Through a series of strange and hilarious circumstances and happenstances, I ended up having a kind of a life changing week last week. It all started by taking a boat from Padang, which is the capital of West Sumatra, to Siberut, which is the biggest of the Mentawai Islands, about 10 hours off the coast, without really knowing what I would do. I just wanted to go. It turned into living with Mentawai people in one of their long houses for a week, said week culminating in a big ceremonial party thing to retrieve the spirit of a Mentawai Shaman, called a Sikerei. His name was Aman Sergei, and after a week living with him, and think I can actually call him my friend.

And the kids and a lot of the family, I got to know them all pretty well. They are funny as hell, pretty fiesty, do not like the mainlanders or the Transmigrasi policy one bit, and we had a lot to talk about, even with our limited vocabulary. My eyes welled up with tears when I had to say goodbye.

Anyway, the Sikerei needs to know how to identify plants, administer medicine, sing, and be a totally kick ass dancer. The dancing is kind of like a jungle flamenco. Oh, and it’s very important they don’t lose their mind, which if they do, sometimes requires four other Sikerei to come and help the loser of the mind to journey to get it back. And this is what had happened to Aman Sergei. He had lost his way, and had humbly asked his brethren Sikerei to help him find it again. But there was no guarantee that this would happen, and so the whole week was kind of up in the air. It ended up being a bit of an exorcism, not in a Linda Blair kind of way, but still…and I was blown minded to be allowed to be part of it. By the end of the 7 day blow out, 62 members of the clan had arrived. This clip is from in the morning after we stayed up all night clearing out the bad spirits, asking for forgiveness, asking in the new spirits, and then dancing in celebration when they came.