Spirals of community life

I am holding onto two of the spikes of the spider shell's shell.
It is cracked open so you can see the spirals leading up to the top of the shell.

The spider shell is a marine animal whose shell has a line of 7 spikes sticking out. The shell and the animal inside spirals up to a pinnacle.

Spider shell visible at the top of frame. This
underwater photo was taken around high tide.

The animal has two long, flexible shafts that can protrude out of the shell and retract. At the end of these are eye balls. Spider shells also have one leg which they stick out of the shell and use to move, quite effectively.  On February 13, I helped our neighbours prepare this delicacy as part of long and ongoing preparations for an April wedding.

Cracking open part of the shell reveals the spirals inside.

As the trailer load of shells indicates, we were preparing the meat on bulk.  Apparently, the spider shells had been gathered at low tide, a long way out on the reef. 

Once brought back to the land, the preparation process begins with [ketuk] breaking open the shells in order to expose and extract the animal from the shell. 

 We got the spider shells out of buckets (see blue bucket full of spider shells and empty red bucket). We held them on the anvil ( Nek As is wearing a glove to hold the spider shell) and then bashed (ketuk) them with the hammer. Then we threw the shells onto the trailer in the foreground.

Extracting the meat

The shell is extremely strong. Even experienced hands like Nek Neng and Nek As required at least 2 or 3 very sharp hammer blows to break a shell open. With this number, I could crack open the small shells, but I needed generally at least 4-6 blows for the larger shells.

After cracking open the shells and taking out the animal inside, the women cleaned off (rawat [sic.]) the ‘crap’ [tahi]; and finally rinsed [bilas] the white meat.

Rawat (taking care of) the meat, involving separating entrails etc.

Rawat: the white meat is kept, while the entrails etc. are pushed
 into the hole in the middle of the table, so they fall ino the tray below.

The two women dressed in blue to the left of the frame are rinsing (bilas or cuci) the meat.
The pink and blue house in the background, Ocean Villa, is where I'm staying.

Spider shell meat has many uses.

Shell

Nek As told me they also used to get the shell of a young spider shell, clean it and polish it, and sell it to white people (orang putih) on West Island for 3 ringgit.

Gong gong just taken out of the cauldron and
 strained of the water in which they were boiled.

(“Ringgit” could refer to the currency during the Clunies Ross times, but, seeing as it sold to ‘foreigners’, as it were,  it probably refers to “pounds” or “dollars”. Indeed, people still use the term “ringgit” for dollars”.)

Food and bait

Male spider shells are not consumed but can be used for bait.My Blog “Teach a man to fish” shows how spider shell meat and entrails are  used for bait. The entrails, by themselves can be used to attract fish while angling (in Australian English this is called "burley"). 

Female spider shells we were preparing are specifically referred to as female spider shells.

The legend of gong-gong

...here's some they prepared earlier. From boiled to dried gong gong.

So how did Cocos Malays find out spider shells are edible? Nek Iwat (owner of a local store) related a local legend to Monika. Originally, he said, locals had only used spider shell for bait. An Indonesian told the locals on Home Island that humans could eat spider shell too. And that man’s name was “Gong Gong”. It didn’t sound like a common Indonesian name, so Monika asked if the man might have been ethnically Chinese (as some locals claim they were descendants from the Chinese Indonesians). No, she was told, he was an Indonesian from Banten.

Fried gong gong makes a nice, crunchy snack.
It tastes very similar to crackling.

Another version of the story comes from Haji Wahid. According to him, "Gong Gong" is the name of a Singaporean Chinese who came to Home Island. He was connected with Clunies-Ross (the last 'king' of Cocos), as Clunies-Ross shipped the coconuts to Singapore.

Finally, Nek Kaya told Monika that it was a visitor or visitors from Australia who first started eating gong-gong. Home Islanders learned from them. Whatever the origins, it happened that we were extracting the meat for food.

Ways to prepare gong-gong

As food, gong gong has many uses, people happily listed to me. You can use gong gong for soup. You can dry it for later use. You can also fry it.

A line from the Cocos School Song, recited at school assemblies, extolls spider shell soup.

Gong gong Crackers (Kerupuk gong gong)

Gong gong Crackers (Kerupuk gong gong)

We were extracting gong gong for use later as sate (little bits of meat speared on wooden stick and barbecued over a fire). The meat was then frozen to be defrosted and cooked later.

Preparation of gong gong is labour intensive. Harvesting it at low tide, hauling it back to land, cracking it open, cleaning, to washing takes a lot of time and energy. Monika heard that there is a local couple who actually specialise in doing it, and sell it for $25/bag. They go further out to get big gong gong. So why didn't the people who taught me to crack open gong gong shell just buy it?

Onions, carrots, rice, and spider shell meat. Put them
 together, and you've got gong gong soup.

I think it is because the gong gong we were preparing will be used for the wedding. This wedding often comes up when people talk to me. The wedding they refer to is the wedding of Ashari, the grandson of Nek As, in April. With preparations starting at least two months earlier, this wedding (like most first marriages apparently) will be a huge event for the community. The celebrations, I’m told, will last a week. So, everyday, close friends and family are helping out at Ashari's parents house, giving their time and energy to  prepare for the festivities. In 'return', they are given drinks and, if they happen to be around in the evening, fed. Giving and receiving is already occurring on a large scale at this house and it will increase as we get closer to the wedding.

The spirals of the spider shell might make a good metaphor for the wedding preparations. Initially involved in the preparations are family and close friends. As the wedding approaches, more people will help out. Before the wedding, many Cocos Malays who have emigrated will also return for the rituals. Eventually, the whole community will be involved.

Teach a man to fish

Haji Wahiib teaching fishing, Cocos-style 

 We know this planet as EARTH. But over 70% of the surface of our planet is water and within that water exists 90% of all living creatures. Life on this planet began in the water and the oceans of this world are vital to our existence. Our planet should be called OCEAN. (Glen Cowans, Beyond the Edge, 2009)

Sundays on Home Island are seemingly devoted to relaxing. The ferry doesn’t run and the lagoon is criss-crossed by fishing boats. The upshot of this for me is that while Saturday might have been more cement (see Blog “Laying some foundations”), Sunday was fishing. Haji Wahiib, who is also a captain on the ferry,  had taken me under his wing and invited me to accompany him fishing. This was a great privilege, as tourists pay a lot for this kind of experience. It would also be my first fishing trip on a boat. “Where will we go?” I asked. “I’ll wait and see; it depends on the wind and the tide”.

Fishing was very relaxing but eventful. Everyone knows, it appears, that you shouldn't take bananas on boats. I won't dwell on how bananas are successfully transported around  the world and accept the taboo as fact. In any case, I hadn't heard about it and transgressed the rule by taking a banana on the boat. As a result, apparently, the boat almost capsized. I stood up to cast my rod just as a 1ft wave came from nowhere to slightly upset my balance. I tumbled and the boat almost came on top of me, taking our catch, fishing gear and Haji Wahiib with it. Thankfully Haji Wahiib responded quickly and righted the balance. Then, we spotted turtles. Jumping in to photograph them, I got quite close and could see the head and shell but none of the pictures could be found when I got home. They also swam off extremely quickly. Obviously, they were hantu (ghosts).

Back to more worldy matters...As I walked home through the village, Nek Kyya called out "balek mancing" (finished from fishing)--it's a kind of idiom.We ended up with quite a bounty, most of which will be placed in the freezer for dinners during the week. Haji Wahiib’s wife, Hajah Atie, is a talented cook and we have engaged her to prepare meals for us. A few guys I have spoken to say they have large freezers full of fish, obtained from angling around the lagoon, and I have noticed these large freezers in a couple of houses. I’d like to see how common this is.

The photographs below document the day, while AV footage combines two separate incidents--a reef shark that got away and a sweet-lipped emperor that didn't.

Connecting boat trailer to 4-wheeler

Lowering boat at ramp 

Kepiting ketam balong (land crab) to attract fish

Spreading land crab to attract fish.

Hook has octopus for the littler fish to nibble on. Then gong-gong (spider shell) for the larger ones

Ikan gerapu (Rock cod); meat is soft and great to make ikan sambal (a spicy condiment) but scaling is difficult, so we returned these to the lagoon.

Ikan babi (trigger fish)

Ikan kakap kuning (Sweet lipped emperor)

Ikan mak keripuk (wress)

 Later on...Haji Wahiib and his wife Hajah Atie, who turned part of the catch into a delicious dinner

Fishing has contributed significantly to the diet in the past and today. PJ recalled to me that in his youth:

[We fished] on the lagoon mainly. Most men went every weekend because every single weekend we had to go to South Island to feed the chooks [chickens] because we had a pondok [beach shack]. So on the way back we would fish. We would anchor the boat to fish. Once you got extra you share it around. And when you cook it you put extra oil it will last a couple of days. My parents said as long as you don't touch it [the fish], it will last.... [We did] not fish for fun that time. 

When, in mid-February 2014, volcanic dust from an eruption in Indonesia saw flights to Cocos Islands cancelled, Pak Imannya said even if there are no shipments, and fresh food doesn't arrive, he joked "don't worry, here in Cocos we have plenty of fish". But I think this reflected a truth, fish are truly plentiful. But fishing is not just about survival, it also says a lot about society and culture.

Woman (left) and man (right) fishing at beach

Fishing plays an important role in the reciprocal economy. I will explain, in another Blog, that an economy of gift giving sits alongside the capitalist economy on Home Island. Cocos Malays returning, taking the flight to mainland can often be seen carrying eskies (large Styrofoam boxes) full of fish, I think to give to relatives. In this gift-giving economy, fish are crucial. Put another way, fish are often gifts.

Fishing reflects a gender divide. Angling is largely undertaken by adult men. You can see women and children fishing, casting from the shore sometimes. I've also been told that women do go fishing on the boats. However, I have seen no women fishing out on the lagoon. While women are highly integrated into the capitalist labour market (see the photos in Blog “Earning a Living”), fishing seems to be something of an obsession for men. This might compare to rearing roosters for Balinese men, surfing for surfers, or motorcycle maintenance for bikers.

Fishing is a meaningful activity. Getting money from the ATM is not something about which much significance is placed. It is mostly an ends oriented, instrumental action. For people on the mainland, when you add the cost (petrol, bait etc.) and effort (usually several hours) involved, fishing makes no sense. It would be more efficient in time and money to buy fish from a professional fisherman. But a different kind of rationality dominates in angling. The point is to do things the right way, and the right way is for a man to go and fish for his family. From this perspective, fishing is eminently sensible. On Home Island, it might also make sense from a 'rational' economic perspective, as meat is dear and fish are plentiful.

None of this, of course, is exotic. Fishing resonates in many other cultures, as books, magazines, and a huge international industry attests to. History supports the point; we could look to the Christian tradition. Aspiring to escape what they saw as religious persecution,the Puritan forefathers approached King James I to endorse their project of settling in the New World. When his royal majesty was told the little band proposed to support itself by fishing, he exclaimed : "So God have my soul, 'tis an honest trade! 'Twas the Apostles' own calling." James was probably alluding to Matthew 4:18-20, one of my favourite New Testament passages:

Now as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon who was called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. And He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men."  Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.

The symbolism wouldn’t have worked if Peter and Andrew had been butchers or mowers! While the specific symbolic significance clearly differs between cultures, looking at the Christian tradition shows that the appeal of fishing as a symbol is clearly not limited to the Cocos Malays.

Finally, in the broader context of human culture, oceans have played a crucial role. Incas and Aztecs built civilizations in mountains. The Mongols built a civilisation on grasslands. Generally, however, civilisations have been developed in river valleys (Ancient Egypt on the Nile; Mesopotamia built around the Tigris and Euphrates). Sometimes these are a fair way up river, such as Indus and Angkor. Others are near the sea. The Indian Ocean has provided a freeway of sorts for trade in goods and ideas for two millennia. It was in this context that the Cocos Keeling island were inhabited in 1826. Through the fish and trade the Indian Ocean has supported the Cocos Malays and peoples on its shores in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

In sum, fishing for Cocos Malays, as in many other societies, is much more than an activity sourcing fish from the sea. However, to understand what fishing means among the Cocos Malays, I need to go much deeper than these opening observations. I feel confident that, if I can explain fishing better, I’ll be able to explain Cocos Malay culture better too.

(For anglers who might be reading this Blog, I am learning about fishing as we go. Anyway, in the fishing excursion pictured above, we used mono line. We used no sinkers and, after we lost our rigs on the bombies (protruding reef and coral), no swivels; just the hook and bait. The idea was to get the bait to move around, attracting the smaller fish, and then the sweet lips we were after. Haji Wahid used a hand line; I used a small rod. The boat was anchored and the water was probably 2-4 foot in depth on the mid-tide.)

Postscript March 8: Fishing is real

After I wrote the blog, Monika posted it on Facebook. Hajah Atie was kind enough to comment "this is real":

On a subsequent fishing trip, I also found myself thinking, without reflection, "this is real". 

Haji Wahiib was idly sketching this while passing time. It's a drawing, but fishing is 'real'. You think about fishing even when you are not fishing. It is a deeply meaningful activity.

On the one hand, of course it's real, like your experience of your nose or my experience of the laptop I'm writing on. But there are experiences that strike us humans as much deeper--the kinds of experience or behaviour people are referring to when they say "keep it real" or "the real thing". Haji Wahiib has invited me on another fishing trip, "but no camera" he insists. And now I understand. The camera just gets in the way--on the boat, when I cast the rod, and stop to take photos. It's just a distraction from what really counts; the fishing.

The bird that returns home

Nek Neng

Nek Neng runs short orientations of Home Island. Under the Clunies-Ross dynasty,* he had been trained up as a scuba diver by an American and was put to work maintaining and cleaning the beacons and markers which assist in navigating the lagoon. But, he told me, he got sick of working for almost nothing on the islands. Relatives on the mainland helped organize work for him. He learnt English word-by-word reading newspapers with a dictionary on the side. He started off in Geraldton, then worked in Queensland, on Australia’s Pacific Islands and then landed a job maintaining remote health clinics in Western Australia’s Pilbara and Western Desert regions. He was based in Port Hedland and his job involved driving a Landcruiser to places as remote as Jigalong** transporting heavy supplies and fixing plumbing, electrics, and so on.

Burung main-main

Being a very generous and welcoming gentleman, Nek Neng volunteered to take me on an orientation of Home Island and to a kenduri. This is a funeral ritual, which I will talk about some other time. Men had gathered outside the house wearing sarongs and bright long-sleeved shirts, in the Malay fashion. Inside other men were tahlil (chanting prayer). There I met an animal that was obviously designed as a cross-between a duck, cat and ocean bird. If you haven’t met him yet, let me introduce to you perhaps the world’s greatest pet, man’s other best friend, the Playful Bird (Burung Main-main).

Click to see Playful Bird 'Talking'

According to what the men told me, the Playful Bird comes from Keeling Island.*** Dr Oliver Berry tells me it looks like a Brown Booby and I'm in no position to disagree. The fine specimen pictured above was nipping at my sandals in a manner that was, well, playful. It didn’t mind its owner picking it up. To top it all off, you can eat them too. When I asked if people ate these birds in the old days, and men assured me they had. I couldn’t catch exactly what they were saying then, but it was something along the lines of: with the arrival of government (i.e. 1984, when the Cocos (Keeling) Islands became part of Australia) to eat a Playful Bird was to langgar (break the law). I’d like to think that they just wanted an excuse for not eating such a friendly creature! If you get a baby Playful Bird and raise it, it will always come home. It will fly off in the morning but then, just as surely, will return by the evening.

http://youtu.be/p51sFPZBJ-4

The Playful Bird in Action!

The same could be said for many who have left Home Island. After spending his working life away, Nek Neng wished to retire to his birthplace.  As he was showing me around the places, I was touched by his deep sense of nostalgia and belonging to the island. Perhaps this connection might help explain why, even when speaking Malay, local people refer to their island using the English words “Home Island”.

* The Clunies-Ross dynasty were generations self-styled kings of Scottish origins who controlled the Cocos Malay population and the islands from the 1820s.

** I mentioned Prof Tonkinson’s widely-admired ethnography, The Mardu Aborigines, in my blog "Laying some foundations". Some Mardu lived in Jigalong.

*** The Cocos (Keeling) Islands consists of two atolls—Keeling Island (a single island) and Cocos Islands (comprising many islands, two of which are inhabited).

Laying some foundations: Rapport (i)

Which way forward?

Saturday morning. My first morning of fieldwork, I am lying in bed, wide awake, waiting for the sun to rise. The challenge of building appropriate relations is immediate and continuing, crucial and mostly beyond the fieldworker’s control. And so it is with a touch of apprehension I consider the day ahead. Over the sound of the air conditioner, I hear the solid, continuous, chug-chug-chug of diesel engines. What could it be?

 After breakfasting and showering, I follow the sounds and turning around the corner behold a hive of activity. Two cement mixers are pattering away and plenty of men working around them. It must be around 7am. I am nervous about approaching, but summon up some courage and ask one of the men what is going on. Apparently, this is a community effort to lay the foundations for an extension for a house. A lot of guys are volunteering to help. 

Two cement mixers

An incredible amount of synchronisation and coordination goes on; it does not seem that anyone is ‘in charge’ but the cement mixing and laying proceeds like clockwork. A man with a fishing shirt on was directing us. An older chap always has to check that I had put the required 11 shovels of sand to the one bag of cement mix and 3 buckets of water. Nek Shazwan (the father of the male owner of the house) is working the mixer. Once the mix is good, Nek Shazwan tips the mixer so the wet concrete falls into a waiting wheelbarrow. Four guys man the wheelbarrows. They push the wheelbarrows over to the foundations area and tip the cement in. Then the guys working at the foundations flatten out the concrete. Meanwhile, the concrete mix guys take turns at emptying the bag of mix into the mixer. Other guys are carting the cement mix bags from the piles to the mixer; others are bringing around drinks. Some are just resting, taking turns at the work. The other mixer has the same system. Over the morning the mound of sand, bags of concrete, and buckets of water are transformed into part of the foundations for an extension.

One of my children took this photo from over the road.

Behind the scenes, the women are also ‘in the mix’ as it were. Moni comes to join them, bringing Kiki and Joey. In the kitchen, the wives of the workers are preparing dishes for the men to eat. Some have been brought theirs from home, others prepare them on site. Speaking to Nek Shazwan’s wife and her married daughter Zulaikha at the side of the house, Monika is told that the women of the extended family have been cooking since after the dawn prayers, or about 5am. They begin to bring out their plates and dishes. On the lids of the dishes or the backs of the plates is written the name of the woman or the house number. These are placed under a white tent. It's probably too obvious to say it, but this level of cooperation requires strong social bonds.

Foundations (left background) and white tent (right background)

From a bird’s eye view, the work would look like the inside of a watch. The bag of cement, the shovels of sand and the buckets of water are three wheels attached to cement mixer. After a hundred or so revolutions, a lever is clicked and another wheelbarrow leaves. After a number of wheelbarrows leaving more stacks of cement are brought. All the time a larger wheel is the drinks circulating around the group. Granted the “like clockwork” analogy I’m using is a little stale. But if the reader can persevere with it, the question gets to the heart of anthropology, and thus, what it is to be human.

Guys working around mixer (including me, in white shirt). Women and children in shade to the right.

So to get back to the question, what is determining the movement? In a word, “culture”. Not “culture” as in a listening to a symphony orchestra in Paris culture. But “culture” as in all that information that we learn and share. “Culture” as in that which imparts, in the first place, a sense of responsibility to community; an obligation to give; a connection with ‘family’; languages to talk in; a division of men and women. Delving into the forms these take: who, for example counts as family; what different kinds of uncle are there? What are the responsibilities of the grandmother? This is the job of the anthropologist.

Scrutinizing the work.

And even though the metaphor’s effect has dwindled, I want to ask, who or what is the ‘watchmaker’ that designed all this? God? Evolution? A gene? Now I’ve gone past socio-cultural anthropology, and unfortunately, before I can answer one of humankind’s greatest questions, the foundations are complete and it’s not even 10am.

Spreading the concrete.

The mixers are washed and cough to a halt. My ringing ears thirstily drink in the ensuing quiet. The men make their way over to the tent and stand and sit around the trestle tables. Plastic plates are handed around. Initially no one moves so as not to appear greedy or selfish. Some of the men entreat me, the outsider, to go first and relieve the stand-off. But I’m going to wait. Eventually one gets up, then another, soon there’s a huddle around the table and we are helping ourselves. There is so much to choose from, including such Australian delicacies as meat pies and lamb chops, and international foods such pizza (but no cornflakes). I eat a little bit of rice, sambal, with a side of a small fried fish, a fried chicken wing, and cucumber. This is the kind of food I ate and grew tired of during fieldwork in Indonesia, but how much I have missed it--it actually tastes like 'real food'. The other guys are chatting amongst themselves, and occasionally encouraging each other to eat more. There were a few laughs, but I can’t quite catch the jokes—beyond my language abilities unfortunately. Then men get up for some sweets. Having finished these people begin to announce their departure.

A moment of discussion.

I follow suit, “OK I’m heading home now, balek rumah [heading home]”.

 A younger man, the guy who owns the house, Pak Nabiya, said “banyak, banyak terima kasih [thanks so, so much].

He seemed genuine. A bit overcome I say, in English, “no, thank you for the experience”.

It was meaningful for me on many levels: feeling constructive, building rapport, getting a good sweat and workout as well as a burst blister on the side of my right thumb. It had been very satisfying watching cement gradually filing the allotted space, knowing that the sand I was shovelling was contributing to that. I hope that I have also started to build my relationship in the community.

Initially reticent, the men then came up to get their food.

Anthropology, most textbooks instruct, is dedicated to putting yourself in ‘their’ shoes. To achieve this, the discipline’s principal methodology remains participant-observation. You research a group of people by getting to know them well; you develop trust, understanding, sympathy, and, ideally, empathy. In other words, you create rapport—long term relationships of trust and understanding.

“Rapport” is central to our understanding of anthropological research. For example, a recent anthropology textbook explains “rapport” to undergraduates in even simpler terms:

Ethnographers strive to establish rapport—a good, friendly working relationship based on personal contact—with our hosts (Kottak 2000, 35)

These formulations seem common enough. They make ‘good sense’; we need rapport for ‘good’ fieldwork.

When teaching the importance of rapport in socio-cultural anthropology to undergraduates, the ‘go-to’ text is Geertz’s (1972) “Notes on a Balinese Cockfight”. Ostensibly, Geertz wrote about “deep play”: a cultural disposition by which we get involved way over our heads in games and competitions. Geertz analyses, for example, why a Balinese man bets on a fighting cock that he thinks will lose. But like most other readers, I want to overlook his point. What stands for us is Geertz’s account of how he and his wife Hildred were initially accepted by the villagers. The story has now become part of anthropological lore.

Things didn’t start well for the couple. Geertz describes how he and his wife were initially held at a distance: “everyone ignored us in the way only a Balinese can do”. However, after days of being treated as if they “simply did not exist”,  they had the good fortune to attend a cockfight. These are illegal in Indonesia and the police raided:

People raced down the road, disappeared head first over walls, scrambled under platforms, and folded themselves behind wicker screens, scuttled up coconut trees... Everything was dust and panic."

Husband and wife scurried way, following “another fugitive” who “ducked suddenly into a compound....and we...followed him. As the three of us came tumbling into the courtyard”.

Long story short: “Everyone in the village knew we had fled like everyone else” (Geertz 1972, 4). 

They all knew that the Geertzs had “demonstrated [their] solidarity with what were now [their] co-villagers”. A, a result of this shared experience their relationships changed, literally overnight:

The next morning the village was a completely different world for us. Not only were we no longer invisible, we were suddenly the center of all attention (Geertz 1972, 4).

The shared experience of escaping the police at the cockfight:

was the turning point so far as our relationship to the community was concerned, and we were quite literally "in." The whole village opened up to us, probably more than it ever would have otherwise (Geertz 1972, 4).

Geertz explicitly credits this experience for:

achieving that mysterious necessity of anthropological field work, rapport…It led to a sudden and unusually complete acceptance into a society extremely difficult for outsiders to penetrate. It gave me the kind of immediate, inside-view grasp of an aspect of "peasant mentality" that anthropologists not fortunate enough to flee headlong with their subjects from armed authorities normally do not get (Geertz 1972, 4).

As a result of their cockfight experience, the Geertzs built rapport very quickly and by accident. It’s not always as simple as that. As turned out, helping lay the foundations was not enough to ‘cement’ my position in the community, nor should I have expected it to be. Nevertheless, being the very first morning of my visit, this was a much better start to fieldwork than I could have had hoped for.