The Night At A Village, Before A Crossing

Paddling past beautiful Padar Island on the way to Komodo Village.

A kampung house - weathered wood planks and zinc roof - was mostly free of dust. Its floor, covered by a pvc carpet of printed yellow and green tiles, was swept daily. The floor was seldom washed, so that water did not creep between the pvc carpet and wooden floor. It was easy to keep things off the floor. Except for the table and chairs, others like cap, bags, etc were hanged on nails knocked simply into the wood walls. At sections where a long cross beam held the standing planks, little toys or use bottles stood. These little shelves were found here and there, a collection of lives, that were also free of dust.

Several longer roof beams leaned from the corners towards the middle, where zinc sheets of reddish brown and reflected light completed the roof. When it was day, it radiated hot air inside the house. 

When it rained, it defeated the silence.

The kitchen was always near drainage, and in this village, it was the sea. An outstretched hand easily tossed out peels of onion or roots of vegetables. There was seldom leftovers. Used oil was repeated. If there was a sink, the pipe brought the waste of soap and grim onto the beach before it flowed into the sea. Toilets too, were built near drainage, and if not ‘further up’, so that waste could also flow into the sea. Some of these discharges sank and trapped inside the sand. Villagers did not built their lives on soft muddy grounds or a muddy beach; they created mud over time.

Kids being kids!

Every morning after adzan, was the scrapping bamboo brooms. There was little to sweep on the sandy street, some plastic wrappers and the odd blue bottle caps. Most rubbish was now collected. The sea brought in more rubbish than the village’s throwaways; plastic thrash piled its main beach. Children littered into the sea, keeping the streets clean.

Rain washed away whatever spits and filths that sank into the sandy street. Rain washed away some red rust on the roofs. Rain smouldered the little holes dug up by the smallest children and paved the sandy street again. It filled up the wells and quench the heat.

Rain certainly delighted the children, who were the zippiest people in the village. It was too hot under the zinc roofs, anyway. They claimed, like kings, to spaces and lands around the village, especially those out of reach. The ledges, the tree branches, or the sea below the jetty…found ways to touch and add to their conquests. Their instinct was to make something out of what they could touch, and make things theirs. No senseless books that gave false hopes. 

Yet hope was something voiced affirmatively by our Host at the homestay. 

“Management 2018!”, our Host boomed his intention to be elected to the village council. If Jokowi the furniture trader could become president of Indonesia, our Host hoped to change his destiny. 

“Management 2018!”

Looking out from the window of our homestay.

Our Host also hoped more people would come stay at the village. But why would they? The ‘higher management’ had built a deep water pier to welcome giant cruise ships that landed directly at the world-class park. The merry tourists stepped down for half-day tours, and after posing with the dragons, went back to their air-conditioned cruise cabins and buffets. Our Host never saw any of them in the village.

“Our homestay is German-standard, accredited by German!”, our Host proclaimed.

Our Host spoke of a quality check-list that the German used. He was told to add items like a table and correct number of chairs; a mirror on the wall. The touted German standards soon dropped after we moved in. Because there was ‘no hooks to hang underwear’ in our mandi, down went the country pride, wet on the floor. The small bathroom door seemed designed to let in the lower body only. No need for mirror since there wasn’t a lamp inside. 

What the German did not accredited was the lives of our homestay families - mothers with children. Their husbands had went out of the village to find work. The mothers made sure the cartoon bedsheets were changed, soft toys taken out, and the kids were ordered to sleep in the kitchen room with their mancik. Like this, rooms were made free for us. Our meals - fresh vegetables from local gardens and fish from the national park - were what they ate. We were taken care of like family.

“Bring more people here.”, the Host asked me.

I must had heard that line so many times in many places. How could we, kayakers from thousands of miles away, also became hope? I offered our Host some kretek and smiled. 

In contrast, a kayak crossing couldn’t be attempted with hope. 

The Komodo Village at low tide.

Linking two islands with kayaks sometimes felt like crossing dimensions. If age was not an number, we could arrive the other side wiser, than if we had lived through normal time. We could come through there a different person, our precarious pieces shaken to the core that they somehow collapsed in sufficient harmony.

I slept early thinking about the crossing, wrestling my mind between naivety and worry. The thoughts spanned, like the width of the sea between the islands, from the safety of a nice beach to the emptiness of an ocean. I kept getting pissed, then regrets, for somewhere in those thoughts, also an awareness that there were dark parts of tomorrow which we couldn’t control, didn’t know. Sleep that came was like a movie on replay, just with different endings. 

Paddling from Gili Lawat towards Komodo Islands in strong currents...but we saw a dugong!

Outside I faintly heard voices and laughter. I heard the crashing of waves underneath the house, spilling onto the sandy street. At the straits visible from my window, the tidal streams built over itself. Everything that stood in its way was swept aside or encircled. The tremendous flowing streams of the Indian Ocean coursed north. Months of wind had whipped up the Indian Ocean to such heights that it emptied readily into the archipelago basin. As quickly as the flow reached their speed, it reversed. Then, the might of the Pacific Ocean pushed against the cold Indian waters, finally gaining enough traction and injecting some warm waters into the southern seas. Even as I slept, I could feel the waters wrapping around the house pillars below and crashing over low kerbs.

Tomorrow then, we cross the straits where two oceans meet.

Sunset on one of the Gilis the night before arrival at Komodo Village.