Bajawa

If you are traveling across the island of Flores you might want to spend a little time in Bajawa. I stayed at the Anggrek Inn but there are a lot of better places to stay. The one neat thing about staying there was meeting Sylvester who I decided to hire out for the day as a guide. He has a club foot and rides his motorbike bare feet but is out there hustling up a buck rather than sitting on a street corner feeling sorry for himself. Often I try to rent a motorbike if I plan to be somewhere for a few days but if just passing through it can be nice to have a guide that knows his way around. I also like to help the local economy a little. He charged 100,000 rupiah for the day (10- 11 USD) and knew his way around the area quite well. He handled the bike ok too but I got off and walked in a few areas that were steep and rough because it gave me pain to see him thrust down his bad foot to maintain balance on the rough road. He really was a trooper. When a dog snuck up behind him and bit him in the leg he got some gasoline from the bike and washed out the wound to disinfect it. I was worried that it might get infected so bought some water from a roadside vendor to wash it better but he felt bad about wasting the water. You can rent some beat up motor bikes for about 40,000 rupiah a day there and you will start off with an empty tank. That would put it up to 50-55,000 rupiah with benzine (gas) and you will most likely miss some of the hidden villages. If you plan to stay a few days it might be the way to go. Sylvester spoke English well and I enjoyed spending the day with him. We went to the villages of Bela, Luba, and Beno. Beno seems to be the most popular tourist village. The traditional villages seem to be a thing of the past though and the younger people are modernizing their lifestyle. Some of the new houses along the road are still built in the traditional way with the tall steep pitched roofs but are made with galvanized roofing material and concrete walls and look rather stylish. On the ridge of the roof there is either a small house or the figure of a man. Some of the new houses with tin roofs keep this tradition. The small house symbolizes the wife and the figure of a man symbolizes the husband. Almost all of the traditional houses have these figures on the ridge of the roof. It is kind of cool. Usually there are two dwellings side by side, one with the house and the other with the man on the roof. There is most likely a much deeper traditional meaning to this set up but not being an anthropologist my knowledge about it is limited. Another interesting thing is that there are small houses on posts in the center of the village representing the woman and there are structures that look like a collapsed umblella that symbolize the man. If I understand it correctly the married couples have one of these each to represent their place in the community. We were looking at one of the small houses that didn't seem complete so I asked Sylvester about it. He said that they couldn't afford to finish the house yet. (The minitaure replica) I was kind of puzzled because it didn't seem like it would take that much wood to complete the project. Sylvester claimed that it would take several million rupiah to complete it because the small house is only a symbol that must be earned by throwing a big feast for the village. Maybe 1 buffalo and 20 pigs or more will be slaughtered. It seems to me that a persons value in the village is measured by how many parties he threw in his lifetime. Kind of a neat concept. They collect the buffalo horns and tie them in rows in front of their homes as a memento of the feast. The pig jaws are lined up as well. The floor joists are carved with pictures of horses and buffalo horns and then colored with white or black chalk or something. I took a few pictures because they reminded me of cave paintings you see in national geographic. There seem to have a lot of pictures of horses but there were not any around. Maybe they were all out in the pasture. The people in Beno seem more used to tourists and invited us over for some rice but in the other villages they were more reserved. These people get a steady flow of tourists and have a book that they request you to sign and leave them a few thousand rupiah as a guesture of thanks for being invited to tour their village. It is a good idea to have some smaller bills with you. Some of the women sell the ikats that they weave right there in the village. They would make a nice souvenir and it would help out the village.  Still I think that the traditional lifestyle will phase out or at least evolve to a more modern way soon. Everyone likes tv and electricity. They will probably keep some of their old traditions but most of the kids are moving on with the times. 2006   www.dutchpickle.com

 

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