The Fever Trail: Goodwill Hunting in Sumatra

No lack of hope. Scott Bass

The Mentawai people, says Griffiths, are naturally friendly and curious, and are hungry to get up to speed with the modern world they get piped into them via satellite dish TV. However, this steep cultural learning curve could lead to ill-planned, unsustainable growth. “You can't rely on regulations here,” says Griffiths. “If we do help to reduce malaria here to a point where it's safe to visit and surf these islands, I would hate to see it go the way of the Nias surf-slum model.”

Griffiths recalls visiting Katiet, the village that fronts Lance's Rights, a few years back. A small village kid, perhaps six or seven years old, ran up to him and chirped in a high gleeful voice: “Fuck you, mate!”

“That kid had been taught to say that by some brain-dead surfer off a boat looking for a laugh. What that surfer didn't realize is that if you treat people like that it won't be long before they mean it.”

Griffiths points to the Maldives as a sustainable tourist model for surfing. Of 200 Maldive atolls, 84 have been developed for tourism under strict guidelines.

“Each resort has been designed with the local culture and carrying capacity in mind so that the local people benefit from high-end tourism but aren't flattened by it,” says Griffiths. “As we move forward here in the Mentawais we have to talk about what's real versus what sells tourist t-shirts. And what's real — like clean water, good nutrition and adequate health care — costs money. Face it: The surf frontier is closed. Spots like Lance’s must be managed or we lose them to overdevelopment.

“There's no way back but there's a right way forward.”

Sunny Sunday afternoon puttering upriver, passing fishing boats and huge lemon-colored butterflies. Squawk of parrots, distant howl of monkey. Thatch-roofed wooden shacks; kids, pigs, goats, drying laundry. Glittering CDs hang from eaves for décor. The banks of the Siberut River are thick with verdant lowland forests, their upper canopies strangled by thick beards of morning-glory creepers. Across our bow a large monitor lizard cruises by, its cruel serpentine head held erect as a periscope. We are a convoy of three large canoes, 15 people in all, loaded to the gunnels with backpacks, camera gear and an arsenal of military-strength mosquito repellents. As part of the Wave of Compassion we are to spend a night in a traditional Mentawai longhouse, called an uma, as guests of an upriver clan. Spirits are high as we embarked on the proverbial three-hour cruise.

Along the way we played a game of spotting perfect boat-wake barrels spinning off at the bend shallows. We passed smiling villagers in sliver-thin canoes laden with rattan, chickens, sago and coconuts. On the distant misty bank I could see the occasional impromptu logging camp, a red bleeding scar of wounded raw earth leading to the water's edge.

After an hour’s travel up the winding tortuous river we pulled up to a small cutout in the embankment. A large contingent of villagers and flower-bedizened Sikerei were waving from the bank.

Ben B goes ballistic. Scott Bass

We greeted our hosts. The shamans, four small muscular men ranging between 40 and 60, were decked out in full ceremonial garb: beads, bells, red hibiscus blossoms and the occasional Timex with frozen hands. Each puffed away merrily on a large smoldering tobacco spliff. They shook hands lightly, their dark bemused eyes sparkling at the sight of our sweaty pale huffing selves struggling up the riverbank. To each of us they said softly “aloeta,” the Mentawai “aloha.”

“These guys were like the jungle equivalent of an NYC rap star,” recalls Strider. “They were buffed and cut, pimping this sick tribal stuff with these amazing tattoos that covered their whole bodies.”

The villagers immediately grabbed our gear and started trucking up into the jungle. We were each given a walking staff made from a freshly cut bamboo pole. We clung to them desperately once we started down the trail; little more than a narrow sluice of shoe-sucking mud cut through the dense jungle foliage.

“The surfers were definitely out of their comfort zone,” laughs Dr. Dave Jenkins, who has spent countless hours in upriver villages running makeshift health clinics. “There was a level of apprehension and some very real dangers out there. It was pretty amusing watching these guys who are such great athletes blurping around in knee-deep mud and falling on their asses.”