If anyone has ever visited Bena Adat Village in Ngada Flores, it will be amazed by the sustainable traditional village (although some of its citizens already use motorcycles). What about the island south of Flores? Yes the island of Sumba. Precisely in downtown district of West Sumba, Waikabubak. This small town is growing and crowded, but there is a traditional village that is still trying to survive from the frenzy of modernization. If you have landed at Tambolaka Airport in Southwest Sumba, take 1 hour drive to Waikabubak. There are travel shuttles that can be used.
Luckily indeed, I have an acquaintance of a lurah IPDN graduates there. From the hotel just walk to the village of Waitabar and Tarung. This village is considered as the center of all indigenous villages in the island of Sumba. Because with a friend who is already famous there, so quite comfortable for me to visit there. Free to go there, just maybe later we should buy souvenirs there, in the form of woven or manik2. Not expensive, I bought a small woven fabric for Rp20.000,00.
Buildings that are still awake, customs that are still held, for example is a traditional ceremony that will sacrifice many pigs and buffalo. We can see buffalo horns and wild boar fangs as a sign of how often and big ceremony held a family.
In Sumba we can see the still-existing Megalithic world, the stone tomb. Yes there is indeed someone who died will be 'buried' in a rock, but the more trend here, the stone tomb has been replaced with a cement that is formed as a hollow stone in the middle.Probably because of the expensive and difficult to find the current stone.
Friends can buy by from Waikabubak in the form of a machete Sumba, I have bought 3 from there. The problem is that later at the airport, airport officials will ask for "fee" Rp50.000 per parang, he said for the cost of out. Do not want, because for me it is illegal, because there is no official receipt.
Anyone want to visit Sumba? Do not forget to enjoy every moment ..
