Suku Laut -Seafarers: Batam, Sumatra

By Wombat | February 25th, 2006 | 2 Comments »

The Suku Laut of Batam Island in Sumatra had lived on boats for generations, but now, the seafaring people are moving onto the land as Fadli reports from Batam.

Portrait of Suku Laut settling on land
Fadli, Batam

Muhammad Din (61), chief of the people of Suku Laut — literally “Sea Tribe” — on Pulau Air Mas, Nongsa district, Batam, was busy stitching his fishing net in the kitchen of his wooden cubicle house. The house was barely furnished, with only a kerosene stove and several plates lying on the floor of its kitchen.

The Suku Laut’s village on Pulau Air Mas, where Muhammad Din and 23 other Suku Laut families now settle, was set up by a non-government organization (NGO), the name of which, unfortunately, has escaped Din’s memory.

There are two compounds in this village. The first is made up of four houses occupied by Muslim families, while the second is made up of Christian families. The population of the village is estimated to be about 100.

Only a short distance away from each other, the Moslem and Christian compounds are separate. Each has their own bathroom, latrine and a place for washing clothes. Din said he did not know why the two compounds had to be separated, but added that the two communities lived in harmony. It is often the case that residents in one community take some water from the well in the other community’s compound if theirs happens to be dry.

“Many Christian residents are either my own siblings or relatives. As I am considered a community elder here, they also come to me for advice. We live in harmony despite our different religions. Anyway, many of us are related in one way or another,” Din told The Jakarta Post recently.

Moving ashore

The Suku Laut people decided to move to a village on land, Din said, after NGOs offered to prepare a village for them. Previously, the Suku Laut did virtually everything on their wooden boats, a practice that had been going on for generations.

Understandably, as they lived on boats, their lives were greatly influenced by the weather and by the direction of the wind. When it was windy and the waves huge — usually between November and March — they would lay anchor close to land. When the sea was calm, they would go fishing around the Riau Islands and sail as far as the South China Sea. Then they would exchange their haul on land for their daily necessities. Some of them even bartered their fish for television sets.

The Suku Laut live on the sea just like people live on land. When there is a wedding, for example, their boats will be positioned in a row next to the boat of the family holding the wedding party. Then they have meals together on their boats. The wedding ceremony is also held on the boat.

Suku Laut women also give birth to babies on their boats. To help the labor process, a midwife is summoned to the boat.

“Many of the people in our ethnic group still live on their boats as they do not want to live on the land,” said Din, who has 14 children, the order of whom he cannot well remember.

Din said he lived on his boat from the time he was born up to late 2002, when he was offered a home on land by an NGO.

“We, the Muslims, got assistance from a Muslim NGO, while the Christians were helped by a Christian NGO. They prepared for us for our homes and donated some money for the schooling of our children,” Din said.
Tough adjustment

For Din, life was very difficult when he and his family first settled on land. After staying in their new home for 2 weeks, he said, he took his children to the sea again. Unfortunately, his children preferred to live on land.

“They shouted when a huge wave hit our boat. My youngest child begged that we return to our home on the land. They said they did not like living on the boat,” Din said, laughing.

Finally, Din decided to live on land with his family. The other families, he said, shared a similar experience. Still, most of then go fishing for their livelihood.

Unfortunately, Din said, his people have begun to be culturally transformed after living on the land. Frequent visits by social organizations and publication of their lives in the mass media have made many of them materialistic.
Many of our people, mostly children and teenagers, for example, will openly ask for money when an outsider comes or briefly interviews them. They will even name the amount they want. “It is common practice here for our people to ask outsiders for money because money is hard to find,” said Din, who realizes that this is not a good practice.

The village on Air Mas island is isolated, and only accessible by chartered boat. It takes about 30 minutes to reach the island from Batam, and the fare is Rp 75,000. The Suku Laut ethnic group is found only around Riau Islands. They live in the waters between the islands making up this archipelagic province. Their population is estimated to be in the thousands. They are not a very religious people.

Ndut (27), a member of this ethnic group, said nobody cared about teaching them good manners. That’s why their behavior and words often made outsiders think they are rude people, he added.

“Perhaps because this island is far from the city center. We don’t get much attention,” said Ndut.

“I hope that some of our teenagers can get a job like other people on the land, for example, in an electronics company or in a government office. It is true that they are not sufficiently educated, but giving them jobs is important to introduce them to a normal and decent life,” he said.

Although the mother tongue of the Suku Laut people is like Malay spoken at a faster speed, most of them speak Indonesian in their daily lives.