Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly sequence by which NPR’s worldwide workforce shares moments from their lives and work world wide.
After a six-hour drive on the island of Sulawesi, my colleague Adi Renaldi and I arrived on the entrance of a village in the midst of a secluded cove.
From there, our water taxi — a motorized wood longboat — took us down a slender waterway, the place we noticed mangroves thriving within the murky saltwater. As our boat rounded a nook at sundown, the village of Torosiaje got here into view, with its colourful stilted homes perched over the Molucca Sea.
Southeast Asia’s Indigenous Bajau individuals are traditionally often called nomadic sea fishers. Many in Indonesia now reside extra settled lives alongside the nation’s coastlines, however Torosiaje is exclusive — it was based in 1901 and constructed on the water. The ocean lapped beneath as we walked throughout bridges connecting the village’s homes, outlets, and faculties.
The individuals in Torosiaje acknowledge how essential mangroves are to their livelihood and survival. We got here right here to speak to the pinnacle of the conservation efforts. By cultivating mangrove timber, the Bajau have been in a position to convey again fish whose habitats had dwindled and defend the shoreline from erosion. We discovered about their conventional makes use of of mangroves, utilizing seeds to make cleaning soap, medicines, skincare, even flour for desserts.
The origin of the Bajau just isn’t precisely identified. One legend says {that a} sultan’s princess was kidnapped, and he despatched his strongest males to seek for her. They did not dare return with out the princess, in order that they wandered the seas as nomads, and the Bajau right here made a brand new dwelling among the many mangroves.
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