Search Results for sumba

Pelipus, 1991 - Under-age warrior

March 25, 2014

Rediscovering Sumba (and a working slideshow)

I was first invited to take tea with a corpse in Sumba, in southeastern Indonesia, some 23 years ago. It was also in 1991 that I first attended a pasola, a wonderful jousting match which aims to secure a good harvest by spilling human blood. During that visit to Sumba, my friend Enny and I both photographed a boy wearing primary school uniform shorts and the head-dress of a jouster. He was too young to go riding out, but his “don’t mess with me” look advertised his intention to become a warrior to be feared….

Video: ritual slaughter in Sumba

March 10, 2014

Sacrifice in Sumba: Indonesia Etc enhanced eBook preview

Indonesia Etc goes to the printers this week. That ought to mean I’m done, but I’ve been working on an electronic version of the book that will include embedded video, audio and photos as well as the full text. Here’s a taster video: The photos and things won’t get in the way of the text — they’ll be signalled by very analogue icons like this in the margin: but they will mean that readers can get closer to the sights…

Incurable I'll-show-you face

November 2, 2011

Twenty years on: warrior-in-waiting heads Sumba village

For my 30th birthday, my mother framed school reports from the time I was 12 or 13. “Elizabeth is far too fond of the sound of her own voice” and “she sometimes sails too close to the wind for comfortable passage in the flotilla.” Are we really set in stone by the time we reach our teens? I had cause to wonder this week, as I wandered West Sumba in search of people whose photos I had taken 20 years…

Megalithing tomb in Anakalang, Sumba

November 2, 2011

Death to the budget! Graves in Sumba

Sumba is a graveyard of bodies and good intentions. Physically, it is littered with impressive megalithic tombs and their hideous modern counterparts. Financially, it is littered with development projects that haven’t quite developed anything. “Megalithic” sounds ancient, and many are, but they are still being built today. The tomb in the photo above was built in the 1970s; it took several hundred people the best part of a year to drag the stones on wooden rollers from the quarry to…

October 29, 2011

Spinning around Sumba

Sumba is well known for its weaving; back in the day, villagers used to wait til the pods of the kapok tree kapas bush burst open to yield their cotton, then patiently spin it in to thread with nothing but a little wooden top (a jenny? am I making that up?) gyrating on a broken plate fragment. It’s rare these days. Trying to follow all the steps involved described by Mama Lakabobo, shown here with a whole year’s production, I…

March 28, 2017

For the sheer beauty of it: Java from space

Let’s for once leave politics and the perfidy of men behind, and revel in the beauty of the earth and the ingenuity of mankind. The photo of the volcanoes of East Java and beyond comes from the International Space Station, courtesy of NASA (and the US taxpayer). You can download a bigger version without the text labels here (jpg, 6kb) and find the source here. But I’m copying the text in full, because, well, because I find it fascinating. Thanks…

Close-up of a Balinese noble in conversation

January 6, 2015

Indonesian art lives, though not in overseas museums

Unless they are credited to someone else, most of the images in these blog posts are photos I took myself and let’s face it, they don’t really do justice to the visual glories of Indonesia’s many cultures. So I was delighted to learn that the Asian branch of the Smithsonian museum, the Freer/Sackler galleries, have made images of the objects in their collection available for non-commercial use….

September 10, 2014

Now Indonesia’s democracy really is in danger

When Joko Widodo was confirmed as Indonesia’s new president by the Constitutional Court late last month, there was a collective sigh of relief. Indonesians could, at least for a few years, stop worrying about a major threat to their democracy.* Not so fast. Parliament is currently discussing whipping away Indonesian’s right to elect the people who have the greatest impact on the daily lives of citizens: their mayors or district heads (walikota/bupati). The suggestion is to go back to the system in place before 2005, when district heads were appointed by the local parliament….

No Picture

August 3, 2014

Indonesia Etc reviewed in New York times Sunday Book Review – August 3, 2014

All Over the Map ‘Indonesia Etc.’ by Elizabeth Pisani (Reviewed by) Joshua Kurlantzick, August 01, 2014 This year, three of the world’s largest democracies are holding national elections — vast polls spread over several days and thousands of miles of territory, involving more than a billion voters. Two of these elections have attracted intense media coverage, or will. India’s national elections, which took place in May, swept out of office the long-ruling Congress Party and handed government of a rising…