Bajawa, Traditional Villages and a Rolled Up Egg

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The bus from Ende to Bajawa was the same jam-packed insanity as always, although we did manage to get seats inside this time. It took six hours of bouncing and jostling and blaring music and screeching breaks and puking passengers and clucking chickens in the bus aisles pecking at our feet and other people's babies sleeping on our shoulders and and suffocating clouds of clove cigarette smoke filling the bus to reach Bajawa, but we finally did, in the late afternoon of October 25th. We checked into Edelweis Hotel, which, despite its name, was run by a group of ever-changing Indonesian teenagers, a nice older man and a cranky old woman. Our room was particularly nice: clean, tiled, attached bathroom and a porch.

There were signs advertising internet inside our hotel, but when we asked one of the women working there she pointed us towards town. We set out walking in search of it, hopeful that it would actually function, in contrast to the internet in Ende. Bajawa is a decent-sized town with paved roads and a feeling of clean spaciousness. Churches, mosques and soccer fields interrupt quiet neighborhoods with modest houses. Satellite dishes stand rudely in the yards of tiny wooden houses, and mopeds are parked along side vendor's push-carts. Bajawa seems lost somewhere between then and now, confused by the sudden arrival of cell phones and SUVs in an otherwise quiet and isolated town. Old women still chew blood-red betel nut and crouch over piles of for-sale vegetables, while teenage boys saunter past in flared jeans and baseball caps. As we walked we became the subject of endless embarrassed giggles from pre-teen kids leaving school in their uniforms. The bravest among them would dart towards us and ask "what is your name?" and then collapse back into a giggle fit before we had a chance to answer. We tried asking about internet, and were directed to another empty wartel that had had internet once upon a time but no longer. We wandered through a claustrophobic market with shops selling clothes and purses and plastic toys, and aisles of produce laid out in neat little piles. We got a little lost on our way back to the hotel, but finally found it just before dark. We told one of the hotel guys that we'd been unsuccessful in our search for internet, and he looked confused and told us there was internet upstairs in the hotel. Right around the corner from our room. We checked email, then went to the restaurant next door to have dinner. The menu had an exciting variety of options, and we gobbled down avocado salads and mashed potatoes along with our noodle soup. We ended up eating every single meal in Bajawa at Camelia Restaurant, except for our free pancake breakfasts at the hotel.

We spent the next day relaxing and reading, with a midday walk into town to buy me a new toothbrush. Having possessed only the few things that fit in my backpack for the last nine months, I found myself oddly elated at my new purchase: a lovely transparent blue, with a plastic bristle cover complete with a hole for hanging it up! My new toothbrush took its place hanging from a nail above the bathroom sink, to be admired for its novelty, and the old one was retired to the trash can, with a tinge of regret. We had dinner next door at Camelia again, and decided to arrange for a day-trip the next day with Stefan, the very friendly restaurant owner. We had been approached repeatedly by a guy loitering at our hotel, offering a tour to nearby villages. Something about him was extremely unpleasant and sleazy though, and we brushed him off and went with Stefan instead. We agreed to meet at 9 the next morning, finished our avocado salads and chicken sate, and went to bed.

The next morning we ate our banana pancakes and drank our tea on our hotel balcony, then wen to meet Stefan next door. He had the car ready to go, immediately gave us cups of tea, and had even gone out to buy cheese tomato sandwiches (not exactly sure why he didn't make them, he did own a restaurant...) for us to eat for lunch while we were out and about. He asked if we minded if his friend came along, and since of course we didn't, we were joined by a young guy who didn't say much but seemed excited to be along for the ride. Our plan for the day was to visit two small traditional villages, a hot spring, and then one more village in the other direction from Bajawa. We set out in Stefan's old SUV, first stopping at the market in town so we could buy betel nut, leaf and lime to share with the villagers. Historically visitors to a new village would always bring betel, as a peace offering, and although the villages take money from tourists as an alternative, we hoped to get more genuine smiles by bringing betel also. And we had decided it was about time I try the stuff. Jeff had been brave enough to try it in Burma, but I had shied away from it, admittedly pretty disgruntled by the blood-red spitting that occurred during and after its chewing. But it was time I try it, and after all, if they all did it regularly it couldn't be that bad, right?

The road to the first two villages, Luba and Bena, wove its way through foothills and bamboo forests, past breathtaking volcanoes and through a number of small towns. The road was rough, and we bounced around in our seats. We pulled up at the beginning of a dirt path, walked for a minute through the woods, and crosses a rough bamboo bridge into the tiny traditional village of Luba. About thirty wood and thatch houses were built in a square around a mostly-empty swept dirt clearing, their roofs steeply sloped and made of thatch, their porches protected by rows of buffalo horns. In the clearing were a few graves (Catholic, due to missionary influence, although animistic beliefs were clearly still strong there too) and protective ancestral totems which looked like straw beach umbrellas. Corn kernels dried on outstretched blankets, and a few stray dogs and chickens wandered through the clearing. I didn't see a scrap of plastic or any sign of electricity. Most of the villagers were attending a service in the church, a low wooden building at the base of the village, but a few kids darted out of houses and and a few women and children were gathered on a porch at the far end of the circle of huts. We joined the women and broke out the betel, which was a huge hit. They busily began breaking the nuts into small chunks with their teeth, fitting them into leaves, adding a bunch of lime, and passing them around. It was my turn, and I took a little nut-leaf-lime package and placed it tentatively in the side of my mouth and started chewing. Everyone watched, breaths held, grinning at my nervousness. My first bite into the leaf sent rivers of bitter bright red stuff into my mouth, and I simply couldn't hide my expression of horror. I recovered quickly and did the best I could to smile, but the stuff was rancid... bitter and drippy with pieces of leaf and nut floating around, that I wasn't supposed to swallow. Luckily, the women found it hilarious, and laughed loudly as I did my best to keep chewing. I began spitting, even though the women had been chewing for much longer than I had and hadn't spit once yet. It looked like I was spitting out gobs of thick blood. One of the ladies got me a cup of water, and I finally gave up on my betel experience and spat the whole wad out onto the ground. The whole right side of my mouth was numb. I'm very glad I did it, but once was quite enough.

We spent about a half an hour sitting with the little cluster of kids and women, mostly just smiling at each other since we didn't have a common language. Jeff demonstrated making a "pop" noise with his cheek, and the kids began attempting it whole-heartedly, brows furrowed in determination. The women cooed and giggled over us, still happily chewing their betel, occasionally adding a new pinch of lime powder. We finally said goodbye and left to head to Bena, a village just a short walk away. Before we left we signed a guest book--no other tourists had been through for four days--and gave a small donation. Somehow, this little village still retained its authenticity, its children not yet begging us for candy, its women not yet pushing us to buy their handmade cloths. The next village of Luba, however, was further along in the corruption-by-tourists process. The kids ran at us shouting "bonbon, bonbon!" and the women pushed their (admittedly beautiful) handwoven ikat cloths at us, repeating "you buy, you buy!" The village was a lot bigger, with multiple tiers of traditional houses. We walked through it fairly quickly, gave some betel to a few old women gathered on a porch, hung out with some kids for a few minutes, then climbed back into the car to head to the hot springs.

The hot springs were about a fifteen minute drive from the villages. We took a small trail down to a river, where ice cold water mixed with scorching hot spring water. The in between was perfect, a swirling mixture of the two temperatures. A local woman washed piles of clothes in the hot water, wading through it as if it was lukewarm. Even Jeff, who has an insane tolerance for burning hot showers, couldn't spend more than a minute in the hottest part. We soaked for a while in the spot where the two temperatures mixed, then returned to the car to head back towards Bajawa. On the way our driver stopped in a small town, where he and his friend (the other passenger) had family. They invited us to sit with the family and share bananas, and then a young guy scaled a palm tree (with no help from ropes, just climbed it like a monkey) and threw down two fresh coconuts. We drank coconut milk and ate some of the sweet white flesh, while answering curious questions about America and how we liked Flores. Then it was back to the car for the ride back to Bajawa. We decided to leave the last village, Wogo, for the next morning. We were ready for a nap and an escape from the midday heat. We had lunch and a cold beer at Camelia, then took an afternoon nap. When we woke up we went next door for dinner again, and as usual wrote down our order on a pad of paper. We decided to get spring rolls, but I wrote down "egg rolls" instead without thinking. Egg rolls weren't in fact on the menu, but instead of asking us what we meant they improvised, and ten minutes later I was presented with a plain omelet rolled up into a tube. An egg roll, quite literally. Not my usual dinner choice, but I ordered it, after all, so I did my best to eat it.

The next morning we set out with Stefan again to visit Wogo. It was actually pretty disappointing after the villages from the day before: a number of mopeds parked in front of huts, music blaring from radios, a plastic tarp to dry the corn instead of woven cloth. Of course I have absolutely no right to begrudge the people of Wogo their radios and mopeds, it just made it quite a bit less interesting than Luba had been. We gave out the last of our betel, signed the guest book, practically ran away from a woman desperately trying to sell us woven-grass betel holders, then returned to Bajawa. We spent the afternoon reading and struggling with the stone-age slow internet, had one last dinner at Camelia, then went to bed.

The next morning we packed our bags, checked out of Edelweis and took a bemo to the bus stop (just a designated intersection outside of town) to catch our bus to Ruteng, the next major town heading west. We sat and waited for the bus with a number of curious young local guys, one of whom asked us a steady stream of questions about America until the already-packed bus finally pulled up and we crammed ourselves and our bags inside for the 6-hour ride to Ruteng.

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Comments

[Claire]

Youre adorable!
I must say my favorite part of this whole thing is the description of your new toothbrush. Youre so cute! The combination of the egg roll debacle and the spitting of the red-blood looking ickyness makes this the cutest blog ever.