From 1-9 June we were the guests of Universitas Teknologi Sumbawa (UTS). It was a really great visit and both Tim and I really enjoyed our time there. I am always a little sad when I go to an island that has more than one species of Trigona, and Nusa Tenggara was no exception. I kept thinking of great projects that I could do if I were there. Tim was blown away by the archaeology, much of which is mostly unexplored. So both of us really excited by the potential of the island. Plus, it isn't Bali and isn't over-run by tourists which makes it feel more relaxed than it otherwise probably would. The campus was a surprise: it's not really located in Sumbawa Besar proper, but up in the foothills above town. Really picturesque landscape.
It was a really fun and really packed visit.
We started from Pulau Moyo where we took the morning public boat to the Pantai Goa harbor of Sumbawa Besar and were met by UTS Global Partnerships staff (it was typical Indonesian "jam karet" (lit. rubber time) and we were met about 40 minutes after they WhatsApp'd to tell us they'd be there in 6 minutes :-) but that gave us time to talk to an interesting British Landscape architect who'd been on the same boat (and caused quite a stir with the Muslim Ibus with her cute spaghetti strap little black dress) who was also waiting for a ride to materialize. They brought us to a swank hotel (Samawa Seasite Cottages) that was about 10 or 15 minutes out of town on the coast. Erik asked about our interests, then gave us a schedule: free time that evening, a groundbreaking ceremony on campus Friday morning, trip to the weaving village of Poto in the afternoon, on Saturday we were going to leave at midnight to see the sun rise over Gunung Tambora and go snorkel with whale sharks. Since we'd be so tired from Saturday, we'd just do a tour of the city sights on Sunday afternoon and have a sleep-in in the morning. It all sounded good. But then at 6pm he called to say the Rector had invited us to come to dinner that night, so, first change and it turned out that the only day that went according to plan was Friday, but it was all OK because everything we did was still really interesting and we've gotten used to things changing around. The first dinner with the Rector was fun. He'd invited 14 -or so people, mostly UTS staff but also a visiting professor from the U.S. (Shirley) and us. It was at a fish restaurant that had mostly outdoor seating (under bale, or gazebo-like structure) and the food and company were excellent.
We started from Pulau Moyo where we took the morning public boat to the Pantai Goa harbor of Sumbawa Besar and were met by UTS Global Partnerships staff (it was typical Indonesian "jam karet" (lit. rubber time) and we were met about 40 minutes after they WhatsApp'd to tell us they'd be there in 6 minutes :-) but that gave us time to talk to an interesting British Landscape architect who'd been on the same boat (and caused quite a stir with the Muslim Ibus with her cute spaghetti strap little black dress) who was also waiting for a ride to materialize. They brought us to a swank hotel (Samawa Seasite Cottages) that was about 10 or 15 minutes out of town on the coast. Erik asked about our interests, then gave us a schedule: free time that evening, a groundbreaking ceremony on campus Friday morning, trip to the weaving village of Poto in the afternoon, on Saturday we were going to leave at midnight to see the sun rise over Gunung Tambora and go snorkel with whale sharks. Since we'd be so tired from Saturday, we'd just do a tour of the city sights on Sunday afternoon and have a sleep-in in the morning. It all sounded good. But then at 6pm he called to say the Rector had invited us to come to dinner that night, so, first change and it turned out that the only day that went according to plan was Friday, but it was all OK because everything we did was still really interesting and we've gotten used to things changing around. The first dinner with the Rector was fun. He'd invited 14 -or so people, mostly UTS staff but also a visiting professor from the U.S. (Shirley) and us. It was at a fish restaurant that had mostly outdoor seating (under bale, or gazebo-like structure) and the food and company were excellent.
Then we picked up Shirley and Ahmed (one of the international students at UTS) and went up to the town of Poto where they still practice traditional weaving with a backstrap loom. I had thought the town was known for ikat (where the thread is pre-dyed and the pattern shows up when it's woven correctly) but it turns out to have mostly (at least that's all we saw) songket weavers: that's the style where they weave patterns over the fabric in gold thread. So I have yet to witness ikat weaving but this was really impressive and beautiful. They don't commonly get white people visiting the villages and so we were quite an event.
Saturday was really confusing and we didn't end up going to see whale sharks at all. We finally decided to arrange our own trip to see some sarcophagi that Professor Rektor had told us about during Thursday's dinner. That didn't start very smoothly but at midday, Bagus, the student who'd driven us around on Friday showed up to take us to Bukitinggi where the sarcophagi were found. It turned out to be quite an adventure -- a long, long drive and really rough roads, but it was a lot of fun and Bagus was a good sport. The road went from good to bad to worse to nearly impassible, to (finally) only navigable by motorbike. I don't think Bagus had ever driven on anything like that before but with Tim out of the car, moving rocks and figuring out a strategy that wouldn't leave us high centered or stuck in a rut, we made it surprisingly far in a 2-WD passenger car. We almost made it up one more hill but couldn't get enough traction so reversed back down and hiked the last 4km or so. Bagus asked how old we were and told us that he'd never imagined that professors would do something like that. He was quite impressed.
| The sarcophagi were also quite impressive. AND -- they were up in an agricultural area backed by protected forest, so I got a good look around at what Sumbawan landscapes should look like. AND -- even better -- we flushed a pair of red junglefowl when driving up and (although I'm not a quick enough draw with my camera to prove it), I finally got to see the wild progenitor of today's chicken. So cool. Later I heard this strange bird call and asked Bagus what it was. He laughed "that's a forest chicken!) So, I'll put a little clip of it calling here. Doesn't sound anything like a modern rooster. |
The next day, Sunday, we begged out of doing anything with UTS because we needed to work on our talks. They'd asked us to give on to their students on Monday (on Hawaii and grad school possiblities) in addition to my talk on bees on Tuesday and Tim's talk on deep time on Wednesday and we figured that with only one laptop between us (we left Tim's in Bali), we'd better have some solid working time to clean up and be ready to go the next day. And it was good we did. Even though the hotel was in a beautiful area with a pretty coast and healthy mangroves, we didn't leave our room all day, just worked on talks.
Monday was a blur! We started by packing up to move to the next hotel (where we stayed for our last four nights on Sumbawa), then off to campus and over to SMKk Al-Khafi, a local Muslim boarding school who had been given a grant to start keeping bees with the students. They had started with 200 boxes (imported from Lombok) of T. laeviceps but were down to about 70. They said that predators had destroyed the other boxes. Italked with them about some easily correctable problems that we could see and arranged with them to come back later in the week to get them started on a data collection project (which I'm not sure if it will work out, but we went back on Wednesday, brought them data sheets and taught them how to monitor bee activity).
The UTS campus is really beautiful. It's surprisingly far from town and in a really natural setting. When we stopped by on Friday (which was a national holiday so no students around), there were monkeys sitting on the lawn (well-mannered ones who left when they saw us)
We moved to the Grand Samota Hotel, in town, after a really full Monday. It was nice that we were close enough to everything to eat wherever we wanted (rather than just the hotel restauraunt) although the location was not nearly as pretty.
Tuesday was a full day. I had a 3- or 4-hour session with one of the UTS biology faculty (it went well, I think) then met with the life science faculty at the end of the day to talk about opportunities for collaborative work. I think it went really well.
Then Wednesday was even more full! Tim had a similar schedule to mine (his talk session shared with Prof. Aka, the humanities chair who had done a photo project on the history of Gunung Tambawa). Then a meeting with Social Science faculty for collaboration potential. Then back to SMK Al-Kahfi to work with the school students. Then back to UTS where we had an interview with the Rector and Rinni, the biology faculty, for the UTS YouTube channel production.
Tuesday was a full day. I had a 3- or 4-hour session with one of the UTS biology faculty (it went well, I think) then met with the life science faculty at the end of the day to talk about opportunities for collaborative work. I think it went really well.
Then Wednesday was even more full! Tim had a similar schedule to mine (his talk session shared with Prof. Aka, the humanities chair who had done a photo project on the history of Gunung Tambawa). Then a meeting with Social Science faculty for collaboration potential. Then back to SMK Al-Kahfi to work with the school students. Then back to UTS where we had an interview with the Rector and Rinni, the biology faculty, for the UTS YouTube channel production.
Thursday was all about bees! We took a couple hour drive to a forest where a union of honey collectors collectively manages a forest with wild (native) Apis dorsata population. The honeycombs can apparantly get up to 2m long (they had been harvested only a couple months ago, so were only a couple feet long in the area we visited). They are 20+ meters up in very old trees and the collectors climb the trees using bamboo poles. It must be something. And not very safe. I'm not sure how often they lose people but they said they do.
From there we went to another village where a local collective keeps Trigona bees. We visited a farmer who says there are nine species on Sumbawa and he has at least five at his house. Super-cool.
From there we went to another village where a local collective keeps Trigona bees. We visited a farmer who says there are nine species on Sumbawa and he has at least five at his house. Super-cool.
And, in between all of these great days, we had so many meals with faculty, with administration, with staff and with students.
Plus they have some little videos of our talks on their Instagram channel. Not sure if this will workk, but I'll link them here
It was sad when it was time to say goodbye