…the Chief Har­poon­ist took up his po­si­tion, a per­fect yoga War­rior Two, ex­cept that in this case what looked like an arm ex­tended over his bent front leg was ac­tu­ally his har­poon, ready to be un­leashed. But it’s hard to spot a dol­phin in a sea wine-dark­ened by the glow­er­ing sky. And the dol­phins weren’t help­ing. Though they could eas­ily bolt away from us, they criss-crossed in front of the War­rior, flick­ing his at­ten­tion first left, then right, then far right, then cen­tre left, un­til he didn’t know which way to look and he raised his har­poon straight up to the sky in de­feat. I con­fess that I was not overly thrilled at the idea of hav­ing to bail di­luted dol­phin blood out of the boat as our catch was butchered at my feet. But as the hunt went on I grew less soppy. To get caught on a day like to­day, a dol­phin would have to leap into a high arc di­rectly in front of the War­rior and push the slow-mo­tion but­ton on it­self as it breached the wa­ter to give the drunken har­poon­ist time to fo­cus. […]

Later, chat­ting with a cou­ple of the whale hunters, I showed pho­tos of the red plas­tic kayak that I like to pad­dle in the At­lantic, off the west coast of Ire­land. I said that I of­ten saw dol­phins from my boat, and some­times even a whale, but I wasn’t al­lowed to hunt them. ‘What, be­cause you are a woman alone in a boat?’ No, be­cause it’s for­bid­den.
 ‘Oh right, it’s that thing, those peo­ple – there’s a word for it, isn’t there? What’s the word?’ said the other bailer. ‘Kon­ser­vasi,’ prompted his friend. ‘Yes, yes, that Con­ser­va­tion thing!’
 Elizabeth Pisani; Indonesia, Etc.

the Dutch East In­dia Com­pany, the VOC, was the world’s first joint stock com­pany, with 1,800 ini­tial in­vestors.

When Con­stantino­ple fell to the Turks in the mid-fif­teenth cen­tury, Chris­tian busi­ness­men could no longer eas­ily buy from Mus­lim traders. By that time, spices were an es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ent in the larders of rich Eu­ro­peans – spices pre­served meat in an age be­fore re­frig­er­a­tion, and they masked the taste when the flesh rot­ted. If Eu­ro­peans wanted to main­tain the sup­ply of pep­per, cloves and nut­meg, they would have to go di­rectly to the is­lands where the spices were grown. That be­came pos­si­ble in 1497, when the Por­tuguese ad­ven­turer Vasco da Gama sailed around the bot­tom of Africa and ‘dis­cov­ered’ the sea route to the East. The Por­tuguese quickly found their way to Maluku, home to the most pre­cious spices. They made first for Ter­nate, a vol­cano is­land cloaked in cloves. […]

Known as the Spice Islands, Maluku was obsessively sought for many years before they were rediscovered by Portuguese sailors in the 15th. century.
  Continua a leggere→

Mama Lina’s vil­lage is one of the most iso­lated in Adonara, sit­ting high on the slopes of the vol­cano. A con­crete path leaps straight up the side of the vol­cano from the main road, the in­cline so steep that mo­tor­bike pas­sen­gers have to press them­selves up against the driver to avoid slid­ing off back­wards. […]
 I was a lit­tle sur­prised, then, to see a satel­lite dish next to a pa­paya tree in the gar­den, and a TV in the in­ner sanc­tum of the house. The vil­lage, it turned out, had a com­mu­nal gen­er­a­tor. By com­mon con­sent this was prod­ded into life ev­ery evening at an hour set by TV pro­gram­ming ex­ec­u­tives in Jakarta, a whole time zone away. As the lights came on and the tele­vi­sion sprang to life, ran­dom neigh­bours would wan­der into Mama Lina’s house, spread palm-weave tikar mats on the floor and flop down with the fam­ily for an act of col­lec­tive wor­ship at the al­tar of the sinetron.
 The sinetron, or soap opera…
 Eliz­a­beth Pisani, In­done­sia Etc.

…when An­ton dropped me at Ke­limutu – even the name sings – it was one of those heart-burst­ing days of glit­ter­ing morn­ing air and in­fi­nite vis­tas. The birds ser­e­naded, the but­ter­flies flirted, and I was all alone in one of the most beau­ti­ful places on earth. Two of Ke­limutu’s lakes are di­vided by a sin­gle wall of jagged rock. One lake I re­mem­bered as be­ing emer­ald green, the other a great pool of milk, The third, off at a dis­tance, was sticky, ox­i­dized blood. This time, though, the sib­ling lakes seemed to have bled into one an­other; they are now turquoise twins. As the clouds puffed in, smoky shad­ows flit­ted over their sur­face. I walked on up the dust-muf­fled path to the third lake, pass­ing a soli­tary grounds­man who was at­tack­ing the acres of scrub grass with a scythe the size of a Swiss Army knife. The blood lake, the one where lo­cals be­lieve old souls find their rest, had thick­ened al­most to black. I won­dered what had be­come of the souls of vir­gins and in­no­cents now that the white lake where they used to seek refuge had mor­phed to blue. Ge­ol­o­gists say these colour changes are the work of min­er­als burped up into the lakes from vents un­der the wa­ter. Though ac­cord­ing to Ke­limutu Na­tional Park’s of­fi­cial web­site, lo­cals be­lieve they are the spir­its’ re­ac­tion to the elec­tion of a mil­i­tary can­di­date as pres­i­dent of In­done­sia.

I sat for a while in a si­lence punc­tu­ated by bird­song and the oc­ca­sional buzzing in­sect. It was mid-No­vem­ber, not high tourist sea­son, but still, it seemed amaz­ing that I could have this whole ma­jes­tic scene en­tirely to my­self. No bus­loads of rich kids from pri­vate schools in Java ex­plor­ing the won­ders of their na­tion. No groups of cam­era-click­ing Ja­pa­nese tourists with a niche in­ter­est in vul­canol­ogy. Not even any gap-year back­pack­ers stor­ing up ex­otic tales for fresher’s week at uni­ver­sity in Man­ches­ter, San Fran­cisco or Berlin. I was thrilled by the soli­tude, of course. But I felt al­most of­fended on be­half of In­done­sia.
 Eliz­a­beth Pisani, In­done­sia Etc.