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Later, after the evening prayers have fizzed from crackling loudspeakers across town, bounced off mountains and dispersed over discarded ships tipped like toys in Larantuka’s port, the warungs (cafes) open their doors. “Four nights ago they caught five whales. Not big ones, little ones,” a restaurant owner informs me as I polish off a plate of mie goreng.
“I read it in the paper.”
It seems everyone here is captivated by Lamalera and its whales. I’ve found myself on Flores Island, smack bang in the middle of the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara, hoping to learn about the region’s sacred creatures and the cultures who worship them. The province stretches from the island of Komodo in the west, crawling with prehistoric lizards dribbling saliva so toxic it can kill, to a little-known diver’s paradise called Alor in the east. Bundled in between are Flores, West Timor and Sumba – each peppered with fishing villages, traditional tribes and volcanoes – and more than 500 tiny isles. The figure seems immense until you remember Indonesia comprises more than 17,500 islands.
Whispers about Lamalera seem to float across the sea, but reaching the whaling town is no easy task. First, it’s a four-hour cruise from the port in Larantuka on Flores Island to Lewoleba on Lembata Island. From there you catch a bemo (van) to the outskirts of town where you’ll find a truck that rollicks through thick growth toward Lamalera. My thoughts curdle from heat and the vehicle’s vibrations seconds into the 40-kilometre ride. When we rumble into Lamalera four hours later I’m struggling to remember what town belongs to which L-word. My legs, stiff and bruised from contorting between metal bars, bushels of live chickens and sacks of rice, refuse to unfurl.
The first thing I notice when I disembark is an assaulting stench. The second is a wishbone the size of a child flanking the side of the road. Lamalera lives and breathes whale. A quick stroll reveals drying flesh, flyblown blubber and curious bits of anatomy dangling from bamboo poles. The black sand beach is greasy with fat melting under the sun and vertebrae prop up pot plants. In the middle of the main street a choir harmonises under a tree outside a building decorated with murals depicting whales and Jesus on the cross.
Passing empty boatsheds on the sand I spot children sliding off a bloated white mass in the shallows. They lunge, thrusting imaginary spears into the carcass in lieu of the harpoon-tipped bamboo poles used by the hunters. The villagers believe whales are gifts from their ancestors and eat the flesh, crush the bones for fertiliser and burn the oil for fuel.
Superstition underlies the tradition; it is thought that if the town is at peace there will be plenty of whales, if not crews fear an even more dangerous hunt. This rare waste, a rotting sperm whale – the most cherished of all whales besides the endangered blue, which is revered and never captured – put up a mean fight, tossing a lamafa (whaler) around like a doll. Perhaps it was punishment for a clan dispute. Incredibly, the lamafa survived and rests in a distant hospital waiting for crushed bones to bind while the creature’s cranium lurks
in the sea, tainted with bad luck and well past its use by date.
One morning the beach resembles a butcher’s shop. The fishermen’s sacred boats, handmade using techniques passed down from forebears who sailed from Sulawesi hundreds of years ago, have returned to their shelters and dozens of villagers are at work carving three pilot whales into pieces. Despite whispers of abundance that bounce around Flores, the lamafa often return empty-handed. This is a generous catch. Seizing small quantities and avoiding rare species earn the hunters the badge of subsistence fishers, a term employed by the International Whaling Commission, which permits aboriginal whaling. Indonesia isn’t a member, but to toe the line the lamafa are banned from using modern fishing techniques, instead relying on rickety wooden boats, bamboo poles and the weight of their bodies to drive metal barbs into the graceful beasts.
Hunks of meat ooze onto the sand and a team hauls pink and purple ribbons from a magician’s bag of guts. Beaming women cart away their family’s portion in buckets on their heads. Some will be dried and stored, some cooked fresh in stews. What isn’t needed will be bartered at a market a two-hour walk away for vegetables that refuse to grow in the region’s stubborn soil. Through this trade the whales support life across the entire island.
It’s peak tourist season and a photographer from Spain sits on a couch in my homestay flicking through images from his voyage out with the boats. A couple on a bizarre honeymoon browses photographs of renowned locals on the walls, and two backpackers are searching for somewhere bloodless to swim. We converge for the same rationed lunch and dinner each day – an egg, rice and packet mie goreng with slices of choko – but today a new dish stands out in the spread. Whale. Handing the plate of unappetising brown gloop around the table we each take a lump and chew it down along with our Western misgivings. Despite simmering for hours it’s still tough and tastes a lot like liver. Perhaps it is. Even after our best efforts to make it look as though we’ve appreciated the delicacy, the braise looks almost untouched.
The evening generator kicks in as I settle on the porch with Jeffrey, a teacher who has recently returned to the village hoping to open a guesthouse off the back of the town’s whaling notoriety. The venture isn’t just for money, he says, as a breeze permeated with putrefying fat plays with a mobile of whale figurines above our heads. “All the people here have the responsibility for the existence of this [whaling] tradition.” And running an inn to keep travellers comfy would be his way of helping the town. Bob Marley’s ‘One Love’ erupts from his hip and he frees his phone and places it on the table next to a bone-cum-ashtray. It’s a casual motion, but with reception arriving in the area only a month ago the device is hot property, modernising the town with one great leap.
“Money is not everything,” he tells me. “First I want to make friends, learn. Money can come afterwards.” In truth the village needs rupiahs and food to survive. Cash is hard to come by – bartered whale meat doesn’t bring in a cent – and the numbers who hunt are dwindling. “Most of the parents here want their child to go to school,” Jeffrey explains, describing the conflict they face in trying to feed themselves and keep the whaling tradition alive, while earning enough to give their children the best possible life. Tourists carry coin, although it’s harder to lure them now that newer editions of Lonely Planet have erased references to the little island. Jeffrey insists that although the town benefits from visitors, whaling is for survival not for show.
