Bajau People of Sulawesi

In December 2014 I travelled to the remote island of Hoga – part of the Wakatobi archipelago off the South East corner of Sulawesi. Essentially I was there collecting marine footage for Earth Touch. While there I met Melody Lynch who was living in a small Bajau community as part of her fellowship program. I spend many days filming the Bajau people in their beautiful stilt village of Sampela and also out fishing and sailing around the immediate area as they showed me their prowess in the water. Bajau are renowned free divers and I personally witnessed divers descending easily to 20 meters without the aid of fins or flippers.

While most Bajau now live in houses built on stilts over shallow water, some Bajau are essentially boat dwellers, spending much of their lives at sea. Among the Bajau boat dwellers, local communities consist of scattered groups made up of families whose members regularly return, between intervals of fishing, to a common anchorage site.

Although traditionally Bajau are subsistence fishermen, today, fishing is primarily for sale at markets. Much of the catch is preserved by salting or drying. In some cases turtles are also caught and kept until an appropriate feasting time (such as the marriage of a son) – to the dismay of marine conservationists. I actually witnessed this myself – a poor Hawksbill Turtle kept in grim conditions to be eaten at some future date. The boats that are used as family dwellings vary greatly in size and style. In Indonesia and Malaysia, boats generally average 10 meters in length and 2 meters in width.

It is with eager anticipation that I return to Sulawesi later this year to follow up on this project……….

Written by Stewart Whitfield

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these. George Washington Carver