Wakatobi
Project

​Personal Diary Entry

I am at Tomia Timur in Wakatobi, South-East Sulawesi. I was invited to work on a cultural project here for six months alongside the locals. Desa Kahianga is a very small village up in the mountains. I am staying in a house with a concrete roof and a western toilet, which is very unusual here. All other houses have tin roofs, and when it rains here those tin roofs are the loudest messengers, the roof of my room absorbs all the sound and the last few times I slept through the afternoon rain, my favorite, my loss. But I did not miss the first rain of this season...the smell of the first moist soil, I recognized, same as my hometown and suddenly those 7000 kilometers in between disappeared. They love my voice here, some of my students call me ‘angel’ and ask me to sing Indian songs, and I sing to them as I used to sing to you. With some local musicians, oi, Ifal, and a few others, their names are skipping my mind, we are performing ‘sari de’ bhase tomia lagu (song) at the upcoming art expo. I am the lead singer, I have never sung before with drums, three different kinds of guitar, and piano, which is very different from singing in my room or the classroom in front of my students...we have build a full band here, we daily practice at the gallery, right by the ocean; in between practice I often take a short walk in the open field and hear the waves, at night the ocean is incredibly calm sometimes, but the stars are always so vividly present. I often wish you could be here...you know, in the early morning, I hear women selling fish, and they sound so lyrical “lureeeeeee” “ikaaaaaann” and it reminds of the stories my grandma used to tell me when I was a kid, life is simple here, the sounds of the roosters, not just in the morning throughout the day and night, every house has 40–50 feet deep well to store the rainwater for the summertime, and Kahianga has black squirrels, you remember I always wanted to see them... I also know that one day this novelty will wear off, and I will feel the nuances of simple life more immediately. I want to tell you so much, but today I will stop here... just know every moment here takes me somewhere I have never been and yet and yet so familiar...