My Journey: Isolated Tribe Mentawai #End

This is part of my trip to Mentawai, if you miss the previous part you can read it here

At 3 o’clock we were ready to leave the place, and next stop is to Syukri’s parent house

On the way Back

We are ready to walk through the same path for another 2 hours to Syukri’s house. We joked a lots about the last thing happened last night. Yanti was upset and she walked faster at front of us. She did not give a glance at us. She knew we talk about her, and she sometime said STOP laughing at me!

At 5.15 we arrived at Syukri’s house, we take rest and cleaned ourselves. I started to check my luggage, and take dirty clothes out and wrap with plastic bag. Tomorrow morning we would go back to Muara Siberut a main civilization on the island. From Muara Siberut we would continue our trip to Katiet by local public ferry.

I made fast food for our dinner, I took 3 cans of cornet beef and mixed it with instant noodle and rice. Jonathan and Karen had a little complain about rice. They had been enough with rice things, so then I cook extra instant noodle for both of them. That night I seek yanti and asked her apologize for joking at her along the way to Syukri’s house. She said only one sentence “I was so worry of you and you joked at me, is that fair?” I just said...”Sorry…I would do the same like you did if I were you!”, no more conversation about the funny thing from Syukri’s Uncle house.

We had early dinner after clean up ourselves, Karen and Yanti were sitting on the chair, Sukry and Tata just finished their dinner, and Jonathan were taking another plate of noodle

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In the next morning we are ready to go back, it was still 9 am in the morning, we took all the staff and walked to the river. We changed the plan a little bit, we would not walk through the long road to last point, but we took pompon (small canoe with small engine) directly to Muara Sibereut, because the water level in the river was getting higher so then we can use the pompom directly to estuary

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Muara Siberut

9.30 am, we were on board to Muara Siberut. It took 5 hours on pompon and finally we reached Muara Siberut at the afternoon. We planned to stay overnight at our friend’s house where we put our staff at the first day. We need to take rest and walk around as we did not do it at the arrival time.

Muara Siberut is the central market and the only one market place on the island. The small town in the middle of nowhere mostly occupied by the Minangkabaunese coming from Padang West Sumatera, but they have been there for generation. When the earthquake and tsunami stricken the island this place was the most affected one. Most of the house was broken and left this small town in the ruins. The occupants moved to higher place near there.

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By the time we visited the place, it has had western union for cash transaction on the island

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This is the market activities on the island, not too many of them were opened in Sunday morning

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The city had been change a lots since the tsunami 2010, they had had escape house as a disaster mitigation contingency plan. We had the chance to visit it before the dark fall. They had power plant and telecommunication tower which is well supplied by using solar panel and diesel generator for electricity to all occupants of the small town.

The communication tower with solar panel

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We went to hillside to check their new relocation escape house and notice the main problem, which was water supply. We took some interview note and we made a plan to reduce their problem of water shortage in the area. Afterward, we brought the issue to international board member of our Humanitarian Organization as the help for the community. Some of International Organization took action a month later. At least we did something for them.

The whole small town view from the escape hillside, the town is really close to the see and there was no barrier to protect them from the wave

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This was their relocation at hillside, they are more secure interm of disaster risk mitigation, but they were lack of water supply

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The grave and it history

On the way to the relocation site I saw one interesting grave, at first glance I thought it was one of muslim grave. I did not put any special intention, but I read the name and the symbol on it. It was weird. I asked Leni (one of our friend accompanied us to visit the site). She said that that grave was really old and that is the sign of Bahaiyah religion and they have different calendar which is stated on the grave. I don’t want to discuss about what is right and wrong about someone faiths; you can find the Baha’iyyah on the net. The grave itself is a question when that religion came to the island and how many populations of them across the island, that’s all about the history of the island because the Baha’iyyah was proclaimed in Persia or called Iran on March 23rd 1844 by Mirza Ali Muhammad Asy-Syirozi. It took long way from Iran to the island

The grave of TOEGIMIN. W.S with a mark of his faith

Those stories about my trip to Mentawai come to an end. Next day we planned to go to Katiet to see the most wonderful beach on the other island, see you there……

@el-nailul

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst