King of the District: Part 2
Governor Hein’s clove cigarette fizzes hypnotically, dipped in the incense, and from the utter darkness the ancestral Moro talks the Tobelo language in an old,...
Tagged: christianity
Tales from the Moluccas #1: MIA
In the village, they’re still a little mystified as to what happened to Jeff. He was a missionary, you see. At least, he said he...
A Fistful of Dollars
Our favoured local, back in Rantepao in the Tana Toraja, was the hangout of the local Guides Association, a Teamsteresque conglomerate of the most amiable...
Souls Growing Skywards with the Trees
At Pana, the cave graves were easy to find, half of them broken open, looming out of a granite slab in the oncoming dusk and...
Buffalo Soldiers: Living for Death in the Tana Toraja
“Are funerals like this in London?” asks my new Torajan friend. The dead man’s drum-shaped coffin emerges from the matrimonial bedroom where he has “slept”,...