The whale beach vol.4

On the way going back to the Whale Beach, I comes across a funeral procession on the point. From adult to elementary school students, attendants are walking with coffin. I'm pretty sure they are going to that church. So I follow them.
In the church, prayer begins by the priest. All attendants are now praying. When I watch it through the door, a guy next to me says "Why don't you come in and sit on the bench?" I heard only Christian can enter a church in Indonesia. But non-Christian people are also praying together, I know it from various behaviors in the prayer. Lamalera is small village. They pray for the past parson all together.
Nevertheless I attend the ceremony, I don't even know who's funeral it is. I ask to an attendant who the woman in the photo frame is. "She is Mama Clara" It's the answer. I don't know about her. However gathering from the variety of attendants, I can easily guess she has been loved and respected by the people. I regret I didn't meet Mama Clara alive in this charming village. Her coffin is brought into the cemetery. Before the burial, prayer gives her once again. I see a blue ocean beyond the rusted tin roof of the houses. In this beautiful scenery the life of Mama Clara whom I don't know has been ended.

I come back to the Whale Beach area. Lovely day. Elementary school students who I saw in the church now gather under the tree in the square. They are spreading a big cloth and waiting for an old man drops the reddish fruit of syzygium aqueum. Why the kids in this village has such a pure eye of curiosity?
In the backyard of the guest house, I hear mom is talking to somebody. I check it out. She is talking to the voice from her mobile phone speaker. While she is chatting on the phone, her hands is quickly picking rounded leaves of greens. It's boiled in salted water and served for my meal later. The taste is new to me.

It's a time for the whale boat's coming back. How's the result? ... no whales ... oh...
As if playing backwards the video of the morning, logs are lined on the beach and the boat is pushed back to a hut. Another fishing boat also comes back and fishes are distributed to the local kids. Well, catching whale is not so easy. Coming to the beach and seeing the result is feels like a lottery. I hope they'll get a whale tomorrow.
The reddish sun light makes stand out the rusted roofs of the village. The whale pieces are dried up even on the house's roofs. Residents are collecting the pieces in the evening sun light. Students, fishermen ... all the people are back to the village and chatting. Basically they are friendly, although they have tough heart of islander at same time. Islander? I remember I'm in a remote island of Indonesia.
The guest house has a new guest, a trader of whale bone accessory. Everything is on a whale in this village.

And tonight, the whale is on my dinner table. As if saying "as much as you want" The dried meat was cut in cube and simmered. I cannot eat a lot. The smell of the meat is the very smell I have sent all the day in the village. So I feel full just on the smell.
Actually, it's not first time for eating whale dish to me. I'm in a generation that whale meat was served in Japan's school lunch. (Beef was expensive for school lunch in those days) But whichever simmered cube cut meat or the frit, it's not tasty for kid's tongue. Before long the whale dish was removed from the lunch menu. (Maybe imported cheap beef was replaced on it)
Then whale meat had obliged from my mind for long time. I recognized a whale dish is really tasty was much later, when I grew up and went to a bar or a whale dish restaurant. I had never imagined whale sashimi or bacon was so delicious. After all depends on how it's cooked, at least for me.
I know whale meat is quite valuable here. So I'm sorry to mom that I can't eat them a lot. Meanwhile a fish is fresh and delicious without exception.