Umata Village

We are Yan and Sitta, father and daughter. Yan is an anthropologist, a native of Siberut Island, and he enjoys sharing his knowledge about the Mentawai culture with his guests. His daughter Sitta is a Tourism graduate and has a great interest in sustainability and the Mentawaian island life. Together we speak Dutch, English, Indonesian and Mentawaian. We love involving the local community into our operation and mostly work with locals on freelance basis. For example, in our accommodation we work with cooks who are in between jobs or high school kids who want to save money for school next semester. During our jungle tours we find our canoe drivers, carriers and cooks as much as possible within the community our guests want to travel to. This way the community in question gets the full financial support per trip and we also avoid any possible conflict between communities.