Smiles all around

Tom Cockrem finds a warm welcome in the island of Sumba's silent villages.

Sumba: the name sounds so primal, more resonant of Africa than Asia. But here I am, a mere 40-minute flight east of Bali on an island few Bali boppers ever visit. Had you landed in a spaceship, you'd be hard pressed to ascertain where on earth you had lobbed.

I am in the town of Waingapu, Sumba's capital, on the island's east coast. It's more a sprinkling of buildings than a town and the nearest thing it has to a CBD is a market. There is little that informs of Indonesia since the inhabitants look like Melanesians - perhaps an indication that we are close to Papua New Guinea.

But you don't come to Sumba for Waingapu, as captivatingly offbeat as it is. You come for the villages: the so-called "silent villages of Sumba". And in the hope the culture that produced them has remained intact.

My hopes are high. I am, or seem to be, the only foreign visitor in town and I'm looked at by the locals as if I really am from Mars.

There is one other reason why you'd want to visit Sumba: the textiles. In particular the ikat, which has achieved international acclaim for its spectacular and intricate designs and impossibly perfect weave. Animal and vegetal motifs are used, along with human figures that have attitude and style. Only natural dyes are used. The rich rust red comes from the sap of the kombu tree and the blue from fermented indigo.

Ikat designs are created by masking parts of the threads before they are dyed, an incredibly arduous and highly skilled task. Dutch ethnographers made a point of collecting Sumba's royal textiles early in the 20th century and many examples are now in museums. In the craft shops in Bali it's the gorgeous Sumba ikat that is most prominently displayed to attract passing trade.

Ikat cloth, as tribal legend dictates, is produced in villages near the coast. One such is Rende. To get there from Waingapu, it's best to hire a guide (one is sure to approach you at the market) who will take you by motorbike: a 60-kilometre, bottom-jolting ride.

Is it worth it? Absolutely. Rende is an authentic Sumbanese clan village. It has two parallel rows of massive thatched houses, with peaked roofs soaring up to 20 metres high. Between the rows of houses are tombs. Each one is marked by a limestone slab set atop two limestone supports.

Under these are buried ancestral princes and chiefs who have been deified by death. A single slab weighs about 30 tonnes and is crowned with two tall totems, each intricately carved. The word "silent" is applied to the villages not for morbid reasons but because there are so few folk in residence: some elders, women, children and the family of the raja. Most clan members live outside on the farmlands. The villages are reserved for ceremonial use such as weddings, festivals and funerals. The houses' "steeple" roofs are used as storage vaults for family treasures: tortoiseshell combs, gold implements, gilded garments and turbans