came back. Bob thought the island might have been Madagascar, and the incident inspired his Sarimanok expedition. He and a team built an outrigger canoe to Neolithic specifications from a large hollowed-out log, without any nonorganic materials. Using a palm-woven sail, the canoe carried eight crew members thousands of miles across the Indian Ocean to demonstrate how Madagascar’s first human settlers arrived around 500 BC. They navigated only by the stars and a crude, wooden sundial.
The Indonesian government now wanted the sea nomads to settle on land—boats drifting in and out of Indonesian territory disrupted efforts to secure borders. But as the Bajau began living in stilt villages, they mined coral to fortify the foundations for their homes, gutting large areas of coral reef. Like the rest of humanity, their relationship with the sea was mired in destructive contradictions.
Rikardo and I paused on a walkway where a group of kids were playing. One of them cast a single line with a hook in the water, holding the end of the line in his hand. I looked down and watched a school of fish swim beneath the wooden planks and wondered what this spot might have been like a hundred years before. While this village had fewer concrete pilings and less garbage than other villages I’d seen, the water beneath it was murky brown—it was full of sewage.
“How can one live like this?” I asked myself. But then I imagined how people a century from now might look back into our time with disgust at how we pumped carbon dioxide into the air—another “commons.” We might view thousands of cars at rush hour with the same disbelief. New Delhi had recently exceeded Beijing as the world’s top “killer city.” Air pollution there was sixty times safe levels. Fourteen hundred cars were being added to New Delhi’s streets per day.
The village chief had invited us for tea. His son walked us to his house and introduced us. The chief, Arman, greeted us politely and gestured that we sit down. A lean young man wearing a sarong immediately came out
60 - SEVENSEAS