Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives, and Travels from Sumba

Chapter 6: Hawewa

fter an hour bus ride from Waingapu, I often traveled a narrow road running three kilometers inland from the sea, passing numerous households along the way, and ending at the village of “Hawewa.” The village—composed of two distinct sections—includes about six hundred people and is bordered by dry, chalky hills on one side, a river circling around half of the village area, and a government-constructed irrigation canal at the eastern boundary. The Road to Hawewa The green landscape along this road is one of relative fertility in East Sumba, with continuous rice paddies fed by the canal and the river. The northern side of the village includes some eccentric megaliths (including likenesses of departed maramba in the company of crocodiles, pigs, and dogs) and several high-peaked uma. The large house of the reigning maramba is central in the village. Packs of children greet foreign visitors at the main village entrance, chanting “Hello mister! Kasi pena” (I.; “Give me a pen”). Lone tourists and tour groups frequently enter Hawewa, and villagers appear ready to sell the visitors textiles, yet are often reticent and confused about how to relate to the tourists. Many village women choose to hide indoors from strangers, sending fabrics for sale out with their sons or young daughters. At the home of the raja, tourists sign a guest book and pay a fee (of about fifty cents) to be admitted to the village, where they can walk about and take photographs. The raja himself is usually not available, either sleeping , playing cards inside his house, or out surveying the region on his motor bike. An amiable, phlegmatic man, the elderly raja has fallen under considerable criticism by relatives and people from other villages for being lax in the administration of his immediate domain. In recent years, Hawewa has come under pressure from the government for the litter strewn throughout the village and for the unkempt look of its children. A move to “clean up Hawewa” has resulted in a more tidy village, yet the atmosphere of the reigning monarch’s home is less industrious than is the case in either Parai Mutu or Wandi. Nevertheless, global influences accent the household —the lone element of decor on the raja’s outer front wall asserts a masculine heroic prowess in the form of a poster of Sylvester Stallone from a Rambo film. The muscular American action hero strikes a barechested , defiant pose against a palm-thatch wall. Chapter 6 Hawewa A The other portion of the village domain sits across a road. Highpeaked noble houses, along with the more modest houses of commoners, are arranged in two rows facing a central strip of dusty ground. At one end of this settlement lie large funeral megaliths. In the center is a small, wooden ancestral icon (katoda) supported by rocks. Most of the inhabitants of each section of Hawewa adhere to Marapu beliefs and practices. People say that the bifurcation of the village occurred several decades ago, following a disagreement between two maramba brothers concerning a prospective marriage contract of one. After the brother took the controversial bride, he simply founded another village beside his original one. To the present, people are allied to one half or the other of the domain, although considerable interaction takes place between inhabitants. In contrast to the residence area of the raja, there is a concern with tidiness in this portion of the village realm. Many people explain this as the influence of a more fastidious family group of noblewomen, who want to distinguish their households from the unkempt environs of the current maramba overlord. Huge banyan and mango trees shade sections of this part of Hawewa, and weavers at looms sit on the verandahs of most homes. The region of Hawewa is famous for a type of weaving known locally as pahikung or pahudu.1 Numerous cloth-producing households sit along the road that leads to the divided village. There are also two churches along this road: the Gereja Kristen Sumba (Sumbanese Christian Church, an outgrowth of the Dutch Reformed Church) and the Bethel Church (an evangelical Protestant denomination brought by American missionaries). People who live next to the road, as opposed to the more secluded villages set back from it, are predominantly Christians and attend one of the two churches nearby. At the beginning of the Hawewa Road, a few kilometers east of the village, is the workshop of a local entrepreneur of mixed ChineseSumbanese parentage. About twenty-five women...