Coastal Village Part 2: Mahaba Island

Map of Mahaba

It takes 30 minutes boat ride to go to Mahaba Island. The first thing that you will notice when arrived in mahaba is its beautiful beach. It has clear water and yellowish sand. The village is as coastal as one imagine: fishing gear decorate their porch, coconut tree anywhere you look, house made from wood, and boat parked behind or beside the house. The source of their livelihoods relied heavily on the coastal environment say it sea and mangrove ecosystem.

Living in this beautiful island is not as delightful as it seems. First is the scarcity of clean water. Similar with some island in Indonesia, the supply of clean water to cook, bath, and wash clothes still an everyday challenge. Thus, for those of you who lives in a city who sometimes take water for granted need to know that water is a luxurious thing!

I stayed with Ate Nida’s family. She’s considered as one of Female Food Heroes by OXFAM. Ate Nida was married when she was 19 years old and her husband was 33 years old. They have 4 children with the youngest is 5 years old. Ate Nida lives in a modest house; they have a small place to take a bath but no CR.

Now, Imagine there 2 mice inside this bathroom #truestory

The family livelihoods come from fishing and buying sea cucumber. From time to time, children and elderly will come to their house to sell their sea cucumber.           As long as my stayed there, not even once I see a man come to the house to sell sea cucumber. Most of the men engage in fishing activities. They will go to the sea as eraly as 4 am and come back around 6 – 8 pm. According to most of the fisherman, in the last 10 years their catch of fish has declined and at the moment many other fisherman use stick to make the school fish panicked and trapped at the net. These considered as illegal and create loss to other fisherman.

This is what they usually catch and eat (dumud ut)

Income from sea cucumber has helped the family go through difficult times. It helps the family to send their children to school and to buy some fishing gear. They food that they have daily usually based on the catch by the husband. I was there a week and almost everyday I eat dumud ut.

I found the women activities and food variants there very interesting. These are some income generating activities that Ate Nida’s engaged in:

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1.     Sea Cucumber buyer

Selling-buying sea cucumber

This is her main source of income. This activity has keep her busy everyday. From time to time (maybe every 15-30 minutes) children and elderly women will come to the house and sell a plastic or two of sea cucumbers. She divided them based on their type and dryness and then weights them. The price ranges from 300php – 1100php/kg.

2.     Seashell & sea cucumber collector

During her sphere time, she went to the ban-ban ( a strip of land/coral which visible only during the low tide – I don't know its name in English or Indonesian, sorry) to collect seashell and sea cucumber.

Gleaning shell

       3.     Libo’o collector

Looking for Libo'o

Libo'o soup

Libo’o is a kind of shell that you can find in mangrove areas. In Indonesia we called this buah tanah. In Indonesia, I only find this in Pambang, Bengkalis. This ‘buah tanah’ mostly consumed by the indigenous people ‘Suku Cina Akid’ and not many villagers there eat this food. In Mahaba, the shell is whiter compare the one in Bengkalis, maybe because they have clearer mud here. The other different thing is the way they look for it. It’s more rough here. One have to go really really really deep, up into your chest and do a dancing a bit (move to the right and left) feel the libo’o with your feet. I feel sorry for them, to be honest; It looks like a super difficult thing to do. I did join a community to collect libo’o/ buah tanah when I was in Bengkalis and the deeper that we went is only up to our knee. We had something like a big knife to help us locate the shell.

My stay here teach me something, everyone have the right to have luxurious thing, you know those thing like food, water, and basic education. Any food that you have in your plate now, maybe come from some family out there who never even taste it.