Lazy Day

Batak house and rice field on the island of Samosir in Lake Toba

I spent a deliciously indolent day, in the shade of a tree, by the lakeside, reading William Dalrymple's wonderful "From the Holy Mountain - A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium." I was always fascinated by Byzantium and remembered the times when we used to go looking for small Byzantine churches hidden away high up in the Dolomite mountains. I knew, of course, that the centre of Byzantium was Constantinople, but had never realised that early Byzantine Christianity was born in Southern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, as well as Egypt and Palestine. The Armenian community in Anatolia were some of the earliest Christian converts and built some of the earliest Christian churches in 200 -300 AD. I knew about the genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish government, but I did not know that the Turkish government had continued to destroy their houses, their churches and even their tomb stones. They continue to deny the genocide and maybe they think that if all traces of the Armenians are removed from Turkey perhaps one day the world will believe that they never existed.

William Dalrymple went to places one couldn't visit today. It was pretty dodgy even then. So it's wonderful to read about his journey, a journey I will never make.

Back to Lake Toba.
Although created by the most cataclysmic erruption, the lake is calm and peaceful, a few people sunbathing, one or two swimming, some naked children trying to catch fish with a net.

Later in the day a fisherman paddled his dugout canoe across the water, then began letting his net out. He went round and round in a spiral until he reached the end of the net, marked by a plastic bottle. Then he paddled out of the centre of the spiral and began to paddle round the outside of the spiral, banging the water with a plunger as he went round. He followed the spiral all the way round back to the centre, banging the plunger down as he went. Then he collected his net back into the boat, collecting the small fish as he went.