I didn’t ask her name, so let’s call her Gereja. She’s slightly stooped, white-haired, quite frail, her right eye a cataract, her left leg limping – probably in her eighties, an old lady for sure.
We were travelling from Waimarang near the Eastern coast of Sumba, to Nggongi near the south – about 70kms, a 3-4 hour journey due to the rough condition of the road. I arrived earlier than my companions because I was travelling by motorbike, the others by 4wd; I get car sick on the bumpy, winding roads.
And so I stopped to wait at the only place I knew in Ngonggi – the house where the well liners were being made. No-one was home and the place was locked up, so I stood there in the blazing mid-day sun, a bit tired and sore, thirsty, hot and rattled from the hours on the road, a little confused as to what I should do, where I should wait; a gangly, pale-barked tree wilting in a brown, burnt landscape.
Gereja beckoned me from her house, and we shook hands outside the red, locked doors of the local church. She sent her grand-daughter scurrying to fetch me a chair, and Gereja shuffled off and returned ever so slowly under the burden of a small table. She smoothed a worn table cloth and invited me to share some siri – bettlenut – with her.
I was only there for 15 minutes or so, but experience tells me that Gereja would have willingly prepared a meal, kept me watered and given her best bed if I had decided to stay the night. She didn’t know my name, I didn’t speak her language, she didn’t know why I was there, who I’d come to visit, how long I’d be staying, whether I’m friend or enemy, my political or religious preferences. She just welcomed this ‘stranger in the land’.
She’s slightly stooped, white-haired, quite frail, her right eye a cataract, her left leg limping. But let’s call her Gereja* because she is a beautiful metaphor for what the Church can be – despite its cataracts and limps – on a proverbial Wednesday in the back streets of anywhere, her unconditional hospitality juxtaposed by the official doors of Christianity that are red and too often locked when strange people need a welcoming place of shelter.

When I grow up, I want to be just like the Gereja I encountered in Nggongi.

*Gereja means ‘church’ in Bahasa Indonesia