Sasadu

The Sahu · Jailolo, West Halmahera

A sasadu is the village hall of the Sahu in West Halmahera: open on all four sides, roofed in sago leaf that comes down low, with a bench around it where the village sits down to eat together. It has several openings and they are not the same height; which one a person comes in by follows from who they are. That is why it is here: the thirty-two buildings before it state standing through size, position, count, or a stack of something, and this one states it in centimetres over somebody’s head. The second thing matters as much: even the highest opening is lower than a standing adult, so the bow is not demanded of the low-ranking but asked by the building of everybody. The sun in this model is computed for Jailolo, 1.08° N and 127.48° E.

What to distrust most in this pack is the numbers on the openings. That a sasadu’s openings differ in height and that people stoop to come in is what the sources say; how many centimetres apart they are is not. The eleven-centimetre step here is the author’s, and everything this pack claims rests on it — measuring three sasadu would settle it in a morning. Beyond that: the real carving and cloths are far more than the two pieces modelled; the arrangement of the benches and who sits where is simplified; the communal meal that is the whole purpose of the building obviously cannot be modelled; and the division into men, women and guests is laid out here as a simple order, where the real one involves kin and origin that three or four options cannot represent.