Sunday 6th April
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| Old Batak house |
One of the reasons
Samosir is so special and peaceful, I think, is because of the Batak people,
indigenous to this region. Northern
Sumatra is an extremely strictly regulated part of the world, but Samosir seems
not to be very religiously dominated at all.
For example, Pete can get a beer very easily, and if I were up to
drinking alcohol (having painful sinuses makes this seem like a VERY bad idea)
I would be able to have all manner of delicious concoctions.
It would seem the
Batak people are now Christian, and very keenly so, but they still have their
old beliefs not very far from the surface.
I had in mind a sort of peaceful ancient communal race memory, which has
imbued Samosir with its gentle, peaceful charm, but I have just looked up Batak
History on Google and…aaagghh!
Cannibalism!* Torture! Executions!
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| I don't think I will be buying one of these headstones as a souvenir ... |
On a more cheery
note – I don’t think we realise, in Austalia, how much we are loved by
Indonesians… Once again, we are greeted by people in the street, who ask us
where we come from. When we tell them, the universal reaction is Ah!
Australia! You are our friends,
our neighbours! Teman!**
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| Andrew, Peter, Ulan, Lucy |
I sat next to the
open window looking down at the lane leading to the lake and watched two little
boys giving each other merry hell. Oh
what fun they had… They began playing very companionably, then went on to a game of hide & seek. One of them closed the gate on
the other one, so this developed into a storm-the-citadel game, involving a
meal wheelbarrow as a battering ram.
Quite a few adults walked past; all of them completely ignored the boys –
not a word of This will all end in tears,
or BE CAREFUL! PUT THAT DOWN!!! The parents obviously, and sensibly,
subscribe to the theory of natural consequences…
When we went to
pay, Orari was very pleased to be photographed with her two daughters and…her
son, appearing here in this photo as a very cross little blur… “He has been
hurt,” said Orari, calmly.
We are so enjoying
being here in this relaxed and friendly place.
Everyone calls out hello, or horas. Horas is a very useful word, like aloha in Hawaii, or bula in Fiji – hello,
goodbye, welcome, come back soon, I love you…all of that. And everyone wants to be in a photo!
This lovely man
wanted me to admire his motorbike/shop.
I said I would
take his photo and put it on the internet and he was delighted. “Yes,” he said, “I am businessman!” I would have loved to have bought something
from him but…I am travelling light and can’t carry a broom, or a large plastic
water jug.
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| So pretty, along the lake |
We walked quite a
long way along the lakeside road (there are only two roads here; not sure where
the other one goes – maybe up the very steep mountains??) and admired the
viewty. (The viewty…) And then, on the side of the road, quite shy
and discreet – a shop selling simcards!
We filled up our phones with about $1.70 worth of simcad and
top-up. (This did NOT seem enough to
me…I will try to make a phone call tomorrow and see how long my 13,000 rupiah
of credit buys me.) The simcard man was
very proud of his new baby, Felix.
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|
Little Batak
Felix, in his pink bonnet, with his doting mum and dad
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I showed them
photos of my own darling Tasmanian Felix and they thought he was lovely but
that he seemed very big…Batak people are extremely small!
Felix must be a
popular name here…look at this ferry!
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| FELIX the ferry! |
The ferries come
right along the shoreline every half hour or so. They stop at every single accommodation
place, very civilised!
Tuktuk, our little
town on Samosir Island, is very clean.
Parapat – not so much…There are big piles of plasticrap to be found all
along the roads and lakeside pathways. I
took a photo of a happy healthy chook family…see if you can find mother and
chickies!
We had delicious
grilled fish, salad, chips last night at Jenny’s Restaurant, with our German
friend Claude…who turns out, unaccountably, to be called Knut…(I blame my cloggy sinuses!)
He is a nice man,
calm, interesting. He spent twenty five
years in the German merchant navy until most of the ships got de-flagged and
registered in Panama, Monrovia etc so they could employ cheap CHEAP labour from
the Philippines and other countries
where people are desperate. This was
about the time of the Chernobyl meltdown, so he found himself training
on-the-job as an inspector of emission rates in nuclear power plants. Just as a matter of interest there are 17 such plants in Germany, 70 in France??
He was very amused
by my misunderstanding and had completely forgotten both of our names
anyway.
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| Rain! From the shelter of the Reggae Bar... |
* I won’t go into
gruesome details – not that Google held back in any way – but they were quite
partial to eating LIVE human flesh…Very strength-giving. Apparently.
** Teman is one of the few Bahasa words I
remember – memory like a sieve – and I know it means…FRIEND! Pete and I are both
a bit shocked by how much we have forgotten…some of it is returning but we have
been confused and bamboozled by other languages since we left Indonesia
(ahem…not very long ago…)
*** Jenny’s
Restaurant is featured prominently in Lonely Plant, Wikitravel etc. Jenny and Rinto are very charming and
convivial and, I think, provide very stiff competition for all other restaurants
along the Tuktuk strip.
BIRTHDAYS!
Angus Wakefield –
12 today! My funny, clever supremely
individual, eccentric grandson. I rang
him and said, so wittily, Happy birthday
Angus! How old are you today. Sixteen?
He sighed wearily and said, That’s
exactly what Jeff said. Oh we are so
original…I wil be seeing him (and the other three Wakefields… on 19th
April – not long now – I can’t WAIT!!
Also: Nicole Headlam
Darcey – much-loved wife, mother, daughter, friend and fundraiser
extraordinaire!!
And: Allan Mahoney –
still Registrar at the Tasmanian Industrial Commission – keeping the flag
flying!
Last but not least
– my fabulous nephew Will Harmsen, 19 today, and off to swim (competeitlvely) in
Queensland for a year.
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