PREFACE
Every western scientific researcher travelling to Indonesia for research in Maluku Tenggara during the past decades, sooner or later encountered Andre P. C. Sol, who was bishop of the diocese of Amboina from February 1964 until October 1994.
In Keuskupan Amboina, the episcopal residence, one was not only warmly welcomed, but also informed about the most recent developments in the region and provided with all kinds of practical tips and especially encouraging words, before journeying on to the far, isolated island world. Andre Sol was more or less the gatekeeper of the Southeast Moluccas.
When we stayed in Ambon in the early 1980s in connection with our anthropological fieldwork on the Babar archipelago, we also had the pleasure of being "accompanied" by him. He casually expressed the wish that the cultures of Maluku Tenggara which, according to him, had been insufficiently investigated, would once get the attention they deserved, in the shape of a specific publication. It appeared to be one of his heart's desires. In 1987, during our next visit to the Moluccas, he once again