Summers work in Indonesia profiled with slideshow of new village murals
A fingernail of a moon hung in the sky as a small group of Americans and Indonesians gathered in the village to join hands and dance on a dusty road that dead-ended at the sea.
Rhythmic music blasted from a large boom box set on someone’s porch. Dozens more villagers appeared, some joining in. Round and round we went — step, step, kick, kick — smiling into the darkness, drinking in the night air. Every few rotations, Will Forrester, a Vashon artist, broke from the circle, turned to the dozen or so children watching us and performed a Kevin Bacon-inspired dance from “Footloose.” The children laughed uproariously.
Save for Forrester’s comedic touches, this was the modero, a traditional Indonesian folk dance. And for the tiny village of Taima on a remote peninsula in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, our bilateral street dance marked the culmination of an arduous but ultimately life-affirming project.
For the past six days, a handful of us — working on behalf of the Alliance for Tompotika Conservation (AlTo) and under Forrester’s patient tutelage — had joined forces with several Indonesians to paint a mural celebrating the region’s rich biological diversity. Another group, working simultaneously, had created a mural in Teku, a village 25 miles away.
It had been sticky, sweaty, messy work, made complicated by the complete lack of modern conveniences — electricity, running water, a hardware store. But now, vibrant paintings graced the sides of two primary schools in a part of Indonesia that is, at once, biologically rich and under enormous pressure from nickel mining companies, logging companies and the palm oil industry.
Marcy Summers, a Vashon resident who has given over her life to trying to protect this biological hotspot, was pleased with the results. As she took in the mural in Taima — the docile face of an anoa, the sweep of a colorful hornbill, a sea turtle clambering towards the ocean, a chicken-sized maleo laying its prized egg — she smiled.
“I think it’s fabulous,” she said.