Huddled under a dripping canvas, sheltering from a thunderstorm and chewing half-cooked goat-meat satay at a crossroads town in southern Sumatra – why do I do this to myself, I ask the smirking youth beside me who is petting a blackbird, swaddled in a rag. Water streams everywhere.
Twenty-four hours on, across the sunlit waters, come the slip-slap of water against gently-moving dugouts and the soft plop as the fishermen cast their weighted nets. This is why. The only disturbance to the afternoon torpor is a monkey crashing through the shrubbery.
