While on a visit to the tropical Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, surfer Rob Henry found himself oscillating between two starkly different local communities – an impoverished government-run settlement and a tribal people living traditionally and abundantly in the jungle.
Henry eventually became immersed in the traditional Mentawai culture and began to document it through photographs and video.
This is an excerpt from one attempt to build a dugout canoe from a large felled tree trunk.
For a while, all is going well, neighbours join to help and everyone feasts on pig in the traditional manner.
Then they hit a problem…
What’s interesting, despite the physical effort invested in the project, how philosophically the failure is accepted.