Tag Archives for tribes
The Friday Photo: Yi Lady Smoking
We met this lady from the Yi tribal minority catching the cable car up to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, outside Lijiang, China, to tend to her yaks. I don’t know her first name, which elderly Chinese don’t like to give out, but she did tell me that she is 76 years old and has five [...]
The Friday Photo: Kayan Woman, Borneo
I photographed this lady from the Kayan tribal minority in Sarawak, once an independent kingdom, now Malaysian Borneo, during our big trip upriver there last year. She’s chewing betel, the local stimulant of choice, in the longhouse where she lived, and her stretched ear lobes, like her arm tattoos and head dress, are traditional methods [...]
Because I Want A Skyline
“Why go to Kupang?!” Z asks, rhetorically, standing skinny in his Simpsons PJs. “Why go to Kupang?! Because we’ve been in Kefa long enough. I’m sick of brushing my teeth in a bathroom with no sink. I’m fed up of eating rice and potato cakes. I want internet! A shower! A toilet I don’t have [...]
My Father, The Headhunter
Kores holds his father’s weapons proudly in his hands. A short, broad machete, wrapped up in ikat cloth and string, and two crude wooden spears. His sight’s fading now – one eye shut, almost gone the way of his teeth, and there’s a goitre on the back of his skull bigger than either of his [...]
On the Up in Flores
It is a bright, sunny day and a beautiful ride. I’m starting to feel that the jinx that has befouled our overland mission from Bali to Papua is beginning to lift. It’s only taken a day and a half for the mechanic to find the part, mend our broken bike and deliver it proudly to [...]
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, old woman’s voice, the men around me reechoing jo… jo… jo… hypnotically. It’s like an alien plainsong. He comes in goodness. We all have good hearts. He will do us [...]
The King of the District: Part 1
Governor Hein’s people pick us up early. 9.30pm, not 10. It’s a big, slick, maroon people-carrier, a Toyota, I think, not quite as pristine as his personal vehicle, but it stands out a mile among the motor-rickshaws, scooters and mikrolet on the streets of Tobelo, Halmahera. They call him the King of North Halmahera, Hein. [...]
It happened during the second gold rush they had, here in Eastern Halmahera, in Indonesia’s Wild East, back in the 90s. When parties of twenty or thirty men from the villages on the coast, with their brushed-sand streets and corrugated iron mosques, would head upriver, panning for gold, like the San Francisco 49ers. These guys? [...]
Lima has just discovered clothes. Three months ago, in fact. Compared to the itchy bark loincloths he used to wear, they’re remarkably comfortable. An excellent addition, he feels, to his eminently satisfactory life. It would be hard not to warm to Lima. He’s 40ish, he thinks, or thereabouts, with a ready laugh, a happy soul [...]
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 was. Spent years of his life tending his Togutil flock, only recently salvationed away from their nomadic, hunting-gathering life and corralled, more or (generally) less willingly, into government villages. Then, [...]
