We disembarked in Makassar, provincial capital of South Sulawesi and Sulawesi's largest city, where we stayed in a hotel for two nights giving us the chance to plan our onward journey and catch up online (it had been weeks since we had had access!) We understood that Makassar was well known for it's outstanding seafood so we of course found the restaurant that was recommeded to us and had a feast! Food and culture varies so much in Indonesia with many places having thier own specialities. The local speciality here was 'cebuk-cebuk', a topping for fish made out fresh tomatoes, onions, chilli, coriander and lime. It was lush and had a great kick to it!
Our next intended stop was Tana Toraja (one of the main reasons for our dicision to go to Sulawesi instead of exploring flores) - which is a must on the itinerary as it is infamous for it's strange and unique cult practices around death, elaborate funeral ceremonies and animal sacrifices. As funerals are so elaborate and sometimes take years to plan and pay for, they try to do most of them during July and August when family memebers living around the country are able to take leave from school or work to attend the ceremonies.
Our base from which to explore the area is called Rantepao so we headed there from Makassar on an '8 hour' coach. It just so happened that it was Independence Day in a few days and as a result we were, of course, delayed on the roads by hundreds of marching children! It was quite funny really as this is all they seem to do for Independence Day celebrations - for the days before leading up to it and for a few days after! There were little kids, big kids, girls, boys and even some adults, all dressed in matching outfits according to the group they were in...
We were in the very front seats on the coach so we had the best view of what was going on!
We eventually got to Rantepao quite late where we were hoping to be dropped off at the hotel that we had told the driver about. We got off when they told us to, which was not at the hotel but we presumed quite near, where the biggest blagger of a 'tour guide' grabbed us and told us that he was going to take us to our hotel. He of course then took us to his friend's restaurant and was hoping to make some money out of us by offering us his sevices as a guide (at a high rate no doubt) but got aggressive and upset when we told him we were tired and needed to think about it so we told him where to go on that front!
We did end up hiring a motorbike from him instead and decided to travel around the local areas on our own for a day or two (which is the best way)!
Toraja is one of the few remaining places that traditional houses, known as a tongkonan, continue to be built for reasons other than for the benefit of the tourists. The most distinctive feature of the houses is their saddle shaped roofs, with each end shooting high into the sky. There is a legend that ties the shape of the roof to the origins of the Torajans, and that is - that they originated in the mountains of present-day Vietnam. Thousands of years ago, they began a voyage southward and ended up in Sulawesi. They made their way by boat up the Sungai Sa'dan River to Enrekang where they then continued to follow the river on foot to their present valley home. They bought their boats with them, and hung them between trees for shelter. From the shape of the boat supposedly comes the shape of the elaborate Torajan roofs, to remind them of their roots!
The interior usually has three rooms. In the center is the largest room, used as the living area. To the south is the room where the family sleeps and keeps any dead they haven't buried yet (they sometimes keep them for years while they save up for the funerals!) A small room at the north end is usually reserved for guests or children. The floors of the north and south rooms are usually slightly higher than the floor of the main room.
The exterior walls are made of etched and painted wood panels, some of which are really intricate! Most of the patterns are geometric designs, although representations of people, animals and other objects can also be seen. (We saw some of this being done in the village of Ke'te Kesu and bought some pieces for ourselves)
Throughout Tana Toraja only four colors are used to decorate houses: Black, white, red and yellow. The colors represent, in essence, death or darkness, holy purity, blood and wisdom and were orinially extracted from the coloured soil and limestone.
The north end of the house will usually have a carved buffalo head on it as well.
The pole supporting the north end of the roof may also have a row of buffalo horns affixed to it which is taken as a sign of wealth as is the size of the saddle shaped roof. Buffaloes are a status symbol for the Toraja and are of great importance in various ceremonies. The buffalo has been a symbol of wealth and power and the albino buffaloes can cost thousands of pounds! (Now that's a LOT of indonesian Rupiah, enough to buy houses in some places).
Next on the agenda were the grave sites! We got a map of the area and some tips of where to go from the guidebook and also from people we had spoken to. What struck us in general about Tana Toraja was the outstanding beauty of the surrounding land and in particlar that surrounding the grave sites and villages. Rice paddies galore surrounded by colourful plants and trees; buffaloes washing themselves in the rivers and taking mud baths along side elobarate wooden houses...
As mentioned before, Toraja is known for it's wierd and wonderful practices around death. This not only includes their funeral ceremonies but also the many ways they bury their dead, both in the past and now. They are 'the culture that live to die'.
There are rock graves, cave graves, hanging graves and baby graves in trees! The Toraja believe that you can take posessions with you into the afterlife and so the dead are well equipped in their graves. As this led to grave plundering the Toraja started to hide the dead in caves or deep in the rock. The caves were hollowed and the coffins placed deep inside the caves or into the rock. The best example of a rock grave was in a village called Lemo.
Sitting on the balconies in the rock face in front of the caves are tau-tau - half life-size wooden effigies of the dead dressed in clothes similar to the deceased person they represent. The arms of the statues are always outstretched, welcoming the descendents and others who come to visit. Originally, the tau tau were not intended to be exact representations of the dead, but the current trend is to make them look more like the dearly departed.
Tau-tau are only made for wealthy upper class families due to their cost and the more money they are willing to pay the more elaborate the tau-tau (some of these up close were quite spooky...)
A tau-tau carver and his little girl.
After Lemo, we got on the bike and rode to Londa, the site of an extensive burial cave at the base of a massive cliff face. We knew we needed to have some form of light to enter the caves and so paid for a local guide and an oil lamp.
The entrance to the cave was guarded by tau-tau and at the base of the cliff face were many many coffins of one particular family - a old Toraja custom states that all people in one family house should also be buried in one family grave. The higher class the family the higher they are buried into the rock face but as this family was poor the coffins were left outside (nowadays the deceased are injected with formaldehyde to prevent any smell). The coffins are simply left here to deteriorate and collapse, so that the base of the stack of coffins is nothing more than a deep pile of bones! The minature tongkonan you can see is used to lift the royal class bodies up the rock with the strength of up to 4 men to lift and it may take up to 50 men to then hoist it up and into the rock face using rope and bamboo.
Above our heads and hanging from the cliff wall were also more coffins! As some of the coffins were so old they had burst (also from the weight of all the bones!) and some of the bones and skulls were sticking out! You would think it would be quite scary to see human skeleton bits but it was more surreal than anything... (the next bit is much more in your face bones, skulls and bits and pieces so this was pretty tame really!)
After spending some time staring at the coffins it was time to enter the cave! But not before Matt stubbed his big toe hard on a small tree stump sticking out of the ground and was in pain for days after thinking he had broken it! Well he has got big feet so I guess they are hard to control all the time...
I admit I was quite nervous but excited too at what we were going to see in the cave. We entered after our guide into a dark limestone cave and after looking around, noticed that we were surrounded by coffins, small ones and big ones, and some random bones. We then walked through the cave and around the stalactites and stalagmites to see more coffins and bones.
There was even a story behind a pair of skulls that belonged to a young couple in love who were forbidden to marry so they killed themselves - their very own Indonesian Romeo and Juliet.
The coffins were surrounded by offerings for the dead to have in their afterlife and ranged from cigarettes to plastic flowers, bottles of water and beer!
We then went into another part of the cave where there were rows of skulls placed along ridges of the cave above more coffins. Did you know that a 'fresh' skull is quite yellow in colour and as it ages it becomes white??
As neither of us were getting too disturbed by the sights we decided to drive to another village with more graves. On arriving we were accompanied by two very sweet young lads, one of was very bright and spoke excellent English (he had picked it up from tourists) and knew an awful lot about the area and the history of the graves and so became our guides for the afternoon! (They were tiny and looked about 8 yrs old but claimed they were 12 - they are Indonesian after all I guess.)
They took us to see more hanging graves and piles upon piles of bones....
And the biggest bamboo we have ever seen!
They even took a picture of us with the dead...
We paid them a small fee for their fantastic efforts which they were very pleased with and thanked us profusely!
With the grave sites seen our last stop was to see the Flying Foxes in the village of Nangalla. We had no problem in spotting them because you could HEAR the racket they were making! And we thought they were supposed to be sleeping during the day! What a sight and sound show!
With the day done and dusted we headed back to our bungalows for a relaxing evening and a well deserved beer - if only that's what we really did....
PART II - WHAT A BLOODY SIGHT
Once back at the bungalow I felt like eating some fruit and decided to attack the biggest grapefruit I have ever seen that I had bought earlier with our new penknife.
And of course slipped and stabbed myself in the left hand near the base of my thumb instead! The blood came gushing out so I rushed to hold my hand over the balcony so as to not make a mess and felt quite faint! Matt said I looked quite white which is a real acheivement these days! We thought we could close it up ourselves so Matt got our little first aid kit out and steri-stripped and covered the wound to begin with. As i got over the shock with a beer we started worrying about just how deep I had cut myself so we decided to get it checked out by a local Doctor who ordered us straight to the hospital for some stiches. Wicked! Not only had I never had stitches, I was going to have them in a local Indonesian hospital.
So off we trot with the kind help of one of the locals staying at the bungalow to the hospital and I was really dreading it! However, we were really impressed with the service we got - I was seen straight away (no waiting for hours here) and after a few stares from the nurses when they saw us tourists, the Doctor got to work with his local anasthetic (he wasn't very gentle admittedly) and stitched me up (I didn't even faint!) We were waiting for a big bill (from stories we had heard from other travellers) but ended up paying about 3 pounds for the service including the antibiotics and painkillers!
With my left hand somehwat disabled and with a new fear of sharp knives, Matt cut open the giant fruit the next day (it was actually quite a tough job) and I continued to eat it for days! It was lovely!
The last thing on the agenda was to visit one the elaborate and most important of all ceremonies, a funeral. I know, sounds a little morose, but this was the main reason for coming!
Due to Independence Day celebrations there weren't many funerals taking place but we got lucky on our last day (urrgh, that sounds evil). It's believed that without proper funeral rites the soul of the deceased will cause misfortune to it's family, and so funerals ceremonies reflect a blend of grief and wealth. Dependant on wealth and hierachal status, funerals can last up to 11 days before the deceased is brought to a funeral site for burial! The deceased at the funeral we attended was a very elderly man, 'grandfather', from a small farming family and had been sick for a while before he passed and it was expected to last about 3 days so. We went to the first day.
As previously mentioned; funerals usually occur in the months of July and August when family are able to return home so if someone dies, they remain in their family home until preparations have been made. They consider the person to be suffering from an illness and not truly dead until the funeral when the first buffalo is sacrificed. Then their spirit can begin its journey to the Land of Souls...
We woke early and dressed in any dark coloured clothing that we had making sure I covered my legs and arms our of respect and got on our scooters. We were advised to hire a guide for this trip to ensure we were aware of any traditions to follow and to also explain the rituals. It so happened that the kind man that had helped us during my hospital visit was given the job which we were pleased with! As a guest we were expected to bring along a gift of either sugar (the Indonesians have such a sweet tooth) or cigarettes (and they LOVE to smoke). Our guide decided to buy cigarettes (the clove or kretek ones which smell gorgeous but are even more terrible for you).
We were well on our when the bike that our guide was on with another tourist, a Dutch guy called Peter, got a flat tyre. Woopadeedoo. But as always, no problem mister, he stopped at a warung nearby where some oher locals helped us out. To our surprise, it didnt't take that long and we were on our way again.
We arrived at the house where the ceremony was taking place. We were welcomed by the family and sat down for a short while untill we were ushered around the back to witness what was going on. This was the first sight we saw as we entered the area where the buffaloes had been slaughtered (thankfully before we got there!)
Family members are required to slaughter buffaloes (as many as 100 in some ceremonies!) and pigs as they believe that the spirit of the deceased will live peacefully thereafter, continuing to herd the buffaloes that have joined them in the after life. We were told that the heads of the buffaloes are returned to what is locally known as puya (a site for the soul or spirit of the dead person) and their horns are placed in front of the house of the kin (you can see the horns on the front of the houses at the start of this post).
As well as slaughtering 2 buffaloes there were pigs being slaughtered every 10 minutes or so.
Most of these were gifts from other families. We decided we had to see how this was all done. We were told that they get stabbed in the heart when they are slaughtered so we assumed this would be a quite quick end for them. Well, we dont think any of them were experts on pig anatomy and as it turned out they just get stabbed in the chest and as the pig squeels and shakes it foams at the mouth and drowns in its own blood (some may have been lucky to get one in the heart!) Not a very quick death at all!
It is then gutted,
heaved on to the fire to burn its hair off,
and then chopped up into small pieces. This was then flavoured with onions, herbs and spices and stuffed into bamboo casings with vegetables and steamed over a fire for several hours, a traditional Torajan dish known as pa'piong for the feast later.
The buffalo can also be cooked like this but judging by the way it was being butchered into cuts we assume that this is handed out to the villagers and guest so everyone can get a feast. We tried the bamboo dish in a restaurant with Chicken and Pork as different fillings. The chicken was way nicer as the pork was mixed with a very bitter vegetable which we weren't too keen on. Buffalo on the other hand, however, was popular with meat eating Matt, satay, grilled or simply stir fried!
More pigs were slaughtered but we wondered away and towards the main area where all the guests were, of which there were hundreds. The place was full when we arrived but they kept on coming...
We sat down and were served coffee and some lovely biscuits. Then I decided I wanted to pay my respects to the dead and so asked permission from the family. As the dead are treated as thought they are living, I had to thank the deceased and ask permission when I wanted to leave. I had never seen a dead person before and was a bit nervous but it was actually quite calming and he looked happy. They say that it helps with grief to have the deceased person in the house for a while before they are buried as it helps people to get used to the situation and say goodbye which makes sense to me.
We only spent a couple of hours at the funeral, although it was interesting and the people were very welcoming, the smell and sight of the blood and meat got a bit much for us!
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