Happiness is a Pile of Coconut Husks – Stories, Questions and Contradictions from the Mentawai Islands

 

---

 

 

Tidak Apa Apa

 

From the upstairs porch outside of my simple corner room the smooth lines of Lance’s famous right hand reef break appear, dark blue hills on the march. As they near the white washed reef an invisible zipper rips open the surface of the mounds, and the white foam interior pounces forth. Still air and ample swell have brought out the afternoon surfers. A three-story powerboat anchored in the channel has disgorged a few wealthy Australians, little floating blotches in the water that move slowly toward the lineup.

 

On every wave is saddled a lithe rider, emerging in an act of optical trickery from behind the wave, appearing in the critical plane of smooth blue just ahead of the pitching waterfall, riding with fast pumping dips along the face, or if the wave allows, dropping low and carving in a quick arc toward the lip, whipping the tail of the sharp surf board in a plume that joins the foam, then stalling at just the right point near the wave’s upper edge, allowing themselves to be caught by the maw of the beast. One will reemerge, unbitten; another will disappear, consumed and digested, popping up after the water settles like a stubborn shit.

 

I want to paddle out but I’m limping from a wound on my knee, and the gash on my left thigh still burns, even though it was weeks ago that I tore it open on the reef. It doesn’t seem to heal right, staying wet from days of surfing, or spear fishing. This is a life in the water and it’s wearing on me. Three hours of surfing yesterday and another three today. I feel surfed out, as they say. Still I have the urge to paddle, to test my chances at seeing the inside of the thing, to keep practicing the nuances so that I might relax in the moment, place myself into the most critical edge of a breaking wave and escape, flying over the lip, returning stoically (and secretly gleefully) to join the others, as though nothing out of the ordinary happens out there.

 

 

Members of the family that owns the place where I’m staying are milling about in front of the property, at times watching the ocean and smoking, or shoveling sand and stacking coral, building what appears to be some sort of concrete platform. The concrete is mostly made of beach sand and hunks of coral, with a small amount of cement powder to firm it up. When I ask what they are building they smile, and mention something about Bintangs, the local beer. Maybe it’s a platform for guests to watch the wave and drink Bintangs, but I can’t be sure of the details, they don’t speak English and my Bahasa Indonesia, the national language, is rough. They don’t drink beer, and I’m the only guest, so I guess they are planning for the future.

 

Bitcar, the ageless patriarch who owns the place, is perpetually smiling. Our conversations are mostly about plans for the day, surfing or fishing, and always end with him saying, tidak apa apa, which essentially means hacuna matata, and seems to be a general rule for how he lives his life. At night after dinner we often play chess on a cheap, but large, plastic chessboard he has around the place. I drink Bintangs and he smokes the strong, floral local cigarettes, telling me not to worry, tidak apa apa, regardless if he is taking my queen or I’m taking his.

 

 

It’s a cliché that comes up in tropical tourist destinations, not that this is really one of those yet, the locals are relaxed, people say, or maybe they say they’re chill, so nice. Other times it manifests in comments about how the locals don’t like to work, how they’re lazy. It’s all the same first impressions being repeated like an observation of the weather, mindlessly, as small talk. There is certainly a slower pace in a hot place without access to large markets or frequent acts of consumerism. There is only one store around here and it doesn’t really sell much, mostly cigarettes and withered vegetables. Getting anything else requires a long trip to the ‘city’ on the north side of the island. It’s true, not much gets done in a day, maybe because it’s just not feasible, without access to cars, box stores, and 1 day delivery.

 

In many of the equatorial places we’ve visited the slow approach to time is referred patronizingly by the expats, or wistfully by the tourists, accustomed to a busy schedule, as a kind of removed time, as in island time, Fiji time, or Indo time. Sometimes it’s a thinly veiled jab at the locals, again accusing them sloth or of being unreliable. In some of the more developed tourist hubs it’s a meaningless refrain that symbolizes vacation, a mantra to try and force relaxation, and to get high strung arrivals to chill out, have a drink, buy something. Here, on this little island, it’s different, sure there is the island time pace, but it’s not related to the tourists, it feels all together older, pre-industrial. I’m not saying that the people here are preindustrial, globalism is everywhere, missionaries were here hundreds of years ago, western owned resorts are here and more are planned. They have the Internet, so people know about the world, though many people never leave the island, and the Internet only works for a few hours a night, some nights anyway, in the town square where people gather to slam dominoes and peer at the tiny windows into the world.

 

I want to say that this island is at a good point in its development, but that’s problematic to say as a visitor, and it’s clearly personal, it’s a nice place for me, that doesn’t really require any justification, but to say that it’s good for the people that live here, that complicates the matter. Having seen what development can do, how outside interests, fast growing tourism, and fast travel, can change the daily lives of local people, I want to say that the moment is good for the people who live here too, because it’s tourism and development potential is not yet actualized, and so life goes on at it’s mellow pace, there are few strangers and no crime, but things are about to change.

 

These islands, the Mentawai, are famous. It’s a legend in the surf world. But most people only interact with it in their dreams. Even if people fork up the commitment and cash to make the trek, much of the surf tourism is focused on live aboard boats that, for better or worse, don’t really impact the locals. The waves get crowded, but the guests don’t come ashore much, maybe just to go to the resort (there are two resorts on the island, one on each side, each sitting in front of world famous waves). The cost of the resorts or the boats is unfathomable to a local living and working on the island, twenty times the cost of staying in my small room, and the interaction between resort guests and the towns folks is limited, maybe just on the beach selling carved boats, or in the waves.

 

 

Most of the economy on the island is still sustenance, or selling locally grown products like copra and cloves to the mainland city. But the foundations of modern global capitalism are already being built, Aussies are already buying up the land, the road is being built, there is already a strong sense of have and have not among the teenagers. They see that there is great wealth in the world, shiny new surfboards, giant floating kingdoms, and so they begin to want, to see what they have as lesser. The tendrils of capitalism creep in and enough is no longer enough. I want to tell everyone I meet that they shouldn’t let it change, they shouldn’t sell their land, they shouldn’t build the road, but how selfish that would seem. How can I know the details, how can I see what people need in their lives, how can I tell them to stay poor while we stay rich, flying around the world to play, telling the locals how to live, how they should develop their land and lives, and leaving again as though it were all just part of the plan. But my privilege to travel has given me one particularly privileged view of what vice comes with tourism and development: some people will win and some will lose, but either way, life on the island won’t ever be the same. The story has been told and there is no use telling it here, and anyway, it’s more complex then a hand full of clichés, because it’s the contradictions that make it interesting.

 

---

 

 

Juny

 

Juny comes by most days asking if I want a massage. I don’t like massages and have to decline. She keeps a small shack next to Bitcar’s place on the beach. I’m not sure what’s inside, it’s only a few meters squared, or even who owns it, but she seems to feel at home on the porch. She lives in the town, a half hours walk up the path, with her husband, who is quiet and will sometimes hand line off the beach in front of the shack, catching small colorful fish that you could conceal in your hand. Juny is not from here, and she and her husband are Muslim, like most Indonesians, though for historical reasons most of the island locals are Christian. She has long straight black hair and smiles eagerly, though I often see a look of worry, or maybe fear on her face when she looks out into the ocean. She spends much of the day sitting alone, or with her son Lupe, who, although he is five, seems to be much younger.

 

We keep a small kitchen in one of the downstairs rooms of the accommodation to cook breakfast and lunch, as the family only provides us dinner. A friend that had been here a few times told us to bring supplies for a long stay, a stove and a gas bottle, lots of dry pasta and beans. I noticed one day, as I was warming a can a baked beans that Lupe was eyeing it hungrily. Juny sat out front on the hunk of wood that Bichar and the family often sit at in the evenings. I asked Lupe if he wanted some and he eagerly shook his head up and down. After this I began to wonder about Juny and Lupe. Lupe often appeared while I was cooking, looking up, curiously, silently. Hungrily? Juny would inevitably be sitting at the property’s edge, face turned away, looking out at the ocean. Was she sending her son into the kitchen in hopes that he would be fed?

 

As the weeks past I began to notice other hints of hunger on the island. Bichar often fed the older kids that hung around out front. They would come in quietly and go into the family house, emerging with a pack of ramen or a bit of white rice. And maybe Juny too was being fed from the big house, she often ate with the family. When I saw her each morning she always smiled, asked if wanted a massage, and accepted anything we gave her thankfully, especially if it was for her children. Maybe I misinterpret the situation, misread the cues, tell myself stories, maybe her husband is a quiet man who likes to catch small fish. It’s easy to misunderstand what’s happening around you when you speak the language, penetrating the smiles and kindness, peering behind the dignity and pride without the nuance of a native tongue, is impossible.

 

---

 

 

It Was Such a Nice Place

 

I keep trying to figure out why I am happy here, why people here seem happier than in most places we’ve been. It reminds me of some Americana from just after the war, that probably never really existed, where everyone smiles and nods eagerly, where people look up from their work to greet you, where children, unattended, play in the woods with sticks, where there is only one restaurant in town, where no one locks their doors and everyone knows your father’s name. This place is making me realize that good places are not places, but places in time. The old timers in the Midwest are always saying how it used to be such a nice town, before people started losing their jobs, before the out-of-towners started moving in and the box stores replaced the mom-and-pops, and eventually main street was shuttered, the young people moved to the city, and the place lost its soul.  Those places were not good places because of geography, though I’m sure the pastoral landscape helped, but because of where they were in their development, in their relationship to global markets and distant trade, because the highway wasn’t built yet and people drove through main street, because people ate their own tomatoes and passed their money around between each other in a nice little circle. Now the highway goes around town and folks are sending all their money away to Amazon, and Apple, and Wal-mart, to the strangers who profit from those far away companies.

 

 

There is a similar story, a repeated myth in traveling circles, about places that used to be so awesome. An older guy at a backpackers might comment that, when he was there, at whatever trendy tourist destination is being discussed, in the late nineties, there was only one place to stay, and it was safer back then, there were almost no tourists or tall buildings, or kids asking for hand outs. Now the place is over run with private busses and backpackers, and the beach is covered in trash. None of this used to be here, he would say, it was such a nice place. People like to blame the tourists for ruining good tourist destinations, but we can hardly blame them for ruining small town life in America.

 

There must be something else at work, some sort cultural weakness for nostalgia, or maybe the apparent changes to our landscapes are easy topics for the projection of broader ideals, a place where we can express our politics, and identity. Or maybe global capitalism has a necessarily ruinous effect. I’m not being coy, the contradictions are too many to be sincere, and I still don’t have an answer, just a feeling, that the people on this island are happier than most, and I want to know why.

 

I have heard it said that places like this little island, without any cars, or banks or tall buildings, are going to get better when they put the road in next year. Maybe it could use a few more people bringing jobs and the increase in absolute wealth that comes with them. There are arguments to be made that globalism and the rise in tourism spending increases the quality of life in poor areas. In many ways this is the dominant thinking and can be demonstrated in the numbers. But it’s conclusions never quite map onto my experience, and from here, on my porch looking out into the ocean, it’s hard to see that life is going to get better. I can’t seem to quite put it all together, but at the center of the change, of the slow and quiet conflict between the desire to have more and the desire to hold on to what you already have, is capitalism. Maybe it’s just the minutia of some deterministic social evolution, some Marxist inevitability, maybe the capitalists are right and progress will make everything better, maybe the market is in conflict with our better humanity. Clearly, I’m conflicted.

 

I keep coming back to one simple thought, it’s such a good place in this moment. I’m not buying into some state of nature ideal here, this island has had generations of exposure to western culture, but it’s in a good state of development, capitalism is weak but markets are free. We’re in a late stage of global capitalism and places like this are hold outs, but they are slowly being brought in. Capitalism and economic development don’t have a natural check. The system incentivizes the people to use the land to it’s maximum potential. Sometimes there is forethought about how to keep the land useful into the future, but look around (or visit any industrial area, or developing city), we’re simply not very good at encouraging economic systems that consider the well being of future generations. Maybe more education is needed, maybe the fishermen don’t understand that if they bomb the reef to get the fish the reef will stop producing fish. But I give people the benefit of the doubt, they understand, its simply that the system rewards immediate profit, especially if someone is incentivized with hunger, or envy.

 

Even when local people try and protect their reefs, boats from elsewhere come and bomb the reef, capitalist incentives enable us to legitimize any behavior that is profitable. There are mixed messages, how can something that is bad, like illegal fishing and poaching, be rewarded by a society that pays you to do it. If wealth is a representation of success, than the acts that lead to wealth are expressions of social values. There are contractions, laws will oppose a behavior, but the market will turn around and pay for the same behavior. And in many places, where the law is weak, where regulation is in conflict with survival and prosperity, the market forces dominate. You could say that this is true everywhere where capitalism thrives, that capitalism’s prime moral value, profit, is stronger than any other social value, and maybe that’s what’s causing me so much confusion, why this little island that seems so good, is also destined to decline (progress?) into a familiar scene of exploitation, transactional relationships and littered landscapes.

 

What does the future look like for this little place? On one hand I could write a narrative about how development will displace the local people and ruin lives, giving access to the rich and alienating the poorer locals. But just as reasonably I could describe how this place suffers from hunger, high infant mortality and economic depression, how the young people are stuck with lives they don’t want to live and lack opportunity and access to upward mobility, and really I think both are simultaneously true, reality contradicts itself.

 

---

 

 

The Trail

 

There is a trail that passes in front of the losman (small hotel) where I am staying that the locals use to access further down the beach. It connects into the old town further up the coast and continues north to the next village or it forks inland to the new settlement they built away from the sea after the last tsunami. The trail is sometimes paved with the powdery coral concrete that has deteriorated so bad there are places where only piles of coral remain. Sometimes when I’m walking the trail to go surf on the other side of the island, or to go to the village to see if the internet is working I try to imagine the history of the trail. At one point it must have been a simple footpath, and the powers that be, some government interests, or local headman, decided to pave it. The money for upkeep dried up or was never considered, and now it has begun to return to sand and dirt, an expression of the possibility of regression.

 

 

The part of the trail that goes in front of my second floor perch only breaks from the coast to go around two resorts, the big expensive one, Hollow Trees, and a smaller but still foreign run place called Losman Ombok. This, I guess, is just symbolic to me, and foreshadows the subtler ways that development changes a place. Local people walk the trail along the beach with hand woven baskets strapped to their back and machetes in their hands or tucked into their baskets. The trail isn’t public, or private, it just is, as it has always been, a shared resource. I’m sure there are technicalities, but really no one needed to care, because no one had ever had a need to posses it, to restrict it or turn it into a resource to be controlled for its inherent value, that is, it’s being beachfront. The path wanders along the coast allowing anybody to pass, to go home, to go to the palm groves to work. The path is beautiful, old, and made by feet. But nothing is sacred and now the path curves around the resorts, allowing the paying guests uninterrupted access to the shore. Where the path cuts inland the seaward side is blocked by a 3 meter wall. The stench of sewage hovers around one corner of the wall where the high water table and the need for modern facilities causes the resort’s septic to overflow.  The trail makes a dog leg to avoid a makeshift dump and burning ground for the resort not far from its bubbling septic. It’s not difficult to see how more development will go, soon the trail will be set back away from the beach, and the workers will not look out to the sea as they walk to work but onto the backsides of the resorts.

 

A few local men walk past on the trail in front of the porch where I’m sitting. They smile, big gummy smiles, and wave or nod. They pass once in the morning with empty loads, heading toward the palm groves where they will hack dried coconuts open and peal out the half moon meat hunks. In the afternoon they come back fully loaded and drop their baskets under the porch in front of Bitcar’s front door. Bitcar or his wife will come out and weigh the cargo, offer coffee and sit smoking for a while.

 

The copra can’t bring much money, but the work isn’t grueling and everyone seems to work for themselves. I haven’t met any managers. I’m probably filling in details with how I want the world to be, but I often see the villagers in the woods beside the path working steadily beside a pile of husks and imagine them whistling while they work.  Some lazy afternoon I rack up one of the rickety scooters that can be rented around the village with my surfboard and head over to the other side of the island, through the inland town and over the hill to the open coconut groves along the southwestern tip. Driving along the shady paths I pass locals walking to and from their work. I always wonder how they choose where to work? And, who owns the land? There are a few places along the road where you can sell the coconut meat, like Bitcar’s. They are identifiable by the hand written signs, copra, and invariably an old rusty scale, looking like a dead mechanical chicken, hangs from the porch eves.

 

I don’t completely understand how it works, but I tell myself stories: the only tool you have to buy is the ax, the woven backpacks are homemade and most people wear flip flops. If you have the desire you can take up the ax, find a fruitful spot of shady grove and start harvesting. Work as much as you like, as the work is piece-meal, and the only things to buy don’t really cost much, so you could make in a day more than you need, for cigarettes and wilted carrots anyway.

 

I can remember stopping once to speak with a man who was bent over hacking away at the hearty domes. When he saw me stop to speak with him he smiled enormously, as seems to be the local custom. I can’t recall what I asked him but the impression he left was strong. He was not rushed and he was eager to talk. He wanted to walk with me, and was glad to help, though I don’t think he cared with what. I didn’t want to abuse him and his generosity so I convinced him to stay. He was alone and the patch of woods he was sitting in was shady but mottled with little winking spots of sunlight. There was a slight breeze that caused a shallow rustling sound high overhead, but overall, in the silences between our words, there was broad quietude, not empty or cold, but enclosing and comforting like the hum of a record between songs. The man seemed settled, calm, and not distracted, as a man who works alone and on his own time often is. I wondered as I drove away what about him left me feeling that he was a happy man, a satisfied man. Was I projecting some pastoral narrative I learned at university? Was I filling in details I couldn’t possibly know? Surely. But still, I believe there is something more going on here. In whatever background quest I keep to understand how we ought to live and how I might put together a happy and satisfied life for myself I am drawn to this memory.

 

---

 

 

Marlouise

 

Marlouise picks me up in the morning in his long blue government issue fiberglass canoe. The resort three doors down from where I’m staying got it’s name, Hollow Trees, from the dugout canoes that the locals use to fish and travel short distances along the shore. These traditional craft are still in use here, more than in most places I visited in the pacific, but fiberglass boats with outboards are becoming more common and it seems that in an effort to promote opportunity the government has given several dozen numbered craft to the locals. Marlouise has equipped his with a set of outriggers for stability and has a ten-horse motor that isn’t big enough to get the boat on step but seems to push us along at 5 knots or so. The outriggers are wooden poles, lashed cross ways to the bulwarks with small runners that slip through the water and keep the otherwise tippy canoe from broaching, not so much by floating, like a trimaran, but by creating resistance as they are forced underwater when the boat tries to roll.

 

 

Marlouise anchors the boat just in front of Bitcar’s place, off the beach in waist deep water, and comes up for some coffee and breakfast. It’s traditional here to offer any guest kopi or té, and offer some food if there is any. Marlouise always accepts the food and I get the sense he doesn’t always have interesting food at home. He once told me that there was not enough breakfast for him after the kids ate, he has many children, and I’m not sure if that was a joke, or maybe there is some truth in the humor. It’s possible that after a lifetime of nasi (rice) and ikan (fish) the different style of cooking that happens in our kitchen, with dry beans and eggs, or pasta and garlic, is inviting, maybe its just polite to accept what is offered. It’s too difficult to know these subtleties in our limited shared language.

 

During the weeks I’ve been here in Katiet I’ve fished often with Marluise, as he needs the work and I appreciate his casual style. He is a man in his forties with sharp teeth, blackened at the root from deep decay and constant smoking. The men here smoke a strong tobacco infused with cloves. The cigarettes are packaged in the normal way and imported from the mainland. The cloves are locally grown and then exported, to return later mixed with the packaged smokes. Walking through town at midday you often see mats laid out in the sun with cloves and what looks like nutmeg drying in the fierce sun.

 

Marlouise is thin and dark with short-cropped hair that he always covers in a dirty baseball cap with the logo of some shipping company. Sometimes he wears a black beanie that gives him the look of a bohemian fisherman from a mid century Mediterranean oil painting. His clothes are always too big, an outsized pair of board shorts, and a long colored tee shirt that might have been from the uniform of some cruise ship, faded blue with an insignia embroidered on the pocket. Or often, when I happen to be walking by his small house in the town, on my way to the opposite side of the island to surf, he will emerge from the day time shadows of his doorway, shirtless in black cut off track pants, twin yellow lines down each leg. Grinning he will say a few things I half understand and offer me kopi. As a practice I have been trying to take the time to sit with my local friends and acquaintances, to try and approach the day in a different way, try to better understand what time really means here, to the people in this place. Anxious to get to the waves before the tide changes or the wind changes I have to force myself to sit and relax. Setting my board amongst the piles of nets and floats and broken and collected detritus that is stacked just outside the sitting area in Marlouise’s front yard we sit at his homemade table. Much like a picnic table it has a bench on each side, rough hewn planks nailed together with large framing nails that have clearly been rusting for quite a while.

 

Around Marlouise’s table or mine, we mostly speak of plans, if we will go fishing soon, whether I have some friends that are leaving and need a ride. Marlouise tells me about his children; several times mentioning that he has two that need to go to school. Primary schools in Indonesia are not free and to some people, like those of this island, the relative cost can be quite high. The cost of a year is something like a hundred dollars, maybe a bit more, and for some, like Marlouise who has many children, this was a recurring and cumulative cost.

 

Marlouise has to hustle for work, to look for it wherever the opportunity is even possible. I saw him once or twice mending his nets and extensibly he is a fisherman, but it’s clear fishing doesn’t pay well and although he has a boat and a motor it is barely worth the gas to go out. He is looking at the money that is coming in for the few families that have access to outside sources, the handful of locals that have started businesses on the beach, Mama Hosen who, with her husband, started the first land-based accommodations in the nineties. And there is Bitcar, who because his family has land on the beach has been able to make enough money to have a few houses, and help out the community, feed some of the local kids. There is also Monaloo, who is the chief capitalist around and seems to have a say in everything. Monaloo runs the only boat that takes tourists to and from Tuapejat, the capital town in the north, he charges 3 million local a trip, enough to send two kids to school for a year, and seeing this, Marlouise can’t help but want to get in on the game.

 

 

The issue of course is figuring out how to access the tourists, not being able to speak English and not really being able to find out when people are coming and going makes this difficult and overwhelming to attempt. So when we became friends it made some sense that he was eager to have me help him get some work, especially trips north, which were worth a million to him. He says that he has to use 40liters of gas to get to Tuapejat and back, at 12k a liter that’s almost half in operating cost, but still, half a mill is getting him much closer to paying for school than even a good day of fishing, and it is a lot easier and more reliable, if he can get it.

 

Seen like this our relationship must be an important opportunity for him, and at times, when he is seeming to press an issue about work or his need for a mask to go spear fishing or his need for money to send his kids to school, I will feel ashamed, that he is somehow trying to take advantage of me, or that it is somehow impolite to talk about money and need so openly. In New England where I grew up, my people, Irish and Italian immigrants, suffered their poverty in silence, suffered and prayed and were often silently depressed.  I was taught not to discuss money or poverty, It’s almost part of my culture to feel this shame and it seems wrong to turn these feelings around and think poorly of a man who is simply being realistic. Is it not true that he has children that he needs to send to school? That he wants better gear for his trade? Would it not be difficult for anyone to see the tools that they desperately needed for work being used around them for mere play?

 

One particular day, while we were out fishing Marlouise asked me if I didn’t know how to get an extra mask, without much access to cash he was essentially asking if I had or knew someone who had one to give. Again with my off-put feeling I began to think of other possible motives that Marlouise could have, besides the genuine desire to better his situation. I couldn’t figure why he would need a mask but for the obvious reasons. He couldn’t sell it, and besides there isn’t much to spend your money on in Katiet. Someday the road will bring cars and fancy motor bikes, and the shiny objects of capitalism, as well as the darker markets, drugs and booze, but at this moment in time there are few luxuries and the local population is vary rare to drink.  The next day I went to the resort on the far side of the island and bought Marlouise a mask, intending to give it to him as a parting gift.

 

---

 

 

The Past Tense Parts

 

The last day before I left I went over to Marlouise’s house for dinner and we traded gifts. He gave me one of the wooden carvings of the island that they sell to tourist on the beach, and a small bag his wife had woven from grass. I gave him the mask and a few extra bands I had for his spear gun. Somehow this didn’t solve any problems, with how I was feeling, and though he was thankful for the mask he still looked enviously at mine, a higher end one that doesn’t embrittle in the sunlight (his observation). Neither of us created the world we were thrust into, we were just friends, for a few weeks anyway, in our way, trying to negotiate being from different worlds, negotiate the current moment in the world, and on the island, wading through the muck of wealth disparity, and global capitalism.

 

When I left Katiet Marlouise gave me a ride in his canoe. It was a 6hr ride in an open boat and it rained much of the time. His wife came along for the first half and brought their youngest daughter. She was shy and kept peering out from the colorful umbrella her mother held above them to protect against the steady drizzle. It was early and the sun never rose, the sky getting lighter but keeping the ominous feel of night. I rode in the front of the boat and stayed mostly covered in a blue tarp. After his wife got out at a town half way up the cost the rain stopped and we played a few games of chess. In Tuapejat where I would catch the ferry to the mainland we had lunch. It wasn’t expensive and I think he ate there every time he came to town, but I paid anyway.

 

 

 

 

…

 

…

 

…

 

…

 

…

 

I wanted to include a picture of some of the ‘farmers who wore torn old clothes’ making a thatched roof for their timber house.

 

…

 

This comment about surfers being more worried about crowding than the local population’s well-being pretty much sums up the whole issue.

 

…

 

This seems to be a clear example of the power of capitalism’s value system. Immediate profit inevitably drives people’s decision making process, even if it goes against centuries of cultural norms.

 

…

 

…

 

The second article worth mentioning is De-constructing Wonderland, written by Jess Pointing, et al. Written more than a decade ago it tries to apply a critical deconstructionism (à la Derrida) to the ‘perfect wave’ surf myth, arguing that a surf tourism market fueled by tropical paradise clichés and revenue hungry lifestyle brands has been developed around the Mentawais by western interests that profit from using local resources but do not return any benefit to the local people. Both Pointing’s work and the work he quotes by Barilotti are considered foundational by Dr. Towner, and we see significant redundancy in their messages.

 

…