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After spending a few days in Siska’s village, we tracked a swell down to Lance’s Right, which looked like the perfect shot for Siska to chase her first solid Mentawaian barrel.

Before leaving for the trip, a medicine man had told Siska’s family her aura was weak. She had taken a fall in the surf a month prior, which resulted in a spirit lingering with her. Siska was pretty off missing a surf session but was obliged to commit to the healing.

A medicine man is different from the Sikerei, who are spiritual and cultural leaders in Mentawai. Medicine men deal directly with jungle medicine and, in this case, negotiate with the spirit to restore balance for both Siska and the spirit. The medicine men don’t display the cultural adornments that satisfy the Western expectation of what sacred knowledge should look like. Instead, the medicine man looked about as average as any other Mentawaian uncle. The medicine man rocked up in a well-worn shirt, boardies and a trucker’s cap sitting slightly off-centre, resembling somewhat a Y2K B-boy. I cringed at my own shallowness in writing him off. He wasn’t the figure of health and wellness that my prejudices told me to expect for a high-level spiritual healer.

We gathered on the floor of Siska’s family veranda. With the medicine man in the middle, facing Siska, the family and I formed a semi-circle around them and sat quietly for the ceremony. He placed bowls with rice, water, flowers, leaves and a cigarette between the two of them. From there he worked with Siska to encourage the lingering spirit to move on, instructing Siska when to drink and eat while speaking blessings from a spiritual world into the material things that touched her body. On the spirit’s way out, it stopped to inspect me, confused by my presence. A bule (foreigner) in this village is rare. The medicine man turned to me with his hand stretched out in greeting, with a special stone in its centre. He introduced me to the spirit and appeased its questions about my presence.

All this was taking place in the Touloulaggan dialect of the Mentawaian language, a formally undocumented language. While my Indonesian allows me to chat to everyone, I haven’t picked up the language of Siska’s village yet, so I sat in this ceremony in the dark about what was going on. I’m already someone who trends towards paranoia when it comes to upsetting spirits, so when the medicine man turned to me during the ceremony, I can guarantee you I was wigging out. All I could think of was, ‘Surely this wasn’t a part of the script here.’

The other part of me was anxious he was going to tell Siska not to surf on our swell mission. I was betting he and spirit had a little yarn about how Siska was planning on chasing the biggest swells of her life and venturing to a different part of Mentawais with some random bule chick. Sounds like a story an old spirit could be unhappy about. Just over a hundred years ago, moving in on another tribe’s territory would have caused outright tribal warfare and bloodshed. Luckily, the spirit moved on easily and my concerns were collectively laughed off by the family.

It reminded me of a famous story my friend Tika shared with me when myself, Tika and Siska were chasing waves at Rifles. Our dugout boat got stranded on Karangmajat during a storm. We sought shelter in the island's cove and passed time mining for pipi shells. Tika told the story by the fire (which they made in the pouring rain, don’t ask me how). “This island here is famous for its battles. Back in the earliest times, two tribes claimed this land as their own. The leaders of the tribes were unwilling to stand down, so a battle to the death was the only way to be sure of who was most deserving of the land. Spears and arrows were drawn and unleashed upon each other. Many men lost their lives protecting their land and the integrity of their tribe.”

Between now and then, Karangmajat Island has seen a total colonisation. Home to No-Kandui, Rifles and ten-or-so other waves, it has become one of the most sought-after pieces of wave paradise on Earth. And sadly, this once staunchly protected land has become one of the most inaccessible places for Mentawais’ Indigenous people.

Siska and I boarded the ferry for our adventure to Sipora Island. My Indonesian Bahasa had a full-blown melt and suddenly all my words turned back-to-front. My sentences were totally incomprehensible. My brain was having a drawn-out glitch, as if all the language rewiring had short-circuited for a few days and rendered me as comprehendible as a toddler. Siska would just roll her eyes at me and take the piss. She was adamant that she didn’t speak English, so I persisted through my involuntary language spasm.

After a long trip we arrived at a moonlit Katiet Beach. We were staying at Mama’s – now Yeni’s – the iconic original homestay where Lance Knight built strong community connections and immortalised himself in the history of Mentawaian surfing. Yeni’s place is on the sand, right in front of the wave. We put our bags down and Siska ran out onto Katiet’s iconic white sandy beach, jumping with excitement. This kind of reaction is out of character for the smooth and collected Siska I know. “I’m going to run on the beach tomorrow morning,” she declared in Indonesian, fizzing with day-one surf trip hype. (Unsurprisingly, not once did she jog. Didn’t even say the word lari – jog – again).

We walked the beach, Siska in awe of its beauty even in the dark of night. If we squinted hard enough, we could just etch out the remnants of barrels breaking out at Lance’s Right. Things felt really good. It felt like Siska was on track for chasing the barrel we’d been talking about since we’d met. We were going to be here for a week and pretty much had a perfect forecast of consistent offshore winds with a few days of potentially double-overhead surf.

I ran Siska through the lineup and the structure of the reef – gave her a few important tips about the ‘Surgeon’s Table’ section and how to handle one of the Mentawais’ less forgiving rinsings. Before heading back to Yeni’s for bed, we reminded each other of the medicine man’s warning: always give an offering to the spirits of the wave. We both knew if we forgot the offering, it was probably going to be bad news.

Siska took her time to acquaint herself with the new setting and the new waves. The local expats and travelling foreigners were extremely supportive and respectful of Siska in the lineup, giving her props and warm welcomes whenever she paddled out. One of our early sessions together saw clean-up sets come through. Siska, sitting well inside of me, got caught – probably for the first time in her life – by a proper wash-through set. “Ruuuuuuuubyyyyyyy!” was the last thing I heard as I cleared the set that Siska was perfectly positioned to wear directly on the head. Her cry sounded partially fearful but also envious that I’d made it over. I didn’t look back, but she survived just fine. Character building, I thought.

After a few days in the line-up, Siska was in rhythm and going for it, getting mini barrels on near-dry end bowls that I specifically do all I can to avoid. She paid the price a few times, returning to shore with tiger claws across her upper back. But those first few days were epic. It was the first time ever that I got to see Siska surfing among other Mentawaian women – four of them packing together in the line-up at some points.

When Siska and I met, women’s surfing in the islands was strongly discouraged and misunderstood. I asked some of the girls about their surfing journey. “We don’t care anymore – about our skin colour getting darker from the sun, about what people might say about our appearance,” said Rihannan, part of the new wave of Mentawai surfer girls just starting out. “We care that we learn to be good surfers and give ourselves the opportunity to surf.”

This mentality is a huge shift in perspective for these local women, as Mentawaian girls have typically been shunned for participating in activities that risk darkening their complexion or take focus away from developing their domestic skills. The local boys, much to their credit, have encouraged the girls in the water.

Seeing Siska grow comfortable and start to get a read on the waves she wanted was epic. Once a session, Siska would paddle over to me and say in Bahasa, “Okay, I’m ready for a good one” – and like clockwork, a magic wave would seemingly come out of nowhere directly to her, without the need to hassle for it or hold down priority.

When the first day of solid swell rolled in, Siska was nervous but ready to go. We had a few last words on the shore to rev each other up, both feeling excited. Could this be the session she gets her barrel?

Our timing was amazing; three of us out and the waves were pumping. We tried to get Siska into a few sets, but she pulled back. I told her if she wanted to be out here, it’s because she was ready to take off – pulling back wasn’t on the cards. Geez, that was a bit gnarly I thought to myself after I realised what I’d just said, but Siska took it in her stride. She was ready.

Undergunned on a lightweight 5’6”, she needed a push to have enough entry speed into waves. A solid one came; hollower than any other wave she’s had the opportunity of taking off on before. Liam, the manager of Hollow Trees Resort and the best-performing surfer in the lineup most days, calls her into the wave to ward off the small pack of charter boat guests hunting it down. Watching Siska take off without hesitation, he paddled over to me and acknowledged her guts and commitment. It was a good moment, as Siska had been admiring his surfing since we arrived.

An Aussie friend, Topaz Lilly, saw Siska’s wave and – out of stoke – blurted out, “Oh my God, that was epic!” Siska responded back in English, much to my mate’s shock. They had a quick chat about her wave, the conditions, and what she thought of the place. My mate paddled up to me and broke the news: “You know Siska speaks English, right?”

“No, she doesn’t!” I shot back. I’ve known her for years and she’s never spoken a word of unprompted English to me. My friend recounted their conversation and Siska came paddling back, trying to disguise her mischief and laughter with a forced sheepishness. “The jig is up, you little bohong (liar)! I could barely string a sentence together for days on end and all that time we could have spoken English?!” Siska cackled with delight, as if she was waiting for the day I’d finally catch on. She still refuses to speak English to me – just me, by the way.

Watching Siska surf gives me more happiness than catching waves of my own. I felt so banga (proud) as I watched her take off on that wave. For some, it can be easy to brush over what Siska’s done as an everyday achievement, but it’s important to deepen our sense of understanding. We don’t all start in the same place. For a Mentawaian there was no real pathway into surfing and for women, before Siska, there was no role model to show them it was even possible. North Mentawaian people need to work for a foreigner to have access to the waves, and on top of that their salary is so low that they cannot afford the basic costs of a boat, petrol and a surfboard to be able to surf independently. Foreigners profit while the Indigenous crew get breadcrumbs. Siska just being in the water is a huge achievement and a privilege most of her Mentawaian peers won't get to experience. She never misses an opportunity now to share it.

Our week in Katiet came to an end. We spent our last evening sitting outside for hours, reminiscing on how much fun we’d had together. Siska and I tried dreaming up ways for her to base herself out of both North Mentawai and Katiet Beach, as Katiet has more accessible barrels than the Playground region in the north. Our goal is to create a pathway for her to develop as a barrel rider and enjoy full access to the waves which are her birthright. It’s a slow journey that we’ve been pursuing together for three years together, but if you see Siska in the lineup call her into a bomb. I promise she’ll go!

This story featured in Roaring Journals, Edition Two.