Buffalo sacrifices and baby graves

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I'm in Rantepao (pronounced RANCH-eh-poh) on the island of Sulawesi. It's a small town in an area called Tana Toraja, the local people known as Torajans. I'm here to see a funeral, accompanied by my guide, Arun. He's 25, smiling and cheerful and he feeds me a tremendous amount of information. Can't remember it all, but here are the basics.

Someone has died and his spirit wanders the earth. Torajans sacrifice animals so these spirits can accompany the person's soul to the afterlife. Human souls can't go without animal souls to accompany them. Buffalo, pigs and deer are sacrificed for this, but not chickens which are used for other sacrifices at other times of the year.

The body lies in three different rooms over time, but there is no prescribed length of time for this; it depends on how long the family wishes to have the body around and how long it takes to raise the money to buy the sacrificial animals. It also depends on how long it takes to unite the entire family, some of whom may be living overseas. The body has been preserved with formaldehyde, although in the past this was done with herbal liquids. It goes from bedroom (assuming the person passed away there) to a second room in the house, then to its catafalque. Before the funeral the person is considered sick, not dead, and can lie in state in the second room for years. The person is only considered truly dead after the sacrifices release the soul to go to the afterlife.

Today's funeral is for a high-caste man who was considered a local hero. He died three years ago. The catafalque lies on a bier several metres above the entrance gate to the sacrificing grounds, so everyone who participates or watches here passes beneath him. The bier is a smaller version of the rice barns and so it also has the boat-shaped roof, a design for a the final voyage, perhaps.

Red banners hang above the viewing stands. Red is Toraja's colour and the earth itself has a very reddish hue here. Each banner carries the family motif and each family has its own motif in the same way as Scottish clans have their own tartan.

The number of buffalo used for the funeral depends on the caste of the dead person. Fewer (no less than seven) for low caste, 9/12 for middle caste and 12 or 24 or more for high caste. A president might see 50 buffalo die. Not all animals are sacrificed. Some are spared. All, dead or alive, are given to various villages, committees and associations that have helped to arrange the funeral. It is payment for debt of this help. Feast meals must be prepared, cooked and served, viewing stands erected, etc. It can take up to two months to prepare a funeral.

About 30 buffalo, a deer and a pig are led in to stand around a long rectangular area surrounded by rice barns and viewing stands that have been erected for this. People sit cross-legged on the floor in these. On one side, the middle ones are reserved for family and very close friends. The others are numbered so that those who helped arrange the funeral know where they should sit for the feast that follows. I'm sitting in one of these, halfway down one side of the rectangle.

The rectangle is several metres across and about 30 metres long, bordered all around by a sidewalk of concrete. It is muddy in the centre. The rice barns around the rectangle stand on pillars to keep vermin out. They are blood-red in colour and painted with black, intricate designs, often (or always?) including roosters near the peak of the roof. The roof looks like an open boat with a very high prow and matching stern. Arun explains that long ago the Chinese came to this island in boats to settle here and these boats were probably built in a manner that resembles the roofs. Are these, then, a way to perpetuate memory? A signal to those who might come later from China - a recognizable symbol? Nostalgia for a distant homeland?

Buffalo that are black and white with pale eyes and pink skin are highly prized and cost more, fighting buffalo a little less, normal ones that are brown/black in colour least. Many are castrated when young.

Each buffalo has a nose ring to which is attached a rope. Rings are usually of braided bamboo, sometimes plastic. Buffalo handlers stand waiting, controlling their beasts with slaps and pushes - sometimes slaps to the testicles of those that have them - as each is assigned publicly by loudspeaker to a village, committee, etc and then spray-painted with a number or letters. Animals have numbers or letters spray-painted on their sides in white or red only. Red is the colour of blood, white is for death. Never use yellow for this because it's the colour for life (yellow = the sun). The decision to award which animal to which village, committee, association, etc. is done publicly just before the sacrifice, with officials noting down the decisions.

A man takes a rock and, in three places along the middle of the rectangle, uses it to pound three pairs of wooden stakes deeply into the mud. The stink of buffalo shit is pervasive.

The first to die is the pig. It's not tied so it's chased down, stabbed and has its throat cut. From where I'm sitting I can't see it happen, but I hear it squealing in terror and pain.

Then the first of the buffalo - a prized mottled one - is tied by its leg to the centre stake in front of me. One man ties while another holds the nose-ring rope. As soon it's tied the handler lifts the rope, bringing the buffalo's head up to expose its neck. In his sash he has a special knife, long and sharp, with a wooden handle that's often carved to represent the head and neck of a turkey. He pulls the knife from its sheath and hos movement becomes quick. He steps back, draws back his arm and swings with a chap and slice that thwoks into the animal's neck, leaving a big, red wound that spurts blood in two jets. This is as fresh a red as you'll ever see. Pinkish at the edges, it's bright red, then darker red inside.

This is inside red - the inside of a living animal - something that shouldn't be but is. The beast lurches, heaves, jumps as the man dashes out of the way. Blood sprays everywhere. The buffalo bellows with no voice, just a hoarse, gasping sound as it staggers around trying to stay upright. It falls, pushes itself up, topples over again kicking, moving its head, kicks slowing, twitches and is finally still for a while, although it will go on twitching and kicking occasionally for a few more minutes.

Meantime, men are tying another buffalo to another stake and Thwok! another beast thrashing, kicking, bleeding, dying. One after another, beast after beast. Some run and kick, some stand there stunned, legs slowly giving way as strength pours out of the red throat wound. Some are killed well, with a single cut. Others badly, requiring several cuts. The crowd reacts to this with a vocal disapproval, a sort of Boooooo! Soon beasts are tied to beasts, not stakes, kicking themselves to death beside buffalo corpses.

What's strange is that despite the obvious terror, the stink of death, the presence of death itself, each animal stands patiently with the trusted humans who've tended it, looked after it throughout the years. It follows its handler out into the bloody muck amidst all the corpses of fallen beasts, unsuspecting of intentions, of imminent death, standing tied and patient. They have eyes but cannot see or recognize or know.

Throughout this the deer, tied to a tree in the rectangle, dozes gently. The leaping, kicking, hoarse bellowing, thrashing, slashing, blood an death do not seem to bother it, until a hand seizes one antler, head back and Slash! and suddenly its neck is open, gushing red and it's kicking too, fighting against what Dylan Thomas called “the dying of the light” only this is no gradual dimming but a rapid fall from lightness to darkness.

Dead buffalo, pig and deer litter the muddy, bloody rectangle when the skinning begins. Small teams surround each animal and knife tongues lick the carcasses quickly. Hides come off in minutes, men almost ankle-deep in the bloody muck. Blood pools in the footprints, little red lakes of death, some find of floodplain delta of death. The beasts go from hairy brown-black to white as the hide is cut away. I take a few more pictures, then leave.

It's noon, so Arun takes me to a restaurant. It's a beautiful garden setting with plenty of green leaves, orange, yellow, pink and red flowers, red and white gingham tablecloth. It's peaceful here...quiet. Huge contrast from the mud and blood, the dying and dead animals, the stink of shit and the hot, hot sun. It's true that my stomach - a pitiless master - tells me it's time to eat. I sit at the table, shaken, a bit stunned, hands slightly shaky, stomach not upset or queasy, but odd. I feel tired, drained, probably the result of a sustained adrenalin rush in the face of so much death. I order vegetarian food.

The sacrifices are tradition and custom, but how much of it is based in real belief? Arun tells me he's Christian and doesn't believe in this. Others probably do, but how many? To call it barbaric is to judge with eyes from another culture, one that dates back at least to Roman times where that word - barbaric, barbarian - comes from. We don't believe in this in the West so we don't see the use of value in doing this. We see only useless slaughter, a terrible violation of right to live, a monstrous selfishness of sacrifice for human wants and needs.

Yet - and here is the conflict - within an international system that espouses and proclaims the equality of beliefs in varied cultures, how do we permit ourselves to judge it? Does this equality - must this equality - give way before other aspects that we deem to be even more fundamental, such as the right to life? Equality of belief systems pertains to humans, but life is not unique to us.

In the end I see why the Torajans do this. I understand the value it has for those who believe, but it doesn't hold value for me. And yet...what difference does it really make except in the manner of death? It's the spectacle that's disturbing to me. The animals are not discarded. If they were, it would be heinous. The dead ones are consumed, the ones that are spared continue as beasts of burden. We kill and eat animals all the time. These ones were simply not killed behind closed doors in some sanitized, industrialized process that we think is supposed to be less cruel. Maybe it's only judged less cruel because we don't witness it.

Effigies and baby graves
In the afternoon we go to see three burial sites. The first are at a village called Lemo, like the fruit: lemon. These are graves dug out of the rock of a cliff. Standing outside on rock ledges are effigies of the dead carved in wood. High caste at the top, middle and low cast below. The effigies are dressed and faces painted with white, staring eyes made of bone. They used to be fairly uniform in appearance, mere symbols. But over time sculptors have begun to make them look like the real person by working from photos so now each has its unique appearance, its identity. They stand side by side in their stony loges staring out in endless vigil to protect those who are interred in the rock wall graves. Bodies are not put inside, only skeletons long after all tissue has disappeared.

We go next to baby graves. “Baby graves?” I think, “this sounds curious.” We come to a bamboo grove, jade-green and emerald light flowing down on us. It's peaceful with something gently haunting about it. In the middle stands an ancient palm tree, big around as several people standing in a cluster. There are mats of palm fibre fastened to the tree with wooden stakes. Birds, rodents and insects cannot penetrate these dense mats. Behind these the tree has been hollowed out in tiny, upright graves.

The bodies of children who've died before they've cut their first tooth stand inside. It's the belief here that those who've not yet grown teeth have no human experience and therefore don't need animal sacrifices...they can get to the afterlife on their own. Most of these are first-born children. They're buried in the tree whose sap will nourish them, along with banana juice and one or two other items to help them. Few babies are now buried this way. Torajan women now go to clinics and hospitals during pregnancy and birth so infant mortality rates have fallen a long way.

Final stop is a nearby cave that's been formed by a river, now dry. Inside are more effigies but no rock graves. The cave holds wooden coffins - again, only bones go in. The lids for these look like the rice-barn roofs...like boats. Which came first, barn (and also house) roofs, or coffins? Arun thinks they appeared simultaneously. There are also plenty of skulls and bones here, piled neatly against the wall or on natural ledges in the usual hierarchy of castes. Outside the cave rice farmers plow their watery fields and children play beside a stream.

We return to Rantepao on country roads. It's uncomfortable on the back of Arun's motorbike but very scenic. We go past rice fields and villages. People see me and wave, especially children.

Hours later in my hotel room I can still smell the stink of buffalo shit lingering in my nostrils. Is it really there, or just the memory of it surviving in my brain because of how deeply the scene has been imprinted on my memory?

Rantepao market
The next day we go to the outdoor market. Dozens and dozens of buffalo in a big field, held by the nose-ring ropes, waiting to be sold. Pigs lying on their sides, lashed to bamboo frames by bamboo cords. They're lined up in rows and potential buyers walk up and down on the muddy lanes under the corrugated tin roof, judging, estimating. Most pigs lie placidly but prod one and it starts squealing at piercing volume. Once purchased, a pig is loaded - bamboo frame and all - into a wheelbarrow and carried squealing to the new owner's vehicle. Nearby stand a group of men selling piglets from sacks.

Beside this is the clothing and tool market. The latter includes endless numbers of wooden-handled knives. The finer ones are made of polished buffalo horn. There are wicker baskets and grass mats for sale, clothing, household goods, toys and gadgets. Outside the permanent structure, lining the sidewalk, sit the rice, fruit and vegetable sellers, along with coffee vendors offering three different sizes of tin cups full of ground coffee, an open bag of beans behind and a grinder ready to go. It's endlessly colourful and people show me their goods with pride and smiles. Many are happy to let me take photos.

It starts raining and we dash into a tea house, order tea. Group of men sitting there look at me, ask me if I play football, tell me I look exactly like the Czech footballer, Jan Koller. This starts to explain some of the staring I get here, particularly from boys and men. They love football here and perhaps really do think they're seeing one of their heroes walking amongst them.

In the evening I catch a bus back to Makassar, to the airport, where I'm to catch a plane to Java. I'm half-way through my voyage. India, Nepal and China feel like they're a long way in the past, yet all of it seems to have gone by so quickly. It's a contradiction that I can't explain.

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Photos

The bier
Where the catafalque lies, holding the body of the person whose soul is waiting to go to the afterlife.

Official choice
Officials choose which buffalo are given to whom, and which ones will be sacrificed or spared

Calming
A buffalo handler calms his beast while waiting for the sacrifice to begin. This is one of the expensive ones, with pale eyes and black and white colouring.

Surpised
Calm just a few moments ago, it looks stunned now by what's just happened.

Whack/slash
It doesn't know it yet, but it's as good as dead.

Bright red gash
The throat is open and bright red blood begins to pour.

Another minute or so...
...and this animal will be dead.

Mud and blood
With the final buffalo felled, a moment of calm before the skinners move in.

I wonder what he's thinking
I saw this boy looking at all of these dead animals and wondered if it was the first sacrifice he'd seen and what he was thinking about it all.

Buffalo sacrificer
This guy, covered in blood, was one of the people who killed the buffalo.

Arun
He gets the good motorcycle helmet.

I get a helmet too...
...but it's more like those used by batters in baseball so I'm not convinced by its usefulness on a motorcycle. I'm wearing a white cap underneath the helmet.

Traditional rice barn
This was one of several just near the baby graves.