Imagining the communities of Moa Island
A news article about a regency-level election in eastern Indonesia reminds me of a trip to Tiakur, the capital of Southwest Maluku regency of the remote Moa Island. The trip was a few years ago in 2017. The hours needed for this trip, the secluded islets, and the minimum infrastructure, made me reflect on Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities.
The Southwest Maluku regency is part of Maluku province. I have troubles visualising this fact. Why? Well, if you have any chance to look at Indonesia's map, Maluku province mostly occupies the northern part of the country. It is relatively close to Mindanao in the Philippines. Meanwhile, Southwest Maluku regency is far away to the south, which is close enough to Australia. If truth be told, this regency is closer to Darwin than Jakarta. The sea distance of what is called the Maluku administrative area is shocking for me.
It takes around 24 hours on a commercial vessel from Ambon, the provincial capital of Maluku, to reach Moa Island, the island that hosts Southwest Maluku regency’s capital, Tiakur. Yet, high sea tides often postpone sea routes. Flights from Ambon to Moa on propeller aircraft have been available since 2016, shortening the travelling time to only 1.5. hours. That is good news. The bad news is air carrier frequently cancels flights as the number of passengers are too low.
I did not take the sea route. I would love to, but the sailing schedule just did not correspond to my itinerary. So, I hopped on the propeller plane of Trigana Air, departing from Ambon, which is -by the way- about 4 hours flight from Jakarta. The flight was okay but I was a bit nervous as the airline was not the most recommended yet the only one that served the route.
Moa islands' coastline
Southwest Maluku is a new regency established in 2008, following a decentralisation policy enacted in 1999. The policy has created a proliferation of new provinces and regencies. The current Southwest Maluku administrative area is previously under the Western Southeast Maluku regency, which is also a new regency following the proliferation policy. In total, the Southwest Maluku regency has 48 islands, 31 of which are uninhabited. Administratively, the regency consists of 17 kecamatan or subdistricts. Moa Island is selected to host the capital Tiakur because it is located at the centre of the 48 islands.
Due to its topography, Southwest Maluku regency is also called Nusa Paikra, which means lined islands. Physical contacts among people in the 17 different subdistricts are very minimum. Although sea transportation is improving, passengers may be stranded for days on an island waiting for the ship to unload their baggage or the weather to get milder. It is roughly safe to estimate a two-week cycle of sailing schedules.
In Tiakur, I was involved in a volunteering activity, which engaged school teachers in the area. I did similar activities a few times. So, congregating the teachers are often not the hard part. They usually are glad to attend any kind of capacity building activities.
Tiakur is a different case. The teachers were happy to come and participate I could tell. Yet, it was not an easy trip for them to come to Tiakur, and Moa in general. Some participants reside in other islands. So, for a two-day-event, they need to prepare for a one or two-weeks trip. Because, correct, they have to adjust to the vessel or boat’s schedules. Most of the people I met, who were participants in the activity that my friends and I organised, rarely come to Moa. Let alone visitors like me and my friends, the locals are rarely met as they live on different islands.
Given the remoteness, life in Moa is not easy. Some infrastructure advancements have only started to exist when Tiakur becomes the capital. Previously, the capital is located in Kisar, which is Moa's neighbouring islet. Following the administrative change of capital, people move to Moa. Soon after, office buildings were constructed for civil servants to claim desks. Locals also have started to enjoy some kilometres of asphalt road though they can barely haul the road due to a limited supply of fuel. Again, a remote location has forced Moa to rely on deliveries of basic supplies, from food to fuel, from other places by sea vessels. The problem is, when extreme weather hits, no ship will come to the dock. None are supplies.
Telecommunication networks are intermittent. A local told me an interesting thing: people own mobile or smartphones not to make calls but to play the installed games.
The most iconic in Moa island is Gunung Kerbau or Buffalo Mount. The mount, whose elevation fits better to a hill, is surrounded by savanna where numerous buffalos are freely wandering. Buffalos in Moa are among the top national livestock commodities.
There are more buffalos than human in Moa. Yes, you read it right. According to figures from the statistic agency, the total population of Southwest Maluku reaches 72,774 people in 2016, of which 7,257 people are residing in Moa. Meanwhile, there are 10,531 buffalos in Moa in 2016.
Being an island, Moa offers sightseeing pleasures. Also, similar to other Maluku areas occupied by colonial forces in the past, Moa and the subdistrict called Pulau-Pulau Terselatan host some remnants of a fortress built by VOC (the Dutch East India Company).
Despite the potential, the local administration seems struggling in developing this regency. They remain wavering of what images to present to promote Moa in particular and the regency in general. Moa will likely develop into an island of a domestic immigrant because it hosts the administrative Tiakur capital. A cultural gap and shock, however, should not be a worry. People there are adaptive. I derive this conclusion from a simple comparison. Like their fellow Mollucans in the northern part of Maluku province, people in Tiakur are using many European words. In daily conversation, it is not occasional to hear them say ‘danke’. It is not a mistake to guess the ‘danke’ as Deutsch’s word for ‘thank you’. Yet, it is historically a loanword of ‘dank je’ of the Dutch, which has a long history of the expedition for spices in the Maluku areas hundreds of years ago.
In my mind, Southwest Maluku will be the most up-to-date example of how a new regency in Indonesia is built from the scratch, involving communities who have barely seen each other. Imagining that they are tied together for living on islands forming a line is probably what binds them together.
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