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Andre Graff was island hopping in Indonesia in 2005 when he had an epiphany. The Frenchman felt that it was time for a change.

“I thought, OK, that’s enough,” Graff said. “It felt wrong to look at all those poor people like animals in the zoo. And this decision changed my life.”

He arrived in East Nusa Tenggara and was enamored by the place. He has since made it his mission to build wells — now numbering 22 — in some very remote communities in the area, mostly on the island of Sumba, and also on Savu, Flores and Alor. He thinks of this project as his way of helping ease the living situation of the villagers.

While Graff said this was not a lot, he said that “it is a beautiful start.”

Graff now spends most of his time living a pared down lifestyle in Sumba, with only his computer, a camera and some clothes with him.

Prior to his decision to settle there, he worked as a hot-air balloon pilot and instructor in Alsace, France, for 22 years.

“After I had visited Indonesia and went back to France [in 2005], I wanted to send the many pictures I took to the people, but then I realized that many of them didn’t even know that a mail system exists,” Graff said.

He decided to give the photos in person. “I came back [to Sumba] with 3,547 pictures and gave them to the people,” he said. “Now, I still have around 200 left, which I will hopefully give to their rightful owners in the next couple of months, and then this project will be finished.”

The water well projects came about because Graff wanted to do more for villagers. But unlike other groups, like nongovernment organizations that choose to focus on education, he was more concerned about the basics.

“What I can give them is time,” he said, “Time to do other things, maybe even time for themselves, because normally, they have to walk a long way — kilometers even — to get water and that sometimes takes hours.”

Graff’s project is far from done. He is still working to build more wells with the villagers. Their efforts are an improvement over the watering homes that the locals had been using. These new reservoirs are constructed with concrete rings, making them last longer. They are also cleaner, as weeds, parasites and vermin can be more easily disposed of due to the engineering.

“The biggest advantages are these,” Graff said. “Every well is conical, which means that you can set your foot on the rings, which allow the people to climb down and up the well like Spiderman.”

Graff said this design of wells also prevents accidents. In many villages in East Nusa Tenggara, cleaning or digging deeper wells have resulted in injuries, even deaths, because people use ropes or bamboo canes to go down the well.

“Whenever I have built a new well, it is such a pleasure that the people know they are getting clear water,” he said. “It may not be drinkable water yet, but it is a step up from the dirty holes they had before.”

Graff has taken photos of his life on the island these are currently on display at the French Cultural Center (CCF) in an exhibition titled Surprising Sumba. Among the stunning photographs are snapshots of villagers’ traditional houses, tombs where their ancestors are buried, as well as scenes of every day life. Visitors can also see the progress of Graff’s well projects.

The Frenchman has managed to capture aspects of rituals and traditions in Sumba, including a small collection of several people in a trance-like state.

“Sometimes, when it becomes very hot, the people in Sumba enter trance, a phenomena called troppo , which also happens in Australia,” Graff said.

The people who are in a trance lose all sense of reality and sometimes stay like this for days. Allegedly, one way to ease their altered state is for them to dive into mud, which is said to help release tense muscles and relax the nervous system. While they are doing so, others watch and keep them company, mostly because they feel sorry for the poor souls.

The photo exhibition also includes a series of personal portraits depicting everyday life. One photograph shows a woman picking lice out of an elderly lady’s hair.

Others show young girls performing a traditional dance to celebrate the end of the harvest period and men working on the rice fields or selling coconuts for extra income.

Several photographs are dedicated to the children of Sumba’s villages.

“The ‘jungle children’ of Sumba have such strong personalities,” Graff said.

He added that they learn about the hardships of life and grow up losing friends to malaria and other diseases. This is simply part of their daily lives from a very early age.

“Sometimes, an 8-year-old surprises me with a reaction I myself would probably only have showed when I was 20,” Graff said.

The exhibition shows that the people of Sumba still live in the most traditional ways. Their houses have thatched roofs and they are sometimes still at war with neighboring tribes.

But there is no stopping progress even in the most remote villages. This is most evidently portrayed by the exhibition’s masterpiece: a photograph showing a gray-haired lady holding a mobile phone in her hand for the very first time.

Graff said that the beauty of original village life and progress go hand in hand.

“It is all mixed up in a very fast movement,” he said. “In the five years I have lived in my village, the evolution has been twice as fast as the one I have seen in my village in Alsace over the course of 45 years.”

Graff mostly self-finances his projects. He also gets some help from an organization in France. To make things more official, however, he decided to establish the Sumba Island Humankind Foundation.

“I am happy about it,” he said, “because I hope it will generate the possibility to do even more.”

For the time being, Graff doesn’t feel like returning to France.

“In the past, I had a brilliant life among rich people and I did many crazy things related to my field of work with the hot-air balloons,” he said. “For example, I flew with my hot-air balloon above the Great Wall of China.”

But he explained that things changed in 2003 after he suffered from lyme disease — a bacterial infection transmitted through the bite of infected ticks — that almost saw him bound to a wheelchair

He had to give up his job. But instead of sinking into despair, Graff viewed the chance as his ticket to freedom. When he arrived at East Nusa Tenggara, that was when everything made sense for him.

“It was like 22 years ago, when for the first time in my life I was in a hot-air balloon,” he said. “I just knew that I would do this. It was not even a wish, it was a certitude.

“The same happened when I came to East Nusa Tenggara. It was just clear for me that the new period of my life was in Sumba. I don’t know if this will last for another 22 years, but for now, this is where I belong.”
Surprising Sumba

Photo exhibition by Andre Graff

 

CCF Jakarta, Jl. Salemba Raya No. 25, Central Jakarta Tel. 021 390 8585 (Until March 7)

Jl. Wijaya I No. 48, South Jakarta Tel. 021 720 8133 (Until March 21)

http://web.me.com/graffounet/Site/SumbaSurprenante_.html
Below, some of the photos that comprise the Surprising Sumba exhibition in Jakarta. Photos courtesy of Andre Graff
> Continued on C2