Sampela, Indonesia

November 2015

The light here is never still. It dances on the walls and ripples across the corrugated ceilings. This land was not meant to be land and one gets the feeling that the ocean would like to take it all back. The water laps at the edges of the coral foundations and slowly eats away the wooden poles that stilt the houses. The sidewalks are a maze of weather worn boards and old bits of houses and boats. Each house is connected to the boardwalk by long bamboo poles or small ramps made from abandoned boat hulls or any piece of material long enough to cross a gap.

The cats are never quiet here but the dogs only howl at night. Rats scurry down the boardwalks and into the piles of coral that the nicest houses are built on.

The boats here are called ka-ting-tings because that is the sound that they make. These boats are wooden pirogues whose hulls were once attached to the fins of trees that grew like rocket ships on Kalimantan. They were aborted and drug from their antediluvian homes and brought to Sampela on dangerous boats by men who in other countries would be selling vacuums. These trunks are carved and scraped into low-lying boats that wobble and tip when you sit in them. They are dipped in the water and sealed with pitch and fire. Grass is woven into torches that erupt in tiny bursts of sparks. They contrast starkly against the plain black night and remind me of the night I watched the desert burn from the back of old pickup truck in the north of Madagascar.

Here, stilted above the ocean, sharks are pulled from the water and hung up for all to see and then systematically dismantled. There are sharks that roam the boardwalks as well. They wear motorcycle helmets and leather jackets. They lurk under the houses where the pool tables are hobbled and unlevel and they slide into seats next to middle-aged women who exchange cookies and cigarettes for borrowed money.

Sea turtles are beautiful in the water and ride easily in a small boat. They can last months out of the water. Flipped upside down, they gasp and flap at the air. You can carve off their fins before you eat them.