How To Get Lost In Paradise: West Sumba, Indonesia

There she goes again.  As I try to fall asleep I’m kept awake by the sounds of pigs, chickens and a water buffalo scratching under my hut . Yet louder still is the village outcast.  This poor woman (in her twenties) usually sleeps in the forest, but right now is just meters from my hut.  She’s been engaged in a loud and passionate slanging match with her alter ego for hours now.  I’d love to know what she is yelling at her imaginary adversary, but my limited Indonesian is no help when she’s communicating in a local dialect.  I finally fall asleep only for the usual malaria pill induced nightmares to intrude.  Still, in the morning the lady will be singing happily, and I’ll get a first look at why I came to this remote part of West Sumba, Indonesia.

Waking like a half baked loaf of bread in the morning heat I walk the 1km or so to the beach with only a motley crew of farm animals and a few monkeys for company.  I’ve come to surf, and to do so in one of the increasingly rare spots where there’s barely a handful of like minded people to share the waves with.  I’ve heard the beach here is amazing, and it does not disappoint.  It’s by far the most spectacular clash of sand and saltwater I’ve ever seen, and with only a few fisherman for company.  Places like this do still exist I think to myself, as I jog back to get my board.  This place would easily top even the most pretentious list of ‘top ten beaches’, if more people actually knew it existed, or it wasn’t such a mission to get here in the first place.

There’s not much to the village.  Just some very basic and broken huts for guests (my first foot in the door of my hut went through the floor), a small shop and a few rice paddies.  With only a few hours of fickle electricity a day and basic food (chopped liver and rice, yes, more thanks) time here is  not all fun in paradise.  There’s no cold beer or the Sky Garden (a club in Bali) to pass time.  I spend the next few weeks in a battle with a pig that wakes me up screeching every morning at 430am on the dot, malaria carrying mosquitoes and plain old boredom.  Some hills nearby look like a fun hike; but only for the insane. The heat during the day stifles any thoughts of activity outside the ocean. After the first week I start to lose it a little and make friends with a coconut.  His name was Kevin.  If that sounds weird it’s because it was, but I’ll blame it on lack of company and the malaria pills.

The locals here are friendly and always curious of visitors.  My curiosity of them was every bit as strong.  Sumba is a place full of ancient tradition and superstition and just the odd bit of black magic. While many people have converted to Christianity, and Islam is prevalent in some parts of the island, Animism or ‘The Marapu’ is a local belief system still found everywhere.  It loosely involves worshiping everything from trees to crocodiles.  At another local village (with no road access) there were some examples of tombs with each persons worship animal carved on the gravestone  I was told were worth checking out.   Getting around some of the villages to see this was an exercise in the surreal.  I was warned several times that there were ‘invisible gates’ that I was not allowed to pass through, part of local spiritual beliefs.  I never did find out where they were exactly.

Aside from religion people here are still known to settle disputes via the machete, which the men carry everywhere.  Its a fascinating place with more than hint of the mysterious and unknown about it.  The local belief system dates back to a staggering 500BC.  All this just three hours from Darwin, a total world apart.

After a few weeks of great surf and good people I’m ready to leave.  I sit on the beach on my last day feeling pretty happy and more than lucky about my little place in the world.  Places like this still do exist, I get to see it, and I get to leave.  As I get back on the truck for the 6 hours of bumpy and noisy hell back to town, the village outcast is singing again.  I hope she finds her peace,  like I’d just found mine (and a coconut named Kevin).

You can reach Sumba via one hour flight from Kuta with either Merpati or Batavia Air.  The beach and village in the article are not really a secret, but I’ll leave it for others to find.  Check out more photos at www.brookmitchell.com.

www.brookmitchell.com

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Category: Asia, Ed's Travel Blog, Indonesia/Bali, Off Track Travel, Travel Blog