on to the long communal veranda. To avoid being eaten alive we had to be individually introduced to all the hunting dogs. About ten of the families had been living here for five years, yet still relied more on hunting and gathering than on their rudimentary experiments with growing dry rice. The rest spent most of the year still wondering freely through the forest, sheltering during the heaviest rains at any number of abandoned longhouses, such as these, scattered through the jungle.

  I read the account over and over until I drove myself crazy. I scanned every map in fine detail looking for the town or location of Suleh, the name of the village where they had found the Punans. It was on the Long Eut River. I found neither. In a way I was happy with this. The journey of Kijana was teaching me that nothing worth achieving came easily. We’d just have to find our own path into the interior.

  On the evening of 12 October, our fourth day at sea, Josh received an email from his sister. It contained news that was a world away from my visions of living peacefully with the Punans. It was news that would change Kijana dramatically.

  The tourist town of Kuta, on the Indonesian island of Bali, a place we’d all visited, had suffered a series of horrific bomb blasts in the heart of its tourist strip. The targets included the well-known Sari night club. Her email told us that possibly hundreds of lives had been lost, with many of those Australian tourists. The death toll eventually rose to 202, with 88 Australians killed. More than 300 people were injured.

  We were stunned. It was impossible to comprehend the scale of the disaster unfolding a little way over the ocean from where we were sailing in peace. Another email from the office told us that the Australian Government had issued a warning to all Australian citizens to leave Indonesia, as it was classified as an unstable country for westerners such as us.

  We arrived at Balikpapan, a city of about 500,000 people, the day after the explosions and unceremoniously dropped anchor in muddy water. We were unsure what to do next. Going ashore had taken on a whole new meaning.

  For some reason we felt compelled to head to Bali. I didn’t know why I felt drawn to the scene of such tragedy. Perhaps it was a way of reconciling within our own heads why someone would do such a thing to young people like us. We made the decision to go. As Maria was due to fly back to Darwin anyway, Josh and I decided to fly with her to Bali the following day. From there she would continue on to Australia. Beau would remain on board the boat to keep guard. We hoped to be away for only a couple of days.

  The next day, Beau dropped us at the beach and wished us well. I felt bad for leaving him alone, but someone had to look after Kijana. In hindsight, because of the volatility in Indonesia during the days after the bombings, perhaps I should have stayed. Beau and Maria said a final goodbye, then we were off to catch our flight. We didn’t actually fly directly to Bali, instead, flying to Surabaya, on the island of Java. From there it was a ten-hour bus ride through the eastern tail of Java, crossing over to the island of Bali. We decided to make this strange detour because of the strong warnings against tourists entering Bali. We didn’t dare fly directly into Denpasar, the Bali airport, for we could have run the risk of either having our camera gear confiscated, or even being refused entry into Bali. At least this way we knew we would get where we wanted.

  We arrived in Poppies Lane, two blocks from the blast site, late at night, three days after the terrorist attack.

  After an eagerly anticipated sleep in an air-conditioned room the three of us rose soon after sunrise and made our way to the bombsite. The bright sunshine did little to lift the mood of Kuta. As we walked we encountered shop-owners beginning the laborious task of cleaning up, sweeping piles of rubble against shopfronts that had been badly damaged, even though they were several hundred metres from the centre of the blast.

  We arrived at the bombsite to find onlookers standing behind a flimsy barricade. Disbelief hung heavily in the air as tourists and locals meandered about, whispering to each other and pointing to objects that caught their attention among the rubble.

  We found an alley next to where Paddy’s Bar once stood. Peering through the gaps where windows once were, we could see into the burnt-out remains. Metal stools lay on their sides, the plastic tops melted onto the floor. What struck me was the array of high heeled shoes that had been piled together awaiting collection by the Australian police sent to investigate the explosion. It was hard to believe that only a couple of days earlier hundreds of young people, just like us, had been partying there.

  We continued along the alley, then turned left and followed another road that brought us out onto the main strip directly across from the Sari Club.

  A burnt-out car was parked beside the road where yet another barricade prevented us from walking out onto the street. There we stood, staring at the mess in front of us.

  It was a scene of utter devastation, which I still find difficult to put into words. A peculiar, indescribable smell wafted through the air. We remained silent, afraid to consider what that smell could be. We were not the only ones there, with groups milling at every vantage point.

  ‘I wonder how many people are still missing?’ I finally asked.

  No one felt the need to answer me, for no one really knew.

  I glanced at Josh. He hadn’t said a word since we’d been there. He stood, arms folded, with tears welling in his eyes.

  For some time we stood there, each in our own world, trying to come to terms with the scene in front of us. I couldn’t contemplate why a human being would scheme to do such a thing to others, to people our age.

  On the way back to the hotel we popped into an internet café to find an email waiting for us. It was from the office urging us to get back to the boat as soon as we could. Beau had been threatened by some intruders in our absence, forcing him to sleep on deck with a machete by his side. He desperately wanted to know how much longer we would be. That was all the information we had. My mind was in a spin. What the hell was going on? The world seemed to be spiralling out of control.

  As we left the café Josh saw Gabby and Sam sitting on a motorbike, our friends from the small catamaran who’d come to my birthday in Nembrala. We ran up the street to where they sat, engrossed in a map.

  ‘Hey!’ Josh yelled. Gabby swung around and instantly recognised us.

  ‘Hey, you guys, what you doing here?’ she said in her infectiously friendly Chilean accent. It was an emotional reunion for two groups who’d known each other so fleetingly. Gabby explained that every friendly face they saw was ‘like the best time we’ve seen them, because we are just happy that they are alive’.

  They recounted their experiences on the night of the bombing. They had planned to meet friends at the Sari Club but Gabby was feeling sick ‘so we waited until it was late, then we felt the explosion. It shook me so hard that I wanted to be sick!’ Gabby explained.

  S
he then continued with a startling revelation.

  ‘Dave, you know, from Nembrala, he is somewhere, but we have not seen him since the explosion.’ Stupidly, my first thought was that I still owed him $20. The ramifications of what she’d said then sunk in. Could Dave have been killed or injured? For months I pored over the lists of injured and dead, but never came across his name. I sent off the $20 I owed him and it has never returned to me. I have had no way of contacting him since, so I can only presume he survived and is still happily working on his retirement hut.

  Josh and I had our final meal with Maria before we farewelled her at the airport. I was sad to see her go, for we’d shared the best of Kijana with her. We would miss having her on board. I certainly knew Beau was going to miss her desperately. Their long chats on deck and giggles had held him together. Now it was just us three guys again.

  Something about her departure, coupled with Beau’s alarming email and the awful mood following the bombing made me feel like Kijana was slowly beginning to erode.

  In the morning Josh and I made the ten-hour bus ride back to Surabaya for our return flight to Balikpapan. We stepped back on the deck of Kijana four days after leaving her. It felt like an eternity. As always, it felt nice to be back. But there was no time for relaxing after Beau told us of his experience.

  The day after we left, he’d been sitting on deck when a number of fishing boats began circling Kijana, yelling out in a threatening manner. That night he felt compelled to sleep in the back cabin, facing the steps with the rifle by his side.

  The following morning he was visited by a boatload of men. They demanded to know what he was doing in their port. They refused to believe him when he said he was on his own.

  ‘We could come and cut your throat and no one would ever know,’ they said mockingly. With the bombing fresh in his mind, he had no choice but to believe them. When no further crew came out of hiding after such a provocative threat, they began to believe Beau’s story that the skipper had gone to Bali for a few days. The men then introduced themselves as police.