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

Chapter 7: Worlds Converge

Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined. —Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities Authenticity, too, is something sought, fought over, and reinvented. —Edward M. Bruner, “Epilogue, Creative Persona and the Problem of Authenticity” convergence of worlds occurred every other week in eastern Sumba in the mid-1990s, in organized cultural displays (pameran, I.; exhibition) for foreign tour groups. Rife with intense competition between local people, these events took shape over a couple of hours as impromptu settlements. Pameran spaces became international carnivals where people claimed regions of ground for themselves in makeshift mercantile settings. Moreover, pamerans proceeded as stages: carefully calculated personas were displayed along with fabrics as visions and desires of locals and tourists became entwined. As Toby Volkman concludes regarding the nature of tourist events in Toraja, Sulawesi, “Tourism implies a distinctive sort of gaze. That gaze may become a model for local gazes too, put to work along with other kinds of cultural visions and revisions” (1990:91).1 This chapter focuses on a field that incorporates many gazes. The Pameran In August of 1993, a large bus with “Party Doll” written on its side parked at the entrance of the village of Lambanapu, and twenty-five foreigners hesitantly disembarked. After months of drought, the ground sent up clouds of dust as the squinting tourists descended to an explosion of rhythmic music and frenzied dance. A group of fabric-draped men and women wielding swords and daggers with mock ferocity beckoned the startled visitors into the village center, to the sounds of accompanying drums and gongs. Clad in shorts and summer hats, the tourists held cameras of various sorts. This particular group had come with the Spice Islands cruise ship, which circled the Lesser Sunda Islands once a month. Sunburnt Europeans, Americans, and Australians exited the tour bus, most of middle or retirement age. The rosy cluster of tourists followed the dancers to benches circling an arena near the center of the village.2 Two local guides gave welcoming speeches in English. Several lively dances proceeded, culminating with a Chapter 7 Worlds Converge A line of fetching young women, clad in elaborate fabrics, swaying slowly to the rhythm of drums while carrying baskets of betel nut toward the uneasy visitors. The guide then explained the social significance of offering betel and laboriously instructed the increasingly worried tourists in how to use it. Most refused the stimulant as it was offered to them, but a few tentatively tried it, soon spitting it onto the ground. The tourists expressed squeamish distaste and also humor among themselves. They were closely scrutinized by chuckling villagers. Typically consisting of regional music, dances, and mock rituals such as weddings, a pameran is staged in the center of a village by people SHUTTLING BETWEEN WORLDS 132 Figure 33. Locals and tourists meeting in a place contoured by cloth. dressed in traditional finery.3 The tourist group (which arrives by chartered bus) watches the performances, listens to commentary by (usually) Dutch- or English-speaking tour leaders, then wanders about the village to view hundreds of textiles displayed for sale. The number of tourists might vary from as few as fifteen to as many as a hundred. One of three competing Waingapu hotels coordinated the events with villagers and a foreign tour company. Tour groups attending pamerans were often from cruise ships and represented the wealthiest foreigners to visit Sumba. Village homes sat outside the center cordoned off for performances. Visitors participated in a “cultural center” constructed for them, with local centers, the clan homes, viewed from a distance. In turn, most villagers observed the tourist groups from afar, forming a larger circle around a smaller one and enjoying another performance altogether. In the disparity of worlds of villagers and visitors, a play of stark differences emerged. In the grass-fringed recesses of their verandahs, local people chewed betel nut and peered out under thatched eaves—at the framed tourist space fleetingly manifested in the village plaza. There they also viewed the regional “movers and shakers” of the textile and tourism trades—touts, guides, hoteliers, entrepreneurs—presenting and selling the “culture” of Sumba to the foreigners. A pameran was a play of worlds in tenuous overlap, with the vendors and villagers watching the tourists watch re-creations of Sumbanese village culture—a kind of nested puzzle of reflexivity.4 A Labyrinthine Bazaar Early in...