Trashing the Place

Just like every morning, Un wakes up at sunrise. He gets up and makes the short walk down to the beach to see if the surf’s up in front of his village, Katiet. Today it is. “HTs” or “Lance’s Right”, that legendary definition of Mentawai perfection featured in just about every surf video made in the past decade, is firing.

Four boats are already anchored in the channel at this early hour, so the forecast must look promising. A natural-footer takes off on a bomb and gets spat out of a gaping barrel while the rising sun paints the sky in every possible hue of orange, pink and purple. This is the surfer’s ultimate Mentawai fantasy.

Of course, it isn’t all like this all the time. A goofy-footer who pulls into the next wave, doesn’t make it and gets nailed on the infamous coral outcrop known as the Surgeon’s Table. Not a nice place to be, especially with the low tide. Un doesn’t wait to see what happens to the guy. He turns around and walks back to his little shack. For him it’s going to be just another busy day.

Un doesn’t surf. He’s never even tried it. (What a strange way to pass your time, just playing in the sea like kids and risking your life while you do it). Nevertheless his life (at least during the dry season) revolves around those often-flawless waves, which every year lure thousands of unimaginably wealthy westerners to fulfill their surfing wet dreams. Unimaginably wealthy, that is, if you think of money in Un’s terms. He shares a tiny, windowless wooden hut, no larger than two by four meters, with his wife and three young children. Apart from their humble home, his family’s possessions are limited to a smutty old pot, some kitchenware, a couple of sheets for the night and the ragged clothes they wear. I doubt Un has ever even had a whole bottle of Bintang to himself, let alone sampled any of the other luxuries most of us take for granted. And whenever he gets his hands on anything of any value, like a bunch of bananas, a ripe papaya, a full can of Coke, or one time, a jar of French mustard, he tries to sell it to one of the handful of visiting surfers who put up with the basic living conditions on land in order to get their slice of HT/Lance’s tasty barrel pie.

Un, who moved to the Mentawais from mainland Sumatra some years ago, has never had it easy in life. It’s not like he has ever done anything to deserve his fate, it was simply poor luck in the genetic lottery. When you first meet him, it’s hard to look past his enormous crooked front teeth, which have quite drastically disfigured his face. Mental health problems have left his psychological capabilities underdeveloped, caused by either a birth defect or malnourishment and disease. These aren’t great odds in a society where, although family bonds and support among relatives and neighbors are often a lot stronger than in our western societies, social welfare systems don’t exist and survival of the fittest is still very much a reality.

Un has done alright for himself, though. He gets by. In order to feed his family, to maybe make a little money, he paddles his little sampan, a traditional canoe, out to the charter boats whenever they stop at HTs. It’s not to sell them anything or to conduct any other kind of business, but simply to relieve them of their trash, which, rather than taking it back to Padang where it comes from, the majority of charter boat captains dump in the very same islands they advertise in glossy ads and on fancy websites as pristine and unspoiled. Not one lousy rupiah changes hands in this shameful transaction. Garbage disposal in the Mentawais is free of charge.

The reason this happens, from Un’s perspective, is that from the large plastic bags – which contain anything from plastic wrappers and empty juice boxes to kitchen scraps, empty batteries and medical waste – he can usually salvage a handful of soda and beer cans, which he can then sell on for recycling. For all the other waste, most of it non-biodegradable, there’s no use, so it is either burned, or just left a stone’s throw from the waterline to rust and rot and befoul the beaches.

To say this appalling example of profit-driven arrogance is a disgrace is, in my opinion, an understatement. Every time a new charter boat shows up in the channel at Lance’s Right, Un and a handful of kids from the village can be seen racing their sampans for pole position astern of the often luxurious charter boats. For the 10-12 year-olds it’s a way to earn a little pocket money. Some use it to support their family, but most often it’s just spent on sweets and junk food. They come back to shore, their sampans loaded with black trash bags, and dump all the waste in the bushes just up from the beach. There they sift through the garbage with their bare hands. With rotting food scraps, maggots and even used, bloody bandages and syringes among the rubbish, you don’t need a medical degree to figure out that any of the good educational work done by SurfAid International – who, among other things, is trying to build awareness about simple hygiene, the lack of which is one of the main causes of preventable diseases in the islands – is ineffective, if not futile.

The paddle race to the charter boats is also joined by other men from the village. Apart from Un and the kids, the rest of them paddle out to sell wood-carvings and other small artisan crafts to the guests on the boats. It is a lucrative source of income in an area where most families make a living by harvesting coconuts and selling the dried flesh to oil manufacturers in Padang and Medan. While many of the souvenirs sell for US$20US or more, a kilogram of coconut flesh earns the Mentawai people a mere 1000 rupiahs, currently around 10 cents. This also explains why the 5000 rupiahs (50 cents) paid per kilogram of recyclable tin cans might seem like a good deal to Un.

But in contrast to the boat captains, he and the young boys don’t have the educational background to understand the implications of the deal they’re making. Neither are they aware of the danger of contracting acute and chronic diseases from the trash, as well as from the smoke when they burn it. Nor do they understand that they are polluting their own back yards with hazardous and harmful materials that won’t go away for generations. Of course, by doing this they undermine the potential for future land-based tourism, from which they could profit on a whole new scale. Not to mention the aesthetic aspect in its own right and the long-term health implications of more and more plastics, rusting metal cans and leaking batteries accumulating on their beaches. The fact is that their needs are so immediate that they can’t afford to think of the bigger picture.

Thus, even though nobody is forcing the locals to accept the charter boats’ waste, this common practice of trash disposal in the islands is yet another gross example of the exploitation of the weakest and most vulnerable members of an already poor society. This needs to stop. Idreal, Jormin, Hidel, Daniel and Alpon – the young boys who collect the trash – are all smart kids as well as avid, talented and fearless surfers. They should spend their time in school studying and having fun in the waves when they have time off, not digging through white man’s trash for a few rupiah. Un, on the other hand, really does profit from the little money he makes out of recycled cans. It helps make his life a little easier. So why not separate the cans from all the other trash on board the boats and hook him up with what he can use? Keep the rest and take it back to Padang and in the process keep the Mentawais the beautiful place they truly are. Without doubt, space is limited onboard most boats, but to accommodate one extra bin for cans shouldn’t be impossible, even on the smallest vessel.
Long gone are the days when the Mentawai Islands’ crystal-clear and mechanical barrels and palm tree backdrops were the exclusive realm of an intrepid few adventurers. The surf charter industry is a reality in today’s surfing world, where not only fully committed dropouts, but also doctors, lawyers and investment bankers (and of course people with every job description in between) are capable of and willing to surf the shallow and often unforgiving reefs. Consequently this article is by no means meant as a general attack on, or a damnation of, the surf charter industry in the Mentawais, or anywhere else for that matter. On the contrary, if managed and run responsibly and intelligently, I’m convinced surf tourism can contribute to the welfare of remote areas such as the Mentawais and be both ecologically and socially sustainable.
Neither am I claiming that every single boat operating in the Mentawais is involved in littering in the islands, although sadly over the three month period I spent at Katiet this past year, I have seen the majority of surf charter boats dumping their trash there at least once.

Nevertheless, while the sheer magnitude and complexity of many of the ecological predicaments we face nowadays can be daunting, I believe there is justified hope that the problem of waste disposal in the Mentawais can be solved both quickly and completely. It is the simplicity and the overwhelming one-sidedness of the argument – the obvious fact that dumping waste from a commercial enterprise in an unspoiled environment is utterly unjustifiable – that gives rise to my optimism. Some parts of the surf industry are starting to care more about their impact on the environment, or at least trying to portray a greener image to their customers and the public. So maybe the big companies, some of whom financially support organizations like SurfAid International, can put pressure on the charter industry to stop this dirty practice. Besides, isn’t it nice to believe that despite our often horrific carbon footprints, surfers as a community are generally an environmentally conscious people, that we do care at least a little bit about the impact we have on the ecosystems surrounding us, and the people and societies we touch when we travel in search of waves?

First and foremost, this is of course an appeal to all boat owners and captains to stop their unnecessary pollution of the Mentawai Islands. It is irresponsible and inexcusable. Also, surf guides, photographers and crew members – go ahead and ask uncomfortable questions if you find your boat involved in this. And last but not least, guests, travelling surfers – whether you work for one of the industry’s giants and are sending a team of pros on a luxury photo trip, or if you’re an Average Joe getting away and surfing your brains out with your mates for a couple of weeks – enquire about what happens to your boat’s trash before you book your trip, and again when you’re out there enjoying the good life. Experience shows that consumer-driven change is always fastest and most effective. And these are changes that can make the lives of people like Un quite a bit better, with very little inconvenience to the businesses involved. Let’s get some common sense and common decency in the garbage department. Just make it happen!

This story was first published in The Surfer’s Path Issue 81 December, 2010