Smorgasboarder_16_March-2013

At what passed for the petrol station, I
started to fill the tank. Something made me
fi ll it right to the top. Lucky I did, as I would
need most of it to get back later in the night.
I found the local Chinese run “ sell
everything” shop and proceeded to clean
them out of whatever I could carry in the
rucksack: tinned strawberry jam from
Australia, tinned NZ butter, Indo bread, tinned
Chinese luncheon meat, and whatever else
could be eaten. The rucksack was almost full
when I left the store and headed off into the
night again, only this time with a headlight to
show the way.
Feeling quite chuffed at my efforts to fi rstly
get into town, and secondly to have such a
treasure of food to return with, I couldn’t wait
to get back to the village for a real feed. After
about an hour on the road I realised I was
horribly lost. To add to that, the rear tyre had
totally gone down, leaving the bike sliding its
arse-end around all over the place, but I had
no option but to keep going... Slowly.
I didn’t even know if I was on the right road,
and was hopelessly lost. In the far distance, I
could see a glow of lights, and made my way
towards them, down a dirt track, ending up
at some sort of mining camp with about 300
guys working there. It seemed to be around
10pm at night, but I was only guessing.
The guys all came racing out to greet me.
Although I couldn’t understand a word of their
dialect, they soon had the rear tyre off and
started fi xing it for me, as the manager of the
mine invited me to sit with them and eat. I
thought the night had been interesting up to
this point… How wrong I was.
Although I had trouble with the dialect,
there was one word I understood only too
well - anging (dog) - and this would be the
centrepiece on the table. When I tried to tell
them in Oz we have dogs as pets, they just
laughed at me. Whether this was because
of the mess I was making of their language,
or the fact we kept them as pets, I will never
know. However, the generosity had been
outstanding in helping me with the flat tyre,
so not wishing to offend anyone, I had little
choice but to hoe in and try to forget I was
eating Fido. Let me tell you, dog meat must
be one of the worst meats I have ever tasted.
Even a strong curry would have trouble
masking the flavour, but then again, it was
probably all in my head.
Following dinner, they all pointed to where
I should be heading. As I rode away, I heard
a big cheer from the workers. I thought they
were just giving me a send-off, but no, I
had already started heading in the wrong
direction, and they were yelling trying to point
out my error. But off I went, thinking I was on
the right track.
Simon and Shane, Sumba jungle
“I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IF I
WAS ON THE RIGHT ROAD, AND
WAS HOPELESSLY LOST.”
TALES: BACK IN THE DAY
MAR/APR 2013 | SMORGASBOARDER 109