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Nivell Rayda
After four days in the Mentawai Islands, I had pretty much mastered the main topics of conversation among locals: the weather, the sea and when the next boat is scheduled to leave.
Located about 170 kilometers off the western coast of Sumatra, the Mentawais can be reached by a 10-hour boat ride from the West Sumatra capital, Padang. But this was not the route I took to get there. Susi Air, one of the biggest private charter plane companies in the country, opened a route to the islands on Oct. 18, a week before an earthquake-triggered tsunami hit four of the chain’s major islands on Oct. 25, killing at least 430 people leaving 70 missing. The remoteness of the islands only struck me when our 12-seater Cessna landed on an airstrip near the village of Rokot. “Ooh, the wind is very strong. Let’s just hope the waves are not that high and the boat ride is OK,” said Jevisan, a Susi Air official. Jevisan is in charge of everything, from ticketing to administration to ensuring that passengers get from Rokot to Tuapejat, a sleepy town of 3,000 that does not resemble any district capital that I had ever been to. I was told to get on a seven-meter-long wooden boat, which Jevisan said would take us to Tuapejat. The boat kept swaying from left to right, pushed around by the two-meter-high waves. Occasionally, water would splash into the cabin, drenching the passengers on board. I was concerned about the four items with me that I considered precious: my wallet, laptop, cellphone and camera. Luckily, everything stayed dry, thanks to a 1960s invention by a Swedish chemist, Sten Gustaf Thulin, called the plastic bag.
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