by Nigel Barley
Leaps and Bounds
‘My attention has been drawn to the Island of Nias, which is opposite the settlement of Tapanooly and Natal, and on which the Resident has always maintained a small establishment.’
– T. S. Raffles
You arrive nowadays by air in one of those small aircraft that preserve the sense of flying as logically unsustainable. Nias is 100 kilometres out into the Indian Ocean, and flying off into the open sea is still an act of faith. This is as far west as Indonesia goes. Beyond is ocean all the way to Africa.
Constructors of fanciful genealogy have chosen to see Nias as the primal home of the Malagasy before their sea migration to the coast of Africa. Their act of faith would have been considerably greater than my own. Although Raffles had Malagasy troops at Bengkulu, this was one historical reconstruction that was to elude even him.
There is an airport at Gunungsitoli with a few dispirited tourist knick-knacks under dusty glass, for nowadays Nias is become a place of tourists. Some 3,000 a year make it to the island. The Australians are immediately recognizable by their twelve-foot-long surfboards, sheathed in florid surfboard cosies, possibly sewn by loving mothers. The Japanese cluster in groups. They come in search of surf and sun and stone-age culture – a sort of Bali with rocks. Raffles was attracted for much the same reasons.
The chiefs had petitioned the Company for protection against slavers in 1811 and been refused. Since Nias was the source of most of the imported slaves in Bengkulu, Raffles, with his abolitionist principles, was more sympathetic. Also, Nias was a source of rice and Bengkulu was incapable of feeding itself. But it was the culture of Nias that drew him.
‘I have a long account … of my discoveries in Pulo Nias. I believe I formerly told you that I was engaged in some arrangements for bringing that Island under British authority. I am now happy to say that I have succeeded; the people have unreservedly become the subjects of Great Britain. As this is an Island almost unknown, and I may at least claim the merit of first visiting and exploring its interior, some particulars may be not uninteresting …
The Island is in sight of Sumatra, and seen by most ships passing. I find the population to exceed 230,000 souls, on a surface of about 1,500 square miles, which gives a population of about 153 to the square mile; the country most highly cultivated, the soil rich, and the people the finest people, without exception, that I have met with in the East. They are fair, and a strong, athletic, active race; industrious, ingenious, and intelligent, and forming a striking contrast to their neighbours on the opposite coast of Sumatra. What has most astonished me is, the high degree (comparatively) of civilization to which they have attained, without communication from without. We have no trace, no idea whence or how the island became peopled; the people themselves say, a man and woman were first sent from heaven, from whom they are all descended. Their language, their habits, their character, and institutions, are strikingly different from all others with which we are acquainted.’
– T. S. Raffles
* * *
‘We are not interesting,’ they tell you matter-of-factly at Gunungsitoli. ‘If you run you can just catch the bus to the south, to Lagundi. All tourists go to Lagundi.’
They are right. Gunungsitoli is the least attractive of towns. Wood and thatch are immediately picturesque, concrete and corrugated iron – such as here – are eyesores. Being insufficiently different from the West, they fail in their duty to be exotic, remote in time. They are slums because they are of the present.
The people know just what it is they are selling in Nias, a view of a savage yet noble past. To travel to Nias, the pamphlets urge us, is to travel in time. This can only be because we still arrange the world in an evolutionary sequence, just as Raffles did, from savagery to civilization. This is an absurd view – as if knowledge of the world is like a bucket that is simply filled or emptied up to a certain point. Such a perspective is riven with internal inconsistencies and it was these inconsistencies that generated the puzzles that, in turn, attracted Raffles. The natives were headhunters and slavers – clear marks of savagery – yet they had stone streets, baths and architecture – ‘Roman’ features, therefore clear signs of civilization. How could they be both civilized and savage?
The same question had hung over the Sumatran tribe, the Bataks. In the midst of the furore over the founding of Singapore, Raffles had diverted his ship to meet and question Bataks about their alleged cannibalism. What fascinated him here was that cannibalism appeared to be not some product of a wild fit of communal madness but a civic duty, required by regular legal process. The Bataks, moreover, bore the ultimate mark of civilization: they had books and their own writing system. Raffles was deeply baffled by this and invested time and energy in trying to overcome the enigma. He determined to visit them in person – with the Editor.
The only answer to his bafflement would have involved letting go of the notion of civilization itself and that he would never be prepared to do. For Raffles saw the British as bearers of civilization. This was their justification and their mission. Without this unexamined notion, he could not have gone on. So Nias challenged him and he was dimly aware that this was so, but he never truly rose to meet that challenge.
* * *
Telukdalam was the chief port in Raffles’ day. It was with the chiefs here that he signed a treaty. Later, Krakatoa (west not east of Java, as the film moguls would have it) would erupt and wipe it from the map with a huge tidal wave, as the memory of British presence has been eradicated by the overlay of Dutch occupation.
Again they will not allow you from the bus.
‘No,’ they say with gentle firmness. ‘We have told you. We are not interesting. You must go to Lagundi.’
It is striking how quickly an official route is established. Not to submit to it means you have not ‘done’ a place. You have not really been there; your passport is unstamped. To digress from it is to be awkward or eccentric. And so tourism builds up mutual caricatures. It narrows the mind wonderfully.
They finally push you off at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere.
‘No, no. You cannot stay. You must get off. Lagundi.’
Gentle brown hands hustle you off and deposit luggage at your feet. They smile. They wave. You are left wrapped in the terror of strange places.
There is a cough. You turn and there are gentlemen of a certain age, grave and reserved, pointing to their motorbikes.
‘Taxi?’
* * *
‘The Nias slaves are highly valued throughout the East, for their industry, ingenuity and fidelity; and observation has shown that these are no less the characteristics of the people in their native country. The intercourse with them has given us a most favourable impression of their native character, and of their capabilities of improvement. Notwithstanding the disadvantages of a secluded situation, the absence of all instruction and example, and the insecurity arising from a state of internal division, they have drawn forth, by their industry, the resources of their fertile country to a greater degree than has yet been effected by any of their neighbours on the coast of Sumatra.’
– Dr Jack and Mr Prince, Account of the Island of Nias
* * *
The bay at Lagundi is a broad sweep of sand. Out to sea, huge waves are crashing against the rocks and coral. Within the reef, the sea is a warm bath. A line of huts made of thatched palm leaf stretches away on stilts, around their feet a rabble of bars and eating-houses, offering spaghetti and toasted sandwiches. The accents are heavily Australian, sheepjawed men and big-boned women chewing on broken vowels. Everywhere are surfboards and those absurd cosies again.
A woman passer-by stops to consider me with distaste.
‘Aw, Jeez, not another bloody surfer!’
Considering my physique, this is hardly likely. I look at the terrifying waves, big as houses, cruising by the other side of the coral.
‘No proper waves for a week,’ she says, ‘only this piddling stuff and there’s not enough to go round.�
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‘Actually,’ I say, ‘I don’t surf.’ Relief and contempt sweep over her face.
‘A Pom! They’ve brought you to the wrong part. Here’s for Aussies. The European Quarter’s over there.’ She hooks a thumb at the other end of the beach and I set off with my luggage only to be overtaken by my motorbike chauffeur.
‘I am sorry. I thought you were Australian. I will take you where you belong.’
He explains the difference. In the European Quarter, rooms are Rp. 5,000 (£1.50) a night and you can swim, as there is no surf. In the Australian section are the waves. They know an Australian may drink five or even ten bottles of beer a night, so they may give the room entirely free and make their money from the beer.
The European Quarter is basic, small bamboo huts that the wind blows straight through, water from the well. Everything is still owned and run by village people. Fishermen wander by and sell you fish and squid that locals will cook for you on the beach of white sand. The loudest noise is the rustle of palmfronds. It is recognizably the Gauguin fantasy made flesh.
The tourists are a mixed bunch, young travellers, middleaged schoolteachers, a wicked woman who sleeps with the locals two at a time, a gnarled, tortoise-necked spinster called Maud who wears sandals and a leather hat. They have in common a distaste for package holidays and seem unaware that the locals are packaging them.
Everywhere are children, small, brown, consciously endearing. In the morning, they come and sell you hot bread rolls filled with sweet ‘cocknut’ and pay you back with dynamite smiles. Children are among the first to acclimatize to tourism, and these have all developed hard-luck stories for the consumption of foreigners, speaking easily of calamitous death and hideous disease. One does an outstanding performance as a deaf-mute, producing strangulated squeaks and agonized gestures with an extended hand of supplication.
‘An Australian man wanted to adopt me,’ he confides. ‘But I think he wanted to sell me in Sydney so I let him know I could talk and he ran away.’
It is easy to blame tourism for all that is unattractive, praise traditional culture for all that is picturesque. Tourism’s caricature extends even to the economic relations between West and East.
‘You are rich,’ the locals tell you. ‘White people never work. We know, we have seen. You just lie around all day, get drunk, fight with each other. We work all day, every day.’
But the pornographic sandcastles built by the children on the beach probably owe more to the shapes naturally suggested by the coconuts they use as moulds than to any outside influence. On Nias, after all, there is almost no topless bathing but the traditional sculpture glories in the erect male member.
‘On the subject of religion, the people of Pulo Nias have but few ideas; they acknowledge a supreme being, whom they call Sumban Quit or the Lord of Heaven, but they had no distinct notions concerning him. Wooden images are to be found in all their houses which are regarded as a kind of lares or protecting household gods, but no worship is addressed to them. They are rather considered as representatives or memorials of their ancestors, for whom they have a great reverence. A belief in charms is common and every man carries a bundle of these attached to his kris …’
– Dr Jack and Mr Prince, Account of the Island of Nias
The Raffles Collection of the British Museum includes three such carvings. Two are standing figures, identical to those peddled on the beaches to modern tourists. They look quite new, phalluses unbevelled by time, as if plucked from a modern ethno-tat stall, and must have been produced specially for Raffles’ delegate – probably Dr Jack. The other is an old seated figure with a more convincing patination. Nowadays, such carvings tend towards gigantism, their ability to impress tourists relying on sheer size.
One other item is included, a necklace of fine-grained coconut shell and brass, as worn by the ancestral carvings.
* * *
One morning two Japanese surfers are delivered to the European Quarter in error. The Nias apartheid has broken down yet again. In Indonesia, as in South Africa, it is the children of the Rising Sun who resist categorization. The Indonesian beach urchins rush up to them, climbing on their knees, stroking them the way people do here when being friendly. The Japanese are almost in tears. They are not used to being touched.
‘We have surfed around the world,’ Ito tells me proudly. ‘See.’
He shows his photo album. All the pictures have been taken by pointing the camera straight out to sea at the encephalograph of the waves. There is no land or human figure to give scale. The only difference between the pictures is in the density of the little, grey squiggles – a surfer’s view of the universe.
‘You speak Indonesian?’ Ito asks. ‘Would you help me? I want to buy a souvenir, a necklace. There is a man who sells them. Would you come with me?’
We set off for the house of the dealer, a man of oleaginous sleekness who flaunts himself and his goods before the sunbathing tourists. His is an economy of seduction. We sit on his veranda, handle his wares absently, offer prices offhandedly. He produces a coconut-shell necklace.
‘Antique,’ he declares. ‘The Japanese stole most of the good stuff in the war, but this was hidden.’
There seems no need to translate that to Ito. I hold the necklace. It is warm. The day before, I had visited one of the villages. The royal treasurer had been kind enough to show me the royal heirlooms, including such a necklace.
‘Always look at the fastening,’ he had warned. ‘The metal should be worn on one side but sharp on the other. Sometimes they file them down to look old. But one thing the forgers cannot fake. Touch it!’
The necklace was icy cold, though the day was hot. The treasurer looked at my face and nodded.
‘Cold like the grave.’
This necklace, on the other hand, is warm, therefore new. Ito and I demur, disdain the necklace, condescend to look at it again, sigh, look bored, haggle and finally buy it and some other odds and ends for a modest price.
As we descend the ladder of the house, I turn to see the dealer pressing a banknote into Ito’s hand. My first thought is that I have botched the negotiations, that the price we paid was so absurdly high that even the dealer’s conscience is troubling him to the point of offering a rebate. Then I hear him mutter, ‘That’s enough. I can’t afford any more for you,’ and the penny drops. If a Southeast Asian turns up with a European, he must be the latter’s employee or guide, whatever pretence is made to the contrary. He is giving Ito his commission.
* * *
‘They dwell in excellent and commodious houses, the interior of which are laid out with neatness, not devoid of elegance; streets are regularly formed and paved, with avenues of trees, and stone stairs to the pinnacles of different hills, on which their villages are mostly situated, enbosomed in the richest foliage imaginable. The slopes of the hills and the valleys are covered with one continued sheet of the richest cultivation, and there is not a forest tree standing in the Island: all have disappeared before the force of industry. To each village are attached stone baths, appropriated to the different sexes, which remind us of Roman luxuries. They wear a profusion of gold and other ornaments, than which nothing can be conceived more original. I have a large collection now before me, and only wish I could at once transfer them to Park Lane.’
– T. S. Raffles
* * *
The villages admired by Raffles are still there. But in Nias, tourism is the last in a long line of withering outside influences that have destroyed the culture Raffles revered. Foreign governments suppressed the system of alliances and feuds. Missionaries smothered the religion in a blanket of Christianity. What is left is a ceremonial that is rightly termed ‘brain-dead’, for tourism often preserves the empty outer forms that have lost their meaning. The ancient houses with their rich ornamentation are as impressive and irrelevant to everyday life as English cathedrals. The stone streets, the carved rock seats and slabs are testaments to a stone-working technique that is gone for ever. But Nias are s
till excellent carvers of wood. So when you get to those villages ‘hidden in the hills’ the locals are already struggling from their houses with the new antique carvings before the buses and jeeps have disgorged their camera-clicking hordes through the gate.
An important local ritual involved young men performing gymnastic feats over stone vaulting horses topped with spears. Nowadays, as the tourists arrive, a schoolboy is already slipping into his red shorts (‘They look better on camera’) and offering two leaps for Rp. 12,000 – sorry, no spears. The children who practise surfing on tree trunks in the morning will be plucked off to learn the war-dance in the afternoons. They are needed to fill in the crowd scenes in the shows put on for visitors.
Yet culture is not the same as ceremonial. When you talk to Nias people, they speak matter-of-factly of their battles with witches and sea-spirits. There is an intriguingly different view of the world there, but not one that tourists can photograph.
* * *
In Java, Raffles had argued for free medical care for the inhabitants as part of the responsibility of ‘paternal care’ assumed by the British. This would include the training of native personnel and campaigns to introduce vaccination against smallpox and eradicate syphilis. It was one of Raffles’ paper projects that never came to anything. Historians have noted that the plan fell flat owing to mortality amongst the medical staff. They have not gone on to the doubtless proper conclusion that this demonstrated that such medical help as was available at that time was largely useless. In Bengkulu, the project would resurface.
On his trips in the province, Raffles was willing to offer vaccination. An early effort had resulted in many deaths, but the effect of this was largely overcome by Raffles’ own, much-adored children being vaccinated in the market-place. The urge to supply medical care …
‘Sorry to bother you, Mister …’
I looked up from the page I was writing. It was the little boy who sold the coconut rolls that I ate for breakfast. He held up a leg and looked as pitiful as a lame puppy… ‘Have you got anything for my leg?’
