About Us — The story behind Manoa

I came to Kei as a photographer, chasing light and the faces of people whose way of life is older than any map. Then the pandemic closed the world, and I was held here, on these islands, unable to leave. In that suspended time, I began to dream of a boat.

The Kei people are master boat-builders, renowned across the whole archipelago, and Austronesia had taken hold of me — its sea, its craft, its ancient values. On the land that would become Manoa, I set out to build that boat. And, turned over, it became a house.

In Austronesian cultures, from the islands of Savu to Tanimbar Kei, this is no metaphor. The old houses, the rumah tua, are raised and named after the parts of a boat: a hull upturned becomes a roof, a vessel at rest becomes a home. Manoa is that boat, come to shore.

It was the people of Ohoidertawun who gave me this place — an ancient village watched over by rock paintings older than memory. They were the ones who proposed that I build my boat here, on their shore: a bay where the great Meti, the vast low tide, draws the sea far out and shelters the land from the winds of both the eastern and the western seasons. Manoa was born on the land of the ancestors, raised with the blessing of the Patti — the traditional chief of the village, and the man I call my adoptive father. It could not have stood anywhere else.

Manoa comes from Noa — "to lift a taboo" — and from Ma, for Maria, for Mama. It is Noah's name, and the name of everything we've built together on these shores.

We live at the sea's edge, and so we are bound to give back to it what we take. In 2024, together with the island of Tanimbar Kei and our village of Ohoidertawun, we planted four hundred mangroves along the beach in front of Manoa — a nursery for fish, crabs and birds, and a living shield against erosion and the great waves. This is the principle that runs through everything here: to return to nature, patiently, what we borrow from her. To build gently, to take little, and to leave the reef, the forest and the shore richer than we found them.

The people who make Manoa come from the four corners of the archipelago — from Kei and Kaswui to Seram, Aru and Papua. They are warm, endlessly helpful, and quietly discreet, looking after guests with the natural grace of people proud of their islands. Here, service is family.

This is who we are: we put the human being and simplicity at the heart of what is beautiful. Handmade rooms, home cooking, and the honesty of the place.