In this chapter I will describe the villages. The intention is to provide enough detail for the reader to evoke life as it is experienced by the villagers. While the two villages share a similar social organisation and belief system, although only 12km apart, they differ substantially in terms of agriculture, livelihood and opportunities for education. Tourists visit the nucleated heart (nua) of the villages but the nua are part of a much wider region where the villagers have land and extended family members have homes. The first section provides the backdrop to the villagers’ livelihood, social organisation and belief system. The villagers’ involvement in the market economy, opportunities for education and social activities are then presented before a background to tourism.

Livelihood

Agriculture

Both Bena and Wogo are essentially agricultural villages. Farming is unmechanised (although a tractor is available to hire for ploughing in Wogo) and no pesticides or chemical fertilisers are used (except on wet rice and vanilla). However, as altitude, rainfall, topography and soil type between the two villages are different, their agriculture will be described separately. Wogo is higher (approximately 1100m), wetter and flatter and supports significantly more intensive agriculture than Bena, which is lower (approximately 700m), and has much steeper sloping fields, which are more easily eroded and receive less rainfall. The land in Wogo supports a significantly denser population than Bena, 196 to 98 people per square kilometre respectively (Ngada dalam angka, 1996).

In Wogo, land holdings vary tremendously between households. On average a household will have usufruct rights over about half a hectare of land, which is planted with maize, inter-cropped with beans, twice a year. In the dry season, kidney beans are planted between the maize plants and in the wet season either kidney beans or soya beans. This half a hectare yields between a tonne and a tonne and a half of maize and four to five hundred kilogrammes of beans.