8 November 2011
By 11am, we pack the luggage again. Today we are moving from Ende to Riung. It's gonna be long 7 hours driving, Vitalis warns us. But no worries, good view is waiting outside the window anyway. He promised us that we'll make some stop at interesting place. In one hour driving, we reach the outside part of the city. Back to villagers line, candle nut trees, rice paddy field. All green and green.
We make some stops to get fruit, try the wooden bridge… and after another more drive, finally we see something really interesting. Traditional tribal village! There's a very huge tree at the entrance. It's so huge with a lot of roots. Which pretty much tells us the village must be very old.
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| Huge tree at the village entrance |
It's Wologai, a traditional Lionese village with the background of beautiful forested volcanic ridge. This is one of the few villages in Ende district that still maintain the art and architecture. The villager are friendly, but also shy. We are allowed to walk through the circle of huts, but they ask us not to enter the tall ceremonial house as it contains several sacred object including a ritual drum made of human skin ( spooky!!).
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| Lio House and its guardian |
The huts is pretty unique. It has many window frames and some ornament, wood carved with interesting animal, plant and abstract motifs. They have male house which they call it keda kanga and female house sao ria. Each featuring unique lay out, orientation and design. The house of sao ria will have a very large pair of carved boobs near the entrance. The lay out of sao ria is meant to represent a mother's body, where the door being the entrance of the womb. Unfortunately we don't get much of information about who stays in the female house as well as male house. All we get is the circle form will say about the house status. The centre is always the tribe's head. The closest to the centre is the key family or important family.
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| The methaporical ornaments |
Off from Wologai, the road become rocky. We go up and down, passing candle nut forest. I like its colour arrangement. line up of brown tree branch, meet the dense green leaves then white at the top where the candle nuts are. We stop by at Padang restaurant for a quick lunch. and drive again further west. Now going a long a beach coast ( i forgot the name.. arrggghhh!). Weather is changing. It's more heating up in here.
From Ende to Riung we make a short cut. To a very dry land. I feel so foreign with all those dead tree, cactus, barren hill. Vitalis make a joke that this is Africa. Somehow it's pretty similar. Especially when see group of buffalo running around. By dawn we reach Riung. I feel so sick. My throat burning. We stay at Pondok SVD, a hostel own by Polish pastor. The bad news, electricity in this area is limited only after 5pm to 7am. The good news, we have aircon in the room. Fiuuuuu!!!
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| dry land on the way to Riung |
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