Sangihe Stay (1): Meeting the Sangihe family
~This is part of the Minahasa-Sangihe Chronicle, a journey by Toshi and Uncle R in their ancestors' homeland in North Sulawesi, which is located just on the Indonesian border facing southern Phillipines~
Day 4 (Monday, 10 March 2008)
Note beforehand: Due to the private nature of the discussions Uncle R and I had with our family members in Sangihe, most of the part of our stay when we visited them for a tea and chat would be left out from this journal.
In Sangihe language, the pronunciation of the word “H” and “R” are interchangeable; hence it is perfectly acceptable to pronounce the name of cities like Tahuna as “Ta-hoo-na” or “Ta-roo-na”. The adjective for Sangihe could be both “Sangihenese” and “Sangirese”. The noun “Sangihe” could be used to describe the Main Sangihe Island (Pulau Sangihe Besar) as well as the Sangihe Islands (Kepulauan Sangihe). In my journal, the noun would mostly refer to the main island itself, which was the only Island that Uncle R and I visited.
To standardise the terms, I’ve opted to use “Sangihe” for the noun and “Sangirese” for the adjective.
Waking up at 8 the next day, I was very agitated as I knew not what to expect. In my mind I pictured the Sangihe islands to be a mixture of Hawaii’s tropicalness and Papua’s remoteness, which eventually turned out to be correct anyway.
We checked out of the hotel at 9, and walked to the port which was located 20 minutes away. We checked in onto the ship with the VIP seat tickets which Uncle R bought for Rp250,000 the day before.
Express Bahari ship
We went aboard the fast ship Express Bahari at 9.30. They played VCD of Christian songs on a Plasma LG which –as I later found out— were traditionally unique to Sangihe due to the predominance of Christianity there. The captain himself led the whole passengers in a Protestant prayer for safe journey when we finally departed at 10.10
After an hour or so in the ship, I asked Uncle R (who used to be a work in Caribbean cruise ships) about how fast the ship was going. Seven knots, he told me.
SEVEN KNOTS?!!, I exclaimed.
Geez, that was the fastest ship I’ve ever been on. If you have no idea how fast Seven knot is, then I tell you: One to two knots is the average velocity of the kaleng kerupuk/cracker jar-like ships that goes from Banyuwangi in East Java to Gilimanuk in Bali.
After two hours of the journey, I could see the “virgin islands” outside where not a single houses or landmarks whatsoever were seen. If you had never seen a “virgin island” before, you should definitely embark on a journey to see them yourself. Those “virgin islands” were extremely stunning and mere beautiful words wouldn’t be enough to describe how amazed I was seeing them for myself. Anyway, I managed to take a few pictures then.
Nope, this isn't a virgin island. Notice the small house on bottom right?
Seven knots should be fast enough to make anyone seasick (especially with the high waves that day), but it appeared to me that I was the only one there who got bloated.
Uncle R noticed this, and he asked me if I was feeling seasick.
“No, that’s impossible!” I fabricated a smile, though I knew very well that my seasickness was easily noticeable in my face.
Obviously taken from behind the window.
This one too.
And also this one.
Fortunately this one doesn't look too vague. One of my most fave snapshot.
Around 11.30 or so, I forced myself to sleep because I couldn’t bear having the seasickness tormenting me.
Siau Volcano. Notice the fumes?
I woke up for a while when the ship docked to discharge the passengers in Siau Island and Tagulandang Island, the two main islands which were located middle way between Sangihe and the Minahasa regency.
Part of the Sangihe Islands
Another part of it
And another...
Nice view
At 4.35, the ship finally docked at the port of Tahuna city, Sangihe. It took us 30 minutes to finally descend from the ship, because there were a hundreds of passengers in front of us.
A military ship
Abandoned warship in the Main Sangihe Island
This is what I call cracker jars!
Tahuna port. Damn, I should have turned my flash on that time!
From the port, we took a 20 minute ride by oto (minivan, which is called angkot in Jakarta and elsewhere in Indonesia) to the inn owned by Uncle R’s aunt. For now, suffice it to call it Tante Paula’s inn (“Tante” is the Dutch term for Aunt).
Uncle R then did most of the talking with most of the family members there, because I had not known any of them yet. It had been 12 years since Uncle R left Sangihe, while that Sangihe visit was my first ever. I was introduced then as Uncle R’s nephew, a son of his elder brother.
Notice the small cross on the centre of this picture?
It's a grave of the King of Tahuna, one of my ancestors
Most of the discussion then circulated around the family tree, because Uncle R wanted to gather as much information as possible regarding the European bloodlines in the family.
Wait a sec, European bloodlines?
Yes, you’re reading it correctly. Most North Sulawesinese could find either Dutch or Portuguese names in their family trees, as proven in the prevalence of “van de” names in Manado. This was a direct result of the mixed marriages between the local Sulawesinese and the colonials, a feature more commonly found in Sulawesi due to the ease shown by the locals in accepting the proselytism by the Christian missionaries.
Some North Sulawesinese however, have to take the trouble of tracing the names themselves because the names could be left out far above in our family tree, and that was exactly what Uncle R and I were looking for in Sangihe: to fill in our family tree with the European names we traced.
I hadn’t realised it on my first day, but my Dad’s bloodline apparently belonged to several of the most prominent families in Sangihe (from both my Dad’s Mother and Father respectively), especially with a lot of royal bloods running thru his veins. Each city in Sangihe had two or three sovereignties, or kingdoms as we commonly call it, with each of them rule over an area not larger than the size of Orchard and Novena districts in Singapore combined.
Of course, those royal lines in Sangihe and elsewhere in Indonesia—with the exception of Sultanate of Yogyakarta and Kasuhunan Surakarta in Java— ceased to rule since the Independence of Indonesia.
Dusk had arrived when we visited the BW family house located nearby Tante Paula’s inn, hence there were not much I could see at that time to describe the what Sangihe looked like on my first day.
Uncle R and I had dinner in the one of the food stalls located just across the street from the inn, and we found out that a lot of Javanese work there as a result of transmigration programme that the former president Soeharto implemented. The meatball-noodle stall we visited had an owner who hailed from Salatiga, East Java.
Before going back to our room to sleep, we visited the beach market which was located 5 minutes walk away from the inn. Despite having quite a few lightings turned on in the area surrounding the beach market, the entire area was almost deserted at night, resulting in a picturesque planetarium-like view of stars blanketing the night. I gazed in awe at how beautiful the night scene was. It was just unfortunate of me that my camera is a normal Samsung digital camera (and not an SLR), which resulted in me being unable to provide any snapshots for you here.
We slept at around 23.00 in our non-air-conditioned inn room.
Day 5 (Tuesday, 11 March 2008)
I woke up to the song of RRI (Nyiur melambai…) which had become almost extinct in Jakarta. It was still played often in the Sangihe radio however.
After Uncle R bathed, I took my turn to bathe in that freezing cold water at 6.30, which took me some time getting used to.
That morning I found out that the inn we slept in was actually located at the civic centre (or downtown depending on your dialectal bias) of Tahuna city. So Tahuna (which is the capital city of Sangihe regency) wasn’t so big after all. Despite having known that Sangihe island was only a bit larger than the island state of Singapore, the regency only has a population of approximately 200,000 people, and this explained the smallness of the urban areas there. Most of the Pulau Sangihe Besar itself is still covered with forest till this day, and the area of Tahuna itself is no larger than half of Mataram city, Lombok.
We took a walk around the civic centre from our inn encircling the traditional market, the mosque in Kampung Jawa (Java Village), and back again. Despite knowing that the predominant religion there was Protestantism, I was surprised to find how rare it was to find mosques in Sangihe: there were only three of them in the entire Tahuna that I had caught sight of during my stay there.
The biggest denomination of Protestantism in Sangihe wasn’t one you could find elsewhere either, because it was named GMIST (Gereja Masehi Injili Sangihe Talaud, or Evangelical Messiah Church of Sangihe Talaud), presumably unique to the Sangihe-Talaud region just as Shintoism is unique to Japan or Southern Baptism is unique to America. Its main branch is in Manado, which is named GMIM (Gereja Masehi Injili Minahasa).
A GMIST church in Manganitu
Sangihe has always been the main producer of Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) in the country. Nutmeg seed, or “Pala” as called by Indonesians, has a very strong unpleasant odour, though it is tasty to be imbibed as a juice. I heartily recommend you to try a drink of that Nutmeg juice when you visit Sangihe, because it has a unique taste that is as sour as Orange juice but as sweet as the Aren sugar.
A view of Sangihe greeneries
If you want to take land transportation in and around Sangihe, never expect to find taxis or buses, because there aren’t any. There are only three types of public transportation, namely Oto, Ojek, and Bemtor.
Oto is the minivan, and it is the same thing what you normally call “Angkot” in Java or “Bemo” in Bali. The only difference between the minivan you find in Jakarta and Sangihe is that Sangihe Oto drivers always turn their song volumes into a full blast during their ride, and I laughed when I found out that such otoes are the one that attract most drivers. Such a peculiar thing indeed. The drivers there had their own sound systems and CD players, which amazed me at the first time I saw them.
Ojek is a shuttle motorcycle (found throughout Indonesia) that transports a maximum of two persons at one time for a fee. The fee differs for various regions in Indonesia, but in the case of Sangihe ojeks, they charge us Rp10,000 (€0.60) for a 30 km ride from Tahuna to Manganitu, a very generous fee indeed in comparison to the Rp5,000 Jakarta ojeks charge for a 5 km ride.
Bemtor is a uniquely Eastern Indonesian transportation, though I hadn’t known yet of its existence outside of the Sangihe region. It is a mix between a motorcycle and becak, which makes it only suitable for the inner city transportation, since most of the regions in Sangihe is mountainous.
Bemtor from the front
Bemtor from the side
Bemtor in a Manganitu street
There are only four banks in Tahuna, namely BRI (Bank Rakyat Indonesia), BNI (Bank Negara Indonesia), Bank Mandiri, and Bank Sulut. They are all located in the civic centre of Tahuna, and the Bank Sulut outlet there is located adjacent to Tante Paula’s inn where I stayed.
At 9.00, Uncle R and I took ojek to the Mocodompis King’s Palace in the city of Manganitu. During my ojek ride, I was fascinated at how beautiful the scenery was, because between Tahuna and Manganitu there was a mountain thru which we have to encircle first in order to reach one city from the other. While Tahuna is a seaside city facing the southwest of the island, Manganitu is a seaside city facing the northwest, so there is a considerable difference of atmosphere between both cities, despite having similarly located on the seaside.
Mocodompis king's castle
Mocodompis family house
When I first saw my Grandma’s cousin in Manganitu, I was surprised to find out that she is a close relative of mine. Being 85 years old today, she is 100% Caucasian, with a French father and Portuguese mother!
Whoa, I knew that I had been expecting all along to see some Portuguese names in my family tree later on, but I wasn’t actually expecting to see the evidence in person. Apart from her alone, we met her son and most of her family members (who were all White), and they were delightedly surprised to see us family members coming far away from Jakarta unannounced.
Manganitu street view in the afternoon
Manganitu field
Amongst heaps of other details we discussed with the Mocodompis family in Manganitu, I gathered that I have family members who have been residing for years in Canada, Philippines, Netherlands, Portugal, and Japan.
Manganitu field view from the side
The family member who now lives in Japan was actually my late Grandfather’s sister who was kidnapped during the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia, and there she had intermarried with a Japanese man, though our family had lost contact with her Japanese family for almost two decades today.
Hmm… I revelled in the thought that I actually have a Japanese cousin, and would like to see if I could actually trace my Grandpa’s sister’s grandchildren today. But such a possibility is indeed small, if there is any.
Another view of a street in Manganitu
Manganitu forest leading to my ancestor's graveyard
I was appalled when they told us that there is no telephone connection at all in Manganitu even till this day. The only cellular service provider that accepts signal roaming in Sangihe is Telkomsel (GSM), hence you could only expect to bring either your Kartu AS, Simpati, or Kartu Halo. It is an irony indeed that the people in Manganitu had actually gained firsthand access to mobile phone instead of home phone like most of us does. CDMA cellular services is almost unheard of, despite the fact that Sangirese could see them on TV ads everyday.
Though the Telkomsel signal reception was strong in Tahuna city, most of Manganitu had a poor one, which made Uncle R hard to receive SMSes from our family in Jakarta.
A typical house in Manganitu.
Roofing tile-making centre in Manganitu
A dilapidated Dutch house in Manganitu
Regarding the TV shows Sangirese people watched; I was more overwhelmed to find out that almost every Sangirese households have their own parabola, unlike their Javanese counterparts. Hence, apart from the local channels like RCTI, SCTV, and Metro TV, they also had reception for CNN, BBC, HBO, Star Movies, Celestial Movies, and several Filipino TV channels whose names I couldn’t recall.
A Catholic kindergarten+primary school in Manganitu
View of the school from the front, still being renovated
We went back to our inn at Tahuna at 5.30 that day, because after dark ojeks could seldom be found. A ride thru the mountains after sunset is not advisable either, due to the lack of lighting in the road connecting Tahuna and Manganitu. To give you an idea of what it looked like to ride thru the mountain roads in the dark, you should imagine a ride thru the mountainous roads from Lembang to Puncak in West Java without streetlights at all.
Ship docked amidst the mangroves in Manganitu coast
All in all, the ride by ojek back from Manganitu to Tahuna was the more enjoyable one, because from the motorcycle I rode I could see varying views of the sun setting on the sea with various tinges of red. It was an awe-inspiring view indeed.
Too bad the motorcycle was accelerating fast enough that I managed to get only a few proper pictures of the sunset. Sorry everyone, no sunset pictures for today’s stock, because there are still 12 days to go!
I made a small wish to myself that day though, so that I could take a girlfriend in the future to see the sun setting in Sangihe together…… Oh, how romantic!
~to be continued~
how about the dive site in Sangihe?