Kijana (21 page)

A fire was lit and a metal bowl placed over the flames. A drop of oil and some crushed chilli and salt began to sizzle before the blood was poured in. The colour was spectacular – bright red with green specs of chilli. It then started congealing and turned black. At this point it was taken into the cooking shed for the women to use in their preparations. Meanwhile, a goat's head sat in the coals, sizzling away until Ronny decided it was cooked. The skull was smashed between two large rocks until the brain was exposed. Seeing as I was the birthday boy I was offered first taste.

‘Interesting,' I said as I popped a morsel into my mouth.

It was the only word I could muster that I thought would not offend. Its texture resembled warm baby food, yet it was sort of tasteless. I eagerly passed the skull to Beau, hoping his newfound bug-saving beliefs didn't mean he was going to shirk tasting the goat's brain. He took the skull, possibly out of politeness, and tasted the brain. Always there for me when it matters, I thought.

Maria declined, saying she'd better go and see if the women needed any help. Josh was busying himself with the camera functions – what a professional – but he was not about to get out of it that easily. I reminded him of what he'd said at the start of the trip: ‘If it's part of a cultural experience then I'll try it'.

He knew he couldn't get out of it, and reluctantly agreed to a taste. I grabbed the camera to record such a momentous event. He'd eaten crab and fish with Gayili and her children in northern Australia, so it was a logical step to move on to red meat in Indonesia.

‘White meat,' Josh corrected me. ‘It's a brain!'

The smile and bravado disappeared as he examined the piece in his fingers. It slowly began its journey towards his mouth. He hesitated backwards and forwards, wanting to do it but not being able to seal the deal. He dropped his hand by his side, laughed one of his nervous giggles, then closed his eyes and popped it into his mouth.

‘I've eaten brain,' he yelled, both arms raised in victory. Ronny and Samuel found this pretty funny, if not a bit odd.

While most of the goat was destined for the evening meal, the back legs were eaten for lunch. Samuel's wife cut a chunk off for each of us and we washed it down with another shot of sopi. It was delicious.

I watched Dave sitting among the old men, listening to them and chatting. He really did fit in. He may have been taller, bigger and whiter but they resembled a gang of wise old men.

‘They've really turned it on for you guys,' he told us later, ‘I've never seen this much food at the one time, except at a wedding.'

He told us the locals usually only had two small meals a day. For breakfast they would collect palm sugar and mix it with water to make a drink that tasted like honey. It was the same stuff the locals distilled the sopi from. Lunch would usually be rice and a small amount of meat. Dinner was a rare event, so they too were looking forward to that evening's feast.

By early afternoon the number of women in the cooking shed had increased. They were stripping beans, tossing stir-fries and pounding more chilli into paste. It was getting so crowded in the small shelter that more fires were lit outside to accommodate large woks of rice which were stirred by women using big poles.

While this was going on, we helped the younger kids shuttle tables and benches to the party site. A large table was placed in the party area to hold the food and we set up our filming lights for when the sun went down. The metal dongs were already hanging from a tree and two drums rested on a grass woven mat in the middle of the setting. Dave was running around like a mother-in-law, confirming and reconfirming that we would have enough sopi and acting as translator for our questions.

Soon it was late afternoon. There was not much more to do except wait and hope for a good turnout. The kids asked Dave if we could take them for a ride in our dinghy, so I took them for a quick spin before the crew returned to
Kijana
to wash and get dressed for the evening ahead.

We returned to the beach, where the air was heavy with anticipation. The first guests to arrive were Dave's mate Trent and his wife. In Trent's hand was a guitar.

‘This is good,' Dave assured me, ‘Trent's a good guitar player.' Trent took a seat on the woven mats in the centre of the party area. Ronny sat beside him and started to beat a rhythm on a goatskin drum. Trent began strumming a song and they both began singing what was obviously a well-known Indonesian tune.

All right! I thought. We had a party.

Kids crowded around and joined in the music as more guests began to arrive. It was a party in the truest sense. Everyone felt like an outsider, but that only increased the sense of excitement and after the bottles of sopi were passed around, the conversation flowed.

Dinner was served before dark. I looked around as everyone ate, taking a moment to consider the bizarreness of the occasion. It was my twenty-first birthday, yet I hardly knew anyone. If I was at home I'd have invited nearly everyone I'd ever known in my life, waiting until my old school teachers and relatives went home, before getting plastered with my mates. I never dreamt that I would be in Nembrala, and everywhere around me I would be looking at friendly, yet unfamiliar faces.

I was heartened by the festive tone of every conversation I could hear. Local Indonesians, barefooted and wearing torn clothes were laughing with yachties wearing leather deck shoes and aftershave. Who cared whose birthday it was, it was just a good reason to get together.

As it grew darker Josh repositioned the filming lights to keep us illuminated, while Samuel appeared with a clump of hand-threaded leaves which, when lit, burnt like a torch out of
Indiana Jones
. He dug a hole and propped up the torch with two rocks. While the stark filming lights gave plenty of light, it was the burning leaves that provided the atmosphere.

The night continued, with more drinking, singing and dancing to the rhythm of the dongs. Later in the evening the festivities moved 20 metres or so onto the beach where a fire was lit and Trent belted out some of his best songs. He was a very soulful singer, even if his voice was dirtier than Bob Dylan with a hangover. There must have been 50 people scattered around the flickering light, sitting on top of the rock ledge or playing with their feet in the sand.

I could make out Dave's face by the glow of the fire. He appeared to be lost in a world of sopi, staring blankly into the fire. His eyes broke from their stare as a burning stick snapped and a stream of cinders floated into the air above. As I too stared into the hottest coals of the fire, I remembered something Dave had mentioned to me the day before.

He'd told me of a group of men and women living as God had intended – unashamedly naked and freely roaming among thousands of square kilometres of virgin forest. They were not figures of folklore, for they really did exist, Dave assured me. They were known as the Punan tribe and lived in the forests of Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. Little was known of them, for sightings were few, but they were mountain dwellers, living in small groups and constantly moving through impenetrable rainforest. They were both feared and revered as the ultimate jungle dwellers. What interested me was that they were able to live the life they wanted, without any of the crap of modern life. They represented everything I yearned to be.

As soon as Dave told me about the Punans, I decided the Kijana mission would be to film these people and let others know that it was possible to live life the way they chose to live. Also, if we could capture them on film then surely our documetaries would be sold. And that ultimately would mean Maya could join us on board
Kijana.
Dave had influenced us more than he probably ever imagined.

The following day, Ronny gave me a lift on his motorbike to the nearest major town to get some money to pay for the goats. Unfortunately, all the banks were shut, forcing me to return to Nembrala with only enough money to pay for one goat. Dave kindly lent me the A$20 to pay for the remaining goat, which I promised to repay by posting the amount to him. I thanked Dave, Samuel and his family for everything they'd done, then said goodbye and returned to
Kijana
.

It was sad to leave our new friends but we had to keep moving.

CHAPTER SEVEN
DRAGONS

WE SAILED THROUGH THE NIGHT AND MOST OF
the next day. The wind came steadily from behind and we made good progress. Maria was handling the watches well and she was over her seasickness. Only when the wind got above 25 knots, which was rare, did she start to feel queasy.

The wind, while generally lighter as we got closer to the equator, always seemed to be enough to keep the sails raised and the engine off. This was a blessing for those in the rear cabin. Being so close to the engine room, it was extremely noisy and stinking hot when we had the motor running.

Crew morale was great. We'd had a lot of fun since we left Darwin. But beneath the surface I continued to feel the pressure of expectation on me, the feeling that I could never have too much fun because there was always more work to do, more to film, another update to write and, of course, boat maintenance. There was constant pressure from the office to make quality films to pay for the adventure.

I hoped to solve that problem at our next stop, Pulau Rinca, the island home of the infamous komodo dragon. We sailed for three days, past the low-lying tropical islands around Roti, which made way for the more volcanic and visually stunning island of Sumba. Our challenge when we arrived at Rinca was to capture the komodo dragons on film close-up. In fact, just getting close to such reclusive beasts would be a major achievement.

I was excited about the assignment, but also a bit frightened. We'd heard varying reports about the komodos. They ranged in size from a large lizard to crocodile sized. And they could run – fast! If bitten by a komodo, it was said, the victim would eventually die. Even if one could wrestle with the lizard and get away, the bacteria from the komodo's teeth would eventually poison its prey.

It was hard to tell how much of these stories to believe. I could hardly believe anything could contain enough bacteria to kill a human. Nonetheless, to help us get the required close-up shots of the dragons we decided to use live chickens as bait to attract the hungry lizards. We weren't sure how this would work, but it had to be better than nothing. We had to capture them on film or our visit would be a waste of time.

We anchored
Kijana
in the small harbour of Waingapu on Sumba and made our way to the market where we purchased two chickens and a flimsy cage to keep them in.

Rather than stay in port, we weighed anchor before it got dark and sailed through the night. The chickens made a hell of a noise as they sat on deck, but once the sun went down they thankfully stopped clucking. We made such good progress over the 60-odd miles to Rinca that we were forced to slow down so we didn't arrive before the sun rose.

I replaced Josh for the last watch and, as the sky in the east began to lighten up, I could make out a channel between two mountainous islands. These were Rinca and Komodo Islands. Irrespective of the island names, we'd been told there were more dragons on Rinca.

As morning dawned, the wind died and I turned on the engine to motor the last few miles. The engine noise slowly woke the others and by the time Beau and Josh were on deck we had entered the channel. We found a small, protected bay and dropped anchor. No sooner had the engine been cut than Josh had the binoculars aimed at the shore in search of dragons.

‘Can they swim?' Maria asked. It was a good question. I knew the iguanas of the Galapagos Islands could swim.

‘Possibly,' I replied. I'm not sure if it was the answer she was after.

‘Well, even if they could,' Beau reasoned, ‘I doubt they could leap a metre from the water up on deck.' However, he sounded less than convincing.

Josh saw some monkeys playing in seaweed and something that looked like a deer sitting in the shade of a tree – but no dragons.

We spent the morning exploring the island and searching for dragons. It was very dry and hard to believe that anything could survive on it. Only the hardiest of trees prospered while the rest of the vegetation appeared to be dead. The grass was brown and the soil crumbled easily beneath our feet. And it was bloody hot.

As the midday sun reached its pinnacle we decided to pull the pin and return to the boat for a drink and to formulate a plan.

‘Maybe we're making too much noise,' I suggested.

Everyone agreed, so we decided to head out in the cool of the following morning when we could travel more efficiently. We also decided to take along the chickens to try our luck.

That night I prepared the backpacks for an expedition deep into the island, packing everything necessary for an overnight stay. If we walked as far as we could, then lay in wait, perhaps the komodos would make their way to us.

We set off early, leaving the dinghy on the beach safely above the high-tide mark. It was a beautiful sight to witness the rays of light creeping over the mountains on Komodo Island and lighting up the peaks on Rinca.

We picked a point that led into the mountains and began our climb. It was rough terrain and the packs threw us off balance. Also, we were carrying two live chickens. We made it to the top of the first rise only to realise the downward trek into the next valley was heavily bushy. The dry bushes scratched our skin and the packs felt heavier and heavier. At one point the only effective way to get through the twigs was to fall into a bush to clear a path ahead.

When we hit the bottom of the valley I recognised the bay as the one next along from where
Kijana
was anchored. Maria looked around, slightly puzzled.

‘Weren't we here yesterday in the dinghy?'

I was horrified to realise we'd spent one and a half hours bashing through the bush in searing heat, making enough noise to scare any animal within three kilometres, when we could have got to the same place by dinghy in ten minutes.