There is malaria here, they told me last night. Sitting bathed in chemicals this morning, the mosquitos were a-buzzing. SLAP. The grandmother killed another one on her arm. I asked why they don’t use repellent.
‘No money,’ replied the son.
When I left I gave money enough to buy plenty of repellent for the whole family.
Kringa family
I stayed with a family of subsitance farmers. Everything they gave me to eat they had grown or caught. They had grown the rice, grown the vegetables and caught the fish. They make their cash by selling the odd coconut. It hit me like a hammer – what it really means to be a subsistence farmer. They have NO money, and live from day to day. These are the people that will be hit first and hit hardest by climate change – and they are the ones that have done least to cause it.
The son would like to see the west one day. I would like to take him to a massive, air-conditioned supermarket in a shopping complex in Australia. Look how far we have removed ourselves from the source of our food in the west. The son wouldn’t know which planet he has come to.
Today I crawled up and over the last of the hills of the mountainous island of Flores. Rather than catch the boat to the next island, I flopped onto a bed in a hotel next to the harbour. Flores has worn me out!
On the way to Larantuka
