Restoring Banua Niha Heritage
After the quake that rocked Nias, Father Johannes helped rehabilitate communal houses. A lot of artifacts have fallen into foreign tourits' hands and gone as far as New York.
January 8, 2008
FROM his far-off birthplace in Europe, the 66-year-old pastor solemnly devotes his life in the East, on Banua Niha—the “earth name” of Nias Island, North Sumatra. The fate of the heritage on the hombo batu (stone) island would be unimaginable without Father Johannes M. Hämmerle, commonly called Romo Johannes. For years, the “shepherd,” born in Schwarzwald, Germany, gathered megalithic relics, preserved communal structures and at the sa
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