Ammu hawu

The people of Sabu · Seba, Rai Hawu (Savu island)

An ammu hawu is a house on Rai Hawu, and it is built and spoken of as a boat: its ridge a keel, its two ends a bow and a stern, its family a crew. It never floats. Two things make it worth building here. First, eleven buildings ago this project modelled an actual hull — the Bajau lepa — so the likeness can be tested rather than asserted: the plan has to hold a hull’s proportion, and this pack’s tests compare it against the lepa’s own numbers. Second, the roof comes down nearly to the floor, so what is a wall elsewhere is the lower part of this roof and the way in is a gap under the eave — which means widening the house lowers the eave and closes its own door. The sun in this model is computed for Seba, 10.49° S and 121.83° E: the southernmost site in the collection.

The Sabu terms for the parts of the house are not used here: the two ends are called bow and stern in Indonesian, because the author is not confident enough of the originals — and on this building that shortfall is also part of the point, since even the borrowed words are a boat’s. Beyond that: the hull-proportion range is the author’s reading of drawings and photographs rather than a measurement; the divisions inside and the rules about who sits where are not built; carving and the ornament at the ends of the ridge are not modelled; the choice between lontar and gewang leaf is simplified to two options where in fact it is a question of who has how many palms; and the lontar palms this island lives on stand around the yard without being drawn at all.