Creditors Send Him Up a Tree

A villager in southern Sumatra has spent the last 19 months atop a coconut tree to escape his creditors, ignoring his wife’s pleas and threats of violence, the Sinar Harapan newspaper reported.

Tohiran, 42, climbed the 65-foot tree in January, 1984, and has defied the orders of local officials and the impassioned pleas of his distraught wife to end his self-exile, the newspaper said last week.

“I won’t come down until I get divine inspiration,” Tohiran was quoted as saying.