There was intense activity in the house of Hendrik Pali, 60, in Lambanapu, seven kilometers east of Waingapu, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), with large tents being put up in the front yard in July.

While some people thought the father of six was getting ready for a party, Hendrik turned out to be preparing for a rare cultural event — the making of a 50-meter-long piece of handwoven cloth for making garments called hinggi East Sumba Regent Umbu Mehang Kunda kicked off the event on Aug. 23. The same day also saw the start of a similar event in Paung subdistrict, Melo, which is 60 km south of Waingapu.The Lambanapu weavers are aiming to complete the length of cloth by the third week of December.

“”This is a first for our community and it’s a major event for East Sumba people and for the nation in general, which demands hard work and great responsibility,”" Hendrik said at his home.

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The Sumba Foundation is a nonprofit US-based foundation working to improve health, education and wealth creation on Sumba. One of the foundation’s major efforts is in malaria eradication.

The foundation’s Malaria Eradication Program has shown that Sumba Island has extremely high levels of all four strains of malaria and that 20 percent of Sumbanese children die from malaria or are brain damaged from the disease by 10 years of age. World-recognized entomologist Claus Bogh has been supported by the foundation to map malaria infection rates and develop intervention/malaria prevention programs in Sumba.
The Sumba Foundation also hosts the international plastic surgeons’ organization, Interplast Australia, which carries out cleft lip and palate repair and burn scar grafts for the isolated island’s residents……………….

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It was a drizzly afternoon and 42-year-old Umbu Anton sat idly by the corridor of the main gateway into Waingapu market.
Lengths of ikat (woven textiles) from East Sumba lay neatly in a pile in front of him, while other textiles he was selling hung displayed on the wall behind him. Most of the woven fabrics had horse, skull, crocodile or dog motifs.
Next to Umbu Anton, Umbu Jonathan was also selling textiles, which were laid out in a similar fashion.
Anton and Jonathan have been selling ikat for more than ten years; the profits feed their families and send their children to school.
“Thanks to these textiles, I can afford to send my children to school, up to senior high school level,” Anton said.
Anton buys the textiles from a number of weaving centers in Nggongi, which is about 60 kilometers to the north of Waingapu, and Lambanapu, some 7 km to the east of Waingapu. Both traders said they had recently experienced a drop in the number of buyers. One of the producers of East Sumba ikat, Fidelis Tasman Amat, said the drop in the number of buyers had led to a drop in the number of vendors found along roadsides, in markets and around hotels.
A drop in the number of buyers, Fidelis added, was due to the fact that some vendors sold fake ikat.
“Once someone gets cheated, they are reluctant to buy again as they don’t believe what is being sold is genuine ikat,” said Fidelis, who comes from Manggarai, in East Nusa Tenggara.
If people want to buy genuine ikat, he said, they prefer to go to production centers or visit ikat workshops.
Fidelis said it was necessary to promote ikat in an event, such as the one recently held by the Council for National Handicrafts Indonesia (Dekranasda)’s East Sumba office, which introduced two of Sumba’s longest pieces of ikat……..

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General characteristics The Lesser Sunda island of Sumba, like the Northern Nusa Tenggara EBA (EBA 162), is in Nusa Tenggara Timur province of Indonesia. It is a hilly island, with deeply dissected plateaus, but there is little land above 1,000 m and the highest peak only reaches 1,225 m. Sumba has a seasonal climate because it lies in the rain-shadow of the Australian continent and receives little rain in the south-east monsoon between April and November.

The major natural vegetation type is deciduous monsoon forest, but there are pockets of tropical semi-evergreen rain forest where the south-facing sides of the hills receive moderately high rainfall from onshore winds, some evergreen gallery forest in wet depressions and gullies, and montane forest above c.800 m (FAO 1982c, Whitmore 1984). Much of the island is now covered in dry grassland and savanna woodland as a result of forest clearance and the practice of burning in the dry season (FAO 1982c).

Restricted-range species Turnix everetti is found in open grassland, but otherwise the restricted-range species are all birds of forest or woodland. Recent ornithological survey work on Sumba by Jones et al. (1995a) has greatly improved knowledge of the habitat requirements and conservation status of these species. Most of them were found in all forest types, in both primary and secondary forest, and were estimated to have large populations on the island. The exceptions are Ptilinopus dohertyi (a Sumba endemic) and Zoothera dohertyi, which are associated with primary forest in the higher parts of the island, and Aceros everetti (a Sumba endemic), which prefers primary and mature secondary semi-evergreen rain forest in the lowlands. Two further Sumba endemics, Turnix everetti and Ninox rudolfi, were not recorded frequently enough during the survey work to permit a full assessment of their habitat requirements and conservation status…..

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There are a large number of rituals in the Marapu religion. The rituals are generally performed to ask the Marapu’s permission, or blessing, for all manner of ceremonies that are needed to maintain harmony in ones everyday life. The Sumbanese believe that bitterness and heat, which cause people to fall ill and prevent animals and plants from thriving, are caused by human transgressions, such as incest and violent behavior, or the killing of sacred animals. As a balance, a series of Podu rituals take place throughout the year to cleanse and revitalize the land……
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