East Nusa Tenggara Indonesia Travelogue: Encounter with a Teku tradition

Lasiana Beach

One good thing of working in an NGO like Oxfam is that we have a chance to travel to the very remote place of a country. Oxfam is normally working in the most underdeveloped area that located far away from the capital. It takes hours or days to reach the project site from the capital city. In my opinion, you will never understand the true soul of a country without travelling to its hinterland in which people still live in their traditional way of life. It is wonderful to see their traditional architecture, costume, foods, and their way of life which reflect their close relationship with the nature.

Last May 2010, I visited Nusa Tenggara Timur --- we frequently shorten into NTT-- for the first time. Ah ya it was embarassing actually why after more than three decades of my life in this country I haven't ever visited this poor but beautiful province. We went together in a group of five: Patricus Usfomeny, Vu Minh Hai, Irene Cahyani, and Ari. These pictures here were taken together by me, Hai, and Irene.

Nusa Tenggara Timur which literally means east part of the east south island, was gracefully attractive. It has three big islands: West Timor, frores, and Sumba, with more than 500 islands scaterred around. I did not be able to travel to other part of the province except for only west Timore. Very ufortunate time indeed. A friend told me that Labuhan Bajo in Flores was like a heaven in earth for its beautiful virgin beach.

In the plane that brought me from Bali, I flew together with group of tourists whom brought big surfboards. A native Timorese friend told me that this province is actually have very beautiful beach with strong wave which provides great pleasure for surfing. Serious surfers frequently march to Nembrala island of Rote Ndao district in the province to do excercise before go for surfing competition in Hawai or Brazil.

Well I did not have opportunity to visit other than West Timor island, but even the beach there in West Timor is also beautiful (eventhough they were not well maintained). I visited Lasiana beach with some signs of government intentions to establish it as tourist destination, but unfortunately with very poor condition. May be because there were not so many people visited. I am sure it is not because that the places are less appealing but simply because of lack promotion.

Lasiana beach

Children playing at one cool afternoon in Lasiana beach

This one, is a new well designed restaurant we visited along our way to Belu in the border with East Timorcountry. I am sure the owner spend pretty much money to make it green and beautiful. At one of its small gazebos I stop to pray.

Stop over at this pretty new retaurant

 

                                                                      
Nusa Tenggara Timur, the home of 4.5 million people, is considered as one of the poorest provinces in Indonesia. It has 36.29% people living in poverty, almost doubling the national poverty rate of 17.75% (2006 data of Provincial Bureau for Statistics). The poverty trend in the province is also getting worse; since 1999, NTT has dropped from 21st to 24th in the Human Poverty Index (HPI) ranking and from 24th to 28th in the Human Development Index (HDI) ranking.

That impression was clearly in sight: abandon garden in the middle of Kupang the province capital city, poor houses along the way to Belu district, and also skinny children with reddish hair.

This lady crushes corn (or paddy) at this wooden bowl to prepare meal

A family in Belu district

The province is considered as savanah area with relatively low average of rainfall, occurring mostly between November to April at every year. The topography is very rugged, dominated by deeply incised, erodible limestone which supports open savannah grasslands. Even though it only has very limited fertile land, but most of the people in NTT are working as farmers. Big number of them are peasants with small lot of farms. They domesticate cattle, horses, pigs and goats aside of planting their farm with seasonally crops as such corn, vegetables and some rice.

girls taking waters from nearby river in Belu district for their family needs

If you visit the villages in NTT you can see how simple their lives are. Their houses are very modest; wooden walls taken from palm three skeletons, grass (or palm leaves) roofs, with no bed or chair inside. People develop high roofs for their houses and deposit their harvest crops on it. This symbolizes their local wisdom of food security. Depositing most of their corns and paddy in the roof, they take one small portion of the crops for daily consumption. By this way they can manage their food for a certain period before they harvest a new one.

This is an umah bubu literally means the round house, normally develops in the back of a house. Under its roof they deposit their dried corns. The mother of the house guard this house and other members of the family can not enter without her permission

She is mama Maria, the mother of the house owner. She stay all the time in this small and smokey umah bubu for cooking with this little grand daughter.

He is Pak Bernardus the house owner. He chews betel leaf and bitter nut all the time to keep his teeth healthy. He did not know how old was his age, and that all fine for him. He can understand Bahasa Indonesia the national language, but speak only tetun his local language  

Corns, the field harvests are depositted on the top of umah bubu to feed the family for a year before another harvest 

This is what they cook in the umah bubu, a simple foods named Jagung Boti (corns mix with vegetables and sometime they also put coconut milk in it)

Yet sometime the situation becomes so worse when they fail to harvest due to long drought, flood, or disease. People takes many ways to cope with this difficulty. Some people goes to the city to look for other jobs. Some other people prefer to stay in the village and cope the crisis by selling their remaining livestock or go to the forest to gather tamarind and other valuable plants. While a group of people in one district in NTT prefers to take other people's property to keep living.

There is one popular traditiona robbery gang in NTT that locally called as Teku. The Teku people originally works as peasant. However during the hard time when they have nothing to eat, they turn them self as robbery gang. Teku gang is not only consisting of small number of people, instead it involve the whole village members including the women and children. They usually employ some kind of informant that will identify one specific house as a target, normally a rich family. They then sign the house that has been appointed by giving an early warning to the house owner. They send the house owner an offering that consist of betel leaf and bitter nuts together with a letter saying that they will visit on certain date of night. Upon receiving the letter the house owner will can do nothing, people are not sure whether it is because of a kind of magic spell or due to harsh threat given by the robbery gang.

In NTT tradition, bettel leafs-bitter nuts offering is a symbol of respect. People use this offering to ask a girl for marriage, given to the highly respected people in the society, or given to a guess. Thus I am thinking that in the case of Teku robbery, this offering could be interpret as a symbol of regret to the house owner. They are kind of saying that they are sorry for taking their money and other property from the house. They know that they take other people belonging illegally but they do it decently, with permision.

In my opinion the traditional Teku Robbery story in NTT above simply highlights the hypothesis that poverty drives to criminality. So it is true that we need to elevate poverty in order to create a peaceful world.