West Nusa Tenggara Custom House
The chain of islands east of Bali is named Nusa Tenggara in modern Indonesia: the Southeastern Islands. Among geographers the archipelago is known as the Lesser Sunda Islands, as a separation from the Big Sunda Islands; Sumatera, Jawa and Borneo.
For what tourist places concerned, there is nothing 'small' about Nusa Tenggara. In contrary: a region of this size with a rich cultural and natural diversity can't be found elsewhere in the world.
From Lombok in the west to Timor in the east the group of islands is blessed with white sand beaches, clear water and beautifull coral reefs. The three crater lakes of Keli Mutu on Flores, which have different colors because of vulcanic minerals, offer an almost surreal view. On the small island of Komodo, you can find the rarest spiecies of reptile.
In cultural way the islands are about as important. In the eastern part of the archipelago, women produce the most beautiful ikats of Indonesia. On Sumba, jockeys endanger themselves in the very old and dangerous Pasola-ritual. The fishermen on Lembata catch sperm whales by jumping on them from their small boats.
Far from mass tourism
The Lesser Sunda Islands are located between 8 and 11 degrees Southern lattitude. They stretch over a distance of 1300 km and form a central chain in the 5600 km long Indonesian archipelago. Nusa Tenggara has no less than 566 islands; 320 of them are so small, they even don't have a name.
On the map, five of the 42 inhabited islands are clear: Lombok, Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores and Timor. Besides these 'giants' there are a number of smaller islands, which are worth while visiting as well.
With exeption of Flores, the bigger islands are good to travel on the entire year. The best time for a visit is the dry season: from April until the end of October or November. In the period April until June, the islands are very green; towards September they are dull and brown.
Mass tourism hasn't yet reached Nusa Tenggara. The provisions on the islands are decent. The travelling, especially to the more remote islands, demands initiative, an open travel scheme and a common sense of humor to compete with the unavoidable problems.
But there are also other reasons to keep your travel scheme flexible; you never know what you will see: a whip-fight on Flores, a boat to the hardly known Ndao, a circumstantion on Bima.
On several places you can rent English speaking guides, but little knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia is very handy. Concervative dressing also makes the journey more enjoyable. Don't forget that tourism is something new and that the islanders are not all used to almost naked foreigners.
The traveller should be prepared to be in the center of attention. Every time you should answer the same questions: Where areyou from? How old are you? Are you married? Where are you going? Which religion do you have?
You also have to take into account that eating, bathing ans sleaping outside the big cities takes place under the most elemental conditions and that the beaches - when there are no toilets - also serve as public restroom. Who can live with this is rewarded with a meeting with one of the richest areas in the world for what culture concerned.
Travellers which visit Nusa Tenggara should not expect that they will find an exotic world of animals like in Borneo, Sulawesi and Papua. The relatively dry and rocky Lesser Sunda's are not home to impressive rainforests or a big diversity in strange local animals. In fact these islands are kind of low populated with big animals.
Areas which are covered in shrubs are the habitat of deer, wild pigs, bats, snakes, dragons and other lizards. There are only a few local mammals: one kind op wild pig, one kind of mice and the couscous. Heer, monkeys, rats and several pets have recently been introduced by man. The small cacatoo, singing birds, and other birds can also be found on the islands. Statistics report 56 local spiecies, but their numbers are always small.
Underwater Wonderland
It's a totally different view in the underwater world. The coral reefs belong to the richest ecosystems in the world. Nowhere else you can find a more diverse variety of aquatic spiecies. One single big reef in Nusa Tenggara can contain about 1000 spiecies of fish, more than in all seas in Europe combined.
The underwater world is very colorfull. Brave anemone-fish defend their living house against the teasing hand of the diver. Groups of coral butterflies float between the reef walls, and other fish cross the reef in couples. The area houses big sea mammals like the sperm whale and the Indian seacow, which looks like a walrus without teeth. Along the border of the reefs you can find big pelagic fish: giant sharks, reef sharks and mantha's, relatives of the shark and the ray.
The Komodo Dragon
The most impressive animal of Nusa Tenggara is the Komodo Dragon (Varanus komodoensis), the biggest living lizard in the world, which belongs on Komodo, Rinca and in Western Flores. This robust animal can reach 3 meters in length, and weights upto 150 kg.
The heavyweight was only known in the Western world by the start of the 20th century, mainly because Komodo was inhabited. After the island had become the place for the banned, stories about dangerous, seven meter long crocodiles started to emerge. The stories were somewhat exaggerated, however these lizards can scare people. The giant lizard has a fisique which looks like a snake: his jaws can move independently from eachother, so it can swallow an entire prey which can even be larger than it's mouth; it's forked tongue is used for smelling as well as tasting.
Flora Live
Besides several small areas in the west, the vegetation is kind of scarce; it consists of flora which can stand drought very well, like several eucalypus-spiecies. The wide sandel-wood once was the main export product of Timor.
Now, the Santalum alba only grows in a few remote areas, however the government has tried to replant the trees. The fire- and drought-resistant lontar-palm (Borassus sundaicus), one of the most important usefull plants in the area is an important source of food.
The official statistics show an easy view of the religious landscape of Indonesia: 88 per cent of the population is islamic, 5.8 per cent protestant, 2.9 per cent catholic, 2 per cent hinduist and 0.9 per cent buddhist. A very small group is indicated as 'those which don't have yet a religion'. These categories are separated into unequal parts over the islands of the archipelagio, but there is a clear tendency: the further you go to the east, the more christians and 'others' are found.
Lombok and Sumbawa, in the west of Nusa Tenggara are mainly islamic. On Flores, Roti and Timor, there is a christian majority. Sumba, which was the last island of the Lesser Sunda's to get a colonial rule, as well as the island Savu know a bright traditional religious culture.
When you travel through the area, you will see a totally different religious reality, which looks totally different than the official numbers. Under the layer of big universal religions you can find the traditional religious culture wich are rich and varied. This is probably the most clear in christian areas, however you can also find islamic sects, like the Wetu Telu on Lombok.
In the first place, people are impressed with the colorfull diversity of characteristic local cultures. But there is a foundation of a similar pattern, which offers a key for a better understanding of the religious culture of the region.
Guided by a Dream
Imagine a group of colonists which enter a new area in Nusa Tenggara. The migrants do certainly have several holy objects with them: a sword, a holy drum, or maybe soil and water from the place of origin. It's these objects which form the foundation of a yet to create village and the place of origin.
After the migrants, guided by a dream, the call of a bird or something else, have found their place to settle down and then they have to reach an agreement with the other population and spiritual owners of the island: the gods of the mountain, forest and water. These powers are seen as wild and dangerous. They make the area 'hot' and unusable for humans to live in. But by founding an althat from 'rock and tree', a treaty is granted.
The still untamed forces of the local landscape are envited or even forced to 'take a seat' in the stone of the althar; on which was they become the protectors of the new community. The leader of the group, in his turn, promises in name of the human part of the participants, to do all obliged rites. By this procedure, which is repeated in a smaller scale when the fields are first used, the area is 'cooled down' so it can be used by humans.
The religious ties between the humans and the landscape is enlargened when the founders of the village and the first agriculturers have died and are honoured like ancestors. Their remains rest in the megalith gravetombes around the village square with the 'rock and tree' altar, while their godlike spirits are honoured like ancestors in the highest point of the adat houses. From this place they negotiate between the living descendants and the powers of nature and they watch the strict fullfillment of the foundation-rulers. In the first place they are mainly negotiators, but after a while their cult starts to merge with that of the gods of the village.
The oldest living male descendant of the founder is called Tuan Tanah in Indonesian, 'Lord of the Land'. He devides the communal fields, starts the agricultural activities and lead big fertility-ceremonies. In his house, the holy heirlooms of the village are kept and near his veranda you can find the most important altars of the village. He is the heir of the 'first agreement' with the powers of nature and functions as the spiritual leader of the village.
Duality
The higher gods and ancestors can't be spoken to in a direct way. Some kind of negotiation is demanded. Ritual readers, which act as representatives for a relational group or village, can only get in contact with the highest gods through a long chaing of spiritual messengers, village gods and ancestors.
A ceremonial styled language is uses, the 'language of the ancestors', which consists of couplets of grouped centences. The used things are directly related from the real workd, like for example 'mountain' or 'river', but they are meant to call a more abstract reality, which is not named at all: in this case the 'landscape' or the 'domain'.
The principal of complementary duality can be found in all aspects of thinking and doing: the relations of marriage and agricultural activies and even the political structure. It forms the most important method to organise the visible and non-visible reality.
The most important of these compementary opposites are those between 'inside' and 'outside' and between 'female' and 'male'. Besides that the contrast between 'mountain' and 'sea' as well as 'up' and 'down' important for the orientation, while 'cool' and 'hot' has a function in the ritual context and 'older' and 'younger' is used in social contacts.
All these opposites are located in the vision on reality: the cyclic movements of cosmic dimensions, in which things are created from and return to another unity, their ;source' or 'origin'. The human has a special responsibility to maintain this circular flow of life. Some are more responsible than others.
The Tuan Tanah is seen as the first born, the 'oldest brother', which has as task to stay home to guard the rock and the tree of their cosmic parents. His younger brother, with which he shares power and which often belongs to a different familygroups, has to face towards the outside to guard the borders of the holy domain.
Traditional Dance
Custom Clothing
For what tourist places concerned, there is nothing 'small' about Nusa Tenggara. In contrary: a region of this size with a rich cultural and natural diversity can't be found elsewhere in the world.
From Lombok in the west to Timor in the east the group of islands is blessed with white sand beaches, clear water and beautifull coral reefs. The three crater lakes of Keli Mutu on Flores, which have different colors because of vulcanic minerals, offer an almost surreal view. On the small island of Komodo, you can find the rarest spiecies of reptile.
In cultural way the islands are about as important. In the eastern part of the archipelago, women produce the most beautiful ikats of Indonesia. On Sumba, jockeys endanger themselves in the very old and dangerous Pasola-ritual. The fishermen on Lembata catch sperm whales by jumping on them from their small boats.
Far from mass tourism
The Lesser Sunda Islands are located between 8 and 11 degrees Southern lattitude. They stretch over a distance of 1300 km and form a central chain in the 5600 km long Indonesian archipelago. Nusa Tenggara has no less than 566 islands; 320 of them are so small, they even don't have a name.
On the map, five of the 42 inhabited islands are clear: Lombok, Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores and Timor. Besides these 'giants' there are a number of smaller islands, which are worth while visiting as well.
With exeption of Flores, the bigger islands are good to travel on the entire year. The best time for a visit is the dry season: from April until the end of October or November. In the period April until June, the islands are very green; towards September they are dull and brown.
Mass tourism hasn't yet reached Nusa Tenggara. The provisions on the islands are decent. The travelling, especially to the more remote islands, demands initiative, an open travel scheme and a common sense of humor to compete with the unavoidable problems.
But there are also other reasons to keep your travel scheme flexible; you never know what you will see: a whip-fight on Flores, a boat to the hardly known Ndao, a circumstantion on Bima.
On several places you can rent English speaking guides, but little knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia is very handy. Concervative dressing also makes the journey more enjoyable. Don't forget that tourism is something new and that the islanders are not all used to almost naked foreigners.
The traveller should be prepared to be in the center of attention. Every time you should answer the same questions: Where areyou from? How old are you? Are you married? Where are you going? Which religion do you have?
You also have to take into account that eating, bathing ans sleaping outside the big cities takes place under the most elemental conditions and that the beaches - when there are no toilets - also serve as public restroom. Who can live with this is rewarded with a meeting with one of the richest areas in the world for what culture concerned.
Travellers which visit Nusa Tenggara should not expect that they will find an exotic world of animals like in Borneo, Sulawesi and Papua. The relatively dry and rocky Lesser Sunda's are not home to impressive rainforests or a big diversity in strange local animals. In fact these islands are kind of low populated with big animals.
Areas which are covered in shrubs are the habitat of deer, wild pigs, bats, snakes, dragons and other lizards. There are only a few local mammals: one kind op wild pig, one kind of mice and the couscous. Heer, monkeys, rats and several pets have recently been introduced by man. The small cacatoo, singing birds, and other birds can also be found on the islands. Statistics report 56 local spiecies, but their numbers are always small.
Underwater Wonderland
It's a totally different view in the underwater world. The coral reefs belong to the richest ecosystems in the world. Nowhere else you can find a more diverse variety of aquatic spiecies. One single big reef in Nusa Tenggara can contain about 1000 spiecies of fish, more than in all seas in Europe combined.
The underwater world is very colorfull. Brave anemone-fish defend their living house against the teasing hand of the diver. Groups of coral butterflies float between the reef walls, and other fish cross the reef in couples. The area houses big sea mammals like the sperm whale and the Indian seacow, which looks like a walrus without teeth. Along the border of the reefs you can find big pelagic fish: giant sharks, reef sharks and mantha's, relatives of the shark and the ray.
The Komodo Dragon
The most impressive animal of Nusa Tenggara is the Komodo Dragon (Varanus komodoensis), the biggest living lizard in the world, which belongs on Komodo, Rinca and in Western Flores. This robust animal can reach 3 meters in length, and weights upto 150 kg.
The heavyweight was only known in the Western world by the start of the 20th century, mainly because Komodo was inhabited. After the island had become the place for the banned, stories about dangerous, seven meter long crocodiles started to emerge. The stories were somewhat exaggerated, however these lizards can scare people. The giant lizard has a fisique which looks like a snake: his jaws can move independently from eachother, so it can swallow an entire prey which can even be larger than it's mouth; it's forked tongue is used for smelling as well as tasting.
Flora Live
Besides several small areas in the west, the vegetation is kind of scarce; it consists of flora which can stand drought very well, like several eucalypus-spiecies. The wide sandel-wood once was the main export product of Timor.
Now, the Santalum alba only grows in a few remote areas, however the government has tried to replant the trees. The fire- and drought-resistant lontar-palm (Borassus sundaicus), one of the most important usefull plants in the area is an important source of food.
The official statistics show an easy view of the religious landscape of Indonesia: 88 per cent of the population is islamic, 5.8 per cent protestant, 2.9 per cent catholic, 2 per cent hinduist and 0.9 per cent buddhist. A very small group is indicated as 'those which don't have yet a religion'. These categories are separated into unequal parts over the islands of the archipelagio, but there is a clear tendency: the further you go to the east, the more christians and 'others' are found.
Lombok and Sumbawa, in the west of Nusa Tenggara are mainly islamic. On Flores, Roti and Timor, there is a christian majority. Sumba, which was the last island of the Lesser Sunda's to get a colonial rule, as well as the island Savu know a bright traditional religious culture.
When you travel through the area, you will see a totally different religious reality, which looks totally different than the official numbers. Under the layer of big universal religions you can find the traditional religious culture wich are rich and varied. This is probably the most clear in christian areas, however you can also find islamic sects, like the Wetu Telu on Lombok.
In the first place, people are impressed with the colorfull diversity of characteristic local cultures. But there is a foundation of a similar pattern, which offers a key for a better understanding of the religious culture of the region.
Guided by a Dream
Imagine a group of colonists which enter a new area in Nusa Tenggara. The migrants do certainly have several holy objects with them: a sword, a holy drum, or maybe soil and water from the place of origin. It's these objects which form the foundation of a yet to create village and the place of origin.
After the migrants, guided by a dream, the call of a bird or something else, have found their place to settle down and then they have to reach an agreement with the other population and spiritual owners of the island: the gods of the mountain, forest and water. These powers are seen as wild and dangerous. They make the area 'hot' and unusable for humans to live in. But by founding an althat from 'rock and tree', a treaty is granted.
The still untamed forces of the local landscape are envited or even forced to 'take a seat' in the stone of the althar; on which was they become the protectors of the new community. The leader of the group, in his turn, promises in name of the human part of the participants, to do all obliged rites. By this procedure, which is repeated in a smaller scale when the fields are first used, the area is 'cooled down' so it can be used by humans.
The religious ties between the humans and the landscape is enlargened when the founders of the village and the first agriculturers have died and are honoured like ancestors. Their remains rest in the megalith gravetombes around the village square with the 'rock and tree' altar, while their godlike spirits are honoured like ancestors in the highest point of the adat houses. From this place they negotiate between the living descendants and the powers of nature and they watch the strict fullfillment of the foundation-rulers. In the first place they are mainly negotiators, but after a while their cult starts to merge with that of the gods of the village.
The oldest living male descendant of the founder is called Tuan Tanah in Indonesian, 'Lord of the Land'. He devides the communal fields, starts the agricultural activities and lead big fertility-ceremonies. In his house, the holy heirlooms of the village are kept and near his veranda you can find the most important altars of the village. He is the heir of the 'first agreement' with the powers of nature and functions as the spiritual leader of the village.
Duality
The higher gods and ancestors can't be spoken to in a direct way. Some kind of negotiation is demanded. Ritual readers, which act as representatives for a relational group or village, can only get in contact with the highest gods through a long chaing of spiritual messengers, village gods and ancestors.
A ceremonial styled language is uses, the 'language of the ancestors', which consists of couplets of grouped centences. The used things are directly related from the real workd, like for example 'mountain' or 'river', but they are meant to call a more abstract reality, which is not named at all: in this case the 'landscape' or the 'domain'.
The principal of complementary duality can be found in all aspects of thinking and doing: the relations of marriage and agricultural activies and even the political structure. It forms the most important method to organise the visible and non-visible reality.
The most important of these compementary opposites are those between 'inside' and 'outside' and between 'female' and 'male'. Besides that the contrast between 'mountain' and 'sea' as well as 'up' and 'down' important for the orientation, while 'cool' and 'hot' has a function in the ritual context and 'older' and 'younger' is used in social contacts.
All these opposites are located in the vision on reality: the cyclic movements of cosmic dimensions, in which things are created from and return to another unity, their ;source' or 'origin'. The human has a special responsibility to maintain this circular flow of life. Some are more responsible than others.
The Tuan Tanah is seen as the first born, the 'oldest brother', which has as task to stay home to guard the rock and the tree of their cosmic parents. His younger brother, with which he shares power and which often belongs to a different familygroups, has to face towards the outside to guard the borders of the holy domain.
Traditional Dance
Custom Clothing
