Black, white & green all over

They say that England is a land of green rolling hills – well whoever said that had never seen the highlands of Flores. The colours are amazing. In the far distance the mountaintops are covered in dark green trees, and in the foreground invariably there are rice paddies. The rice is grown in small patches so there is always some to plant and some to harvest at any given time. The youngest rice is a pale yellowy green and sparsely planted letting the water beneath reflect the blue skies, whilst the full grown rice tightly fills the paddies with the brightest neon green. This plethora of colour is reflected in the water the rice grows in & makes the whole vista shimmer & shine like a leprechaun attached to the national grid.

Speaking of leprechaun, I saw the end of the rainbow the other day! Driving alongside a gorge a huge rainbow filled the sky and swept down into the gorge & I could actually pinpoint where it ended. Amazing.

Colour is also important to the people here, but not in such vivid tones. The local weaving (ikat) is dark with just the odd splash of colour. But more importantly to them, it seems, is the colour of skin. As a white person, I am a bulai (meaning albino) and my friends and colleagues are most concerned when I get a suntan (“why do you do that to your lovely white skin”). In fact white skin is the grail here & the people take many measures to achieve it from skin whitening moisturisers to skin bleaching. Indonesians on other islands can regularly be heard to say that the people of Flores are “very black”, and even within Flores individuals will often be described as “the black one”. I am not sure if this is racist – it certainly isn’t spoken or taken as a negative – but grouping people by the colour of their skin is surely a bad habit that needs to stop.