Not Bali: the Indonesian island learning to welcome strangers while sharing the benefits
Sleepy Sumba provides an ideal quiet break during the Year of the Horse. Just don’t mention Bali
It’s been more than an hour since we drove away from Sumba’s tiny Tambolaka airport and so far, it’s been mostly empty stretches of narrow road, with only the occasional group of cheeky schoolchildren waving and hooting to break the monotony.
All of a sudden, a procession of bare-chested, barefoot men approaches on the other side of the road, their red turbans gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Our driver pulls over, pats his pockets and takes out … a packet of cigarettes, which he proffers to the marchers with great respect. A few stop to accept this token while most glare at the driver and carry on walking.
Nina Rambu Rauna holds the unique title of Nihi’s custodian of Sumbanese culture, and she tells me that driving during Wulla Poddu is technically prohibited but the cigarettes helped excuse the minor transgression. The men we encountered were priests, who still wield a lot of power within Sumba.
“To keep them happy, people offer them anything they have on hand – toffees, cigarettes and if there’s nothing else, even the shirt off their backs,” says Nina, who joined Nihi in 2016 as an English teacher for the staff and is now proud to claim she’s the first Sumbanese woman to have risen up through the ranks.
Nina herself learned English from Bob Marley – or at least his songs – since her parents were reggae fans. “But me, I love Shah Rukh Khan,” she continues, humming a popular ditty from an early noughties film of the Bollywood superstar, a sign perhaps of how the outside world is slowly spreading its influence across this sheltered island.