Where death is life

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Tana toraja-the land of the Torajas-is centrally located in the highland of southern Sulawesi. The area is fameous for the strangelooking traditonal noblemanhomes and its strong traditions connected with the death. Saying that death attract the tourists is no overstatement. I start my deathtouring in the tranquil little village of Lemo, midway between Rantepao the comercial centre of Tana Toraja and Makale witch is the administrative. It has been since 1925. The two towns are 20 minutes by kijang-car-apart. Between them there is peacefull countryside. Lemo is a obligatory stop for all visiting groups, so hardcore backpackers might want to skip it. Don’t. This is the real thing. Take a kijang from either town and ask to be dropped off at Lemo. There is a sign there,but every driver-and villager for that matter-knows exactly where you want to go. Lemos attraction is the finest remaining TauTauspot in the entire region. TauTaus mean “little person”, and thats exatly what it is. It is wooden doll, each of them represent a deceased person. In Lemo they are lined up in galleries cut out in the bluegreyish rock in dignified height above the ground where common people walk. Above the cliff there is dark, green forest dripping moist from the leafs. It is still early morning, and the sun hasn’t reached this spot yet. Below the cliff there is a bowl with small paddyfields. It is totally silent, i am the only one present and theere is sort of a supernatural atmosphee to the place. The morningfog drift across the cliff like semitransparent cottonwads creating false movements in the TauTaus. It is like they peform small movements while watching the visitors. The big black and white eyes nail the visitors with a stiff look. The TauTaus have inherited the authoritative personality once found in the persons they represent. Only nobility got TauTaus. Their glimpse and face actually are very similar to those of the big statues on the Easter Island. In the same cliff there are plenty of square openings, most of them covered with a wooden door. Those are the entrances to familygraves cut into the hard rock. They are said to be 500 years old, and belong to rich families. Only they could afford having a chamber beeing excavated. The graveconstruction were paid with buffaloes, the traditional monetary unit in Tana Toraja, it still is. The familymembers were stuffed in one by one, causing the older remains to be pushed deeper into the chamber. Some of the hatches partly has dissappeared, revealing glimpses of rich buialofferings. I can see fabric, householditems, secretive coffins. Outside some of the doors small decorated crosses are displayed. Some of them aren’t old. The old nobility is still memorized by its decendants. The crosses are good illuastrations over the mix between modern and ancient religion, a phenomena found all over the country. I later found crosses in rather unlikely settings.

The TauTau figures are only made of the jackfruitwood. Before the figure is cut, the wood is soaked in coconutoil until ut get the native skincolour. One have to be particular with some details. Under the sarong, the carpetlike cloting used all over Indonesia, all male TauTau has an erected penis. The bodyparts can be moved and were manipulated in sort of a puppetshow during the funeralceremony. It is expensive items, before one could be concidered a TauTauworthy person, one had to be able to sacrifice no less than 24 buffaloes. There existed a cheap version made out of bamboo and cloth, but they rarely were used. I never heard any reference to them in Tana Toraja.
Sadly, fewer and fewer TauTaus can be seen in Tana Toraja. Theft is increasingly comon. Those families still having original TauTaus to worry about often keep them at home these days to avoid loosing them. Instead, eplicas are placed in the galleries. In Lemo, there is a mix of genuine and replaced ones. Collectors pay thousands of dollars for a single TauTau, no wounder some locals are happy to rob the TauTausites, especially those whose ancestrors belonged to the slavecast. The torajasociety was a castsociety with the noble on the top and the slaves at the bottom. At funeraltimes, members of the slavecast regulary had to accept beeing sacrificed so they could continue serving the nobility in the next world. This tradition the dutch stopped when they arrived. Despite the official ending of the castsystem, people even today perfectly well know where they belong-and where the neighbour belong. The slavedecendants have very little reason to have any nostalgy for the past, so after the risk involved in maloko-graverobbery-decreased dramatically, they regarded it as a source of income. The spiritual consequences could be huge, beside it was deathsentence for doing sutch a crime. And it was carried out. I think the deathsentence still is the formal punishment-the difference is that these days nobody can be executed for it.

In the outskirt of Londa-another village a few kilometers closer to Rantepao you find another nomissatraction. You have to walk coupla kilometer along a gravelroad before passing a gate where an entrancefee is charged. Locals have realised the cashpotential in their traditions long ago. Just behind the ticketgate, you find yourself on the lowest part of the edge of a perfect,deep bowl covered in forest and paddyfields. A real beutyspot. On both sides the walls rise, oposite of me there is a more than hundred meter high vetical cliffwall covered with climbing plants. The wall is perforated with natural burialcaves. None of them can be visited by the occational visitor-not because of taboos but because of its inaccessibility. Climbing is required. But don’t despair, to the left of the entrancepoint at the bottom of the bowl there is a rocky outcrop with a big burialcave iside. This is what one could call the visitorcave. In the walls of the overhang, poles are inserted to the rock. On the poles simple wooden coffins are placed.These are the socalled hanging graves. It symbolise the deceased persons magical properties and their ability to climb the wall without a rope or a ladder. The hanging graves are watched by TauTaus, some of them elaborate pieces of work. One can recognize people one never have met or never will meet for that matter. I fell in love with an od grandmother with simple but recognizeable facial features.
Normal statues beeing a copy of somebody everybody has seen countless times. One doesen’t usually get toutched by those, but some of the TauTaus almost felt like messengers from the other side of ethernity. The TauTaus stood at their gallery, watching me with an awake glimpse. They were silent, unmoving, unapproachable. They gave me no indication of having noted my precence. We weren’t anchored in the same world. Still, there were something there. Weak muttering, whispering voices that the ear couldn’t catch. Then it is this strange charge or tension that i can feel, not with my ears eyes or sencorysence. The smellsence was occupied with the smell ov vegetation and humid cave. What ws it i could feel with an unknown sence? Here to i was all alone, at least in a physical sence, so i could enjoy the total silence and tune in on this strange vibrations. It was not unpleasant or scaring in any way, witchever spirits present there this day, they couldn’t have been hostile.
I lit my torch and enter the cave itself. I thought it was silent outside, but inside the darkness and silence was compact as a wall. The air is humid and filled with a sweetened smell. My only company in here are skelletons and headsculls from cracked coffins, some of them are very old. On the floor is a mix of foodremains, plates, textiles, and flowerremains. There are lot of outcrops, every one is filled with coffins, some ancient, some relative new. One of the coffins had very recently placed sigarets on top of it. It is only a matter of days since somebody made an offering to their ancestors in here.The cave is mindboggling in a way. Here one can follow the generations. Here are people that experienced when the first car arrived to Torajaland, others fought the conquering dutch colonists, a fight that only ended as late as the 1930’s. Beside those, people rest who never heard about Jesus, but stuck to Puang Matua, The Great God. Now they are united here.
Later that day a tourgroup arrived. They for sure didn’t experienced what i did. Hey only saw the physical things outside and inside the cave. What one can photograph, toutch, be portrayed beside. To most of them, this is just a cave filled with human remains more or less inside the coffins, with exotic figures placed outside. Figures that would be the perfect gardentrol to place outside the doghouse back home. All of it arranged in the bottom of a beautiful bowl. The bonedrilling noise they would have banned on their own graveyards must hace chased all spirits away. The torajapeoples deathcermonies are noisy events too, but thats not the point here. The point is that those tourists don’t realise, or rather don’t care about the fact that this is a graveyard, somebodys loved ones rest in these caves. The torajaceremonies are more or less unknown to them, something i got confirmed from the grouptalk later that day when i came back to the bowl-as part of a torajaprocession. My point is that the attitude many tourists have is sort of disespect. Sometimes it is fueled by ignorance-lack of knowledge. But that’s not an excuse when you are in a place to see and experience. It worsen it. In my mind, everybody should use their head when entering sutch places.

The torajas have a cultural identity so strong that they happily welcome outsiders. They demand some respect, but they are tolerant towards tourists not expectet to know that mutch. The spectacular funeralceremonies is the mainattraction of the area, and every visitor want to attend one. The funerals are only held uing the harvestseason, especially july and agust are busy months. During this period torajas return home from all over Indonesia and other countries as well in order to attend the funerals. But in order to see one as a tourist, you need an invitation. This caused me some worry before i came here-i knew nobody here.....but it is enough to be rounded up by somebody who know somebody....tourguides often know scores of “somebodies”. But they obviously demand cash for taking you there. I was lucky enough to meet a local writer in Londa, he told me it will be a funeralceremony not far away. If i wanted to, i could go with him and a few other from the village in a few moments. Today is the last day of a funeral that has been going on for days already.

We started to walk up the steep side of a little forestcovered mountain throning high above the plain. On the almost flat top there is a country courtyard with five nice tongkonans-the traditional ricebarns and noblemans livinghouses with boatshaped roof. Tana Torajas trademark. The rest of the courtyard was circled in with roofed bambootribunes for all the guests. In the middle of the square stand the cylindrical, richly decorated coffin on a bier with tongkonanroof. This way the deceased remains under roof even when he is transported to his gravecave. Both the bier and the coffin tell me that a nobleman is in there. Beside the coffin is the head and inyards from a buffalo sacrificed the same morning.
Nothing mutch happens at the moment. Seen trough the eyes of a westerner, there are little evidence of an ongoing funeral. And why should it? The nobleman isn’t dead yet, no matter how well tucked inside the coffin he is. According to the tradition, the deceased is counted among the living until far into the finalising seremony. People sat on the tribunes and the platforms under the tongkonans talking about daily things. The atmosphere is like you would expect on a good day in Disneyland. One of the attendants start to mess with a videorecorder, say something and cause the surroundings to almost laugh themselves to death and next funeral. People take turns of photograph and beeing photographed beside the coffin.

Food is served. To the tribunes a procession of ricebowls and plates with pa’piong arrived. Pa’piong is meat of buffalo, pig or chicken boiled in a bambootube together with some sort of a vegetable. It is boiled over a fire for hours. Today pig and buffalo were served. I like pig best. The fat pigmeat takes more taste. We have two choices of drinking, water or balok-palmwine. Balok is fermented palmsap.The alcoholcontent isn’t that big, but one tend to drink quite a lot, so there might be a surprise in the other end of a party. The fresher the balok is, the sweeter it is. As it ferments, it becomes increasingly bitter. Taste change from hour to hour, and is usually tapped the same day as it is consumed. I tasted a multitude of “vintages” and prefered the fresh balok. Eager hands made sure my glass was filled at all times.

The funeralceremonies is a mix of ancient and christian elements. The familys religious affection have influence on how the ceremony is performed. This ceremony started with a christian lithurgy witch looked catholic, despite prothetantism dominate in this area. It was brought here by dutch missionaries following in the trail of the military campaign launched in 1905. among the guests, both moslems and christians are present, but here everybody is toraja and lojaly attend as a matter of course. Priest and family speak in a mix of bahasa toraja and bahasa indonesia-bahasa means language. After a toutching hymnsinging, a young man with a guitar stepped forward. A long solonumber followed. Facing the coffin he sings and play, not to us, but to the deceased. He is smiling with his whole body as he adress his older relative for the very last time before he start the long journey to the land of the dead.
During the lithurgy, the atmosphere were serious, but not sad. Now the priest and some relatives went around the coffin with burning insence. The priest said something over there. It was like pressing the red button. Lot of people started to scream and cry. An old woman, probably the widow, was absolutely broken down. Some relatives supported her over to a tongkonanplatform. A little later it was a new change of atmosphere. It is funtime! Everybody have been waiting for it! Two groups of young men run to the long handles of the bier performing sort of a tug of war, and swinging it around and around on the square with plenty of noise. The procedure is supposed to confuse evil spirits witch might be present. The cariers and a large procession of guests start to walk down thwe mountain towards the burialcaves i visited in the morning. Now and then, new thugs of war start for the same reason as before. The guests loudly shout and applaud and are even more eager to take photos than i am. They run along the procession like attacking infantery.
At the edge of the bowl, the coffin is stripped for everything exept two long stakes to carry it on. A group of young men start to transport it to the top of the cliff where another group has been waiting for a while. They spend the wait singing and throwing every loose item that they can find into the bowl. As soon as the coffin reaches the top, they lower it along the cliffwall. Some men climb after it. I nervously watch, they aren’t secured up there, they only have the climbing plants and a couple of ropes to hold onto. With balokfilled stomachs and heads the risk for somebody to loose their grip and initiate another funeral is significant. But nothing happen. The coffin is manouvered into a cave where i can see several older coffins, he get company there, witch is good. Now he no more belongs to our world. At last he belongs to the land of the dead.

A guide took me to another funeral in the hills north of Rantepao. This was the donationday of another noblemanceremony. During the donation, all guests give the family a donation, usually buffaloes or pigs. Everything is paraded on the ceremonyground and carefully registered-the hostfamily is obliged to give back something of similar value when it is their turn to donate in another funeral. On the donationday also tourists are expected to give a symbolic present, nothing big. On the advice of my guide i have invested in a few kilos of sugar. Tobacco is another hot option.
We leave Rantepao early in the morning.the bemo is filled with other guests. We are dropped far into the countryside and walk on narrow and slippery paths trough the paddyfields. Soon we arrived in a group of tongkonans. Here scores of people were sitting. The ground is littered with black pigs having their feet tied together and a carryingpole inserted between them. The poor annimals were boiled in the sun, panting heavilly. This is true annimalobuse. Do some lobbying!
Only a fraction of the guests could enter the ceremonyground at the time. The whole day a constant train of donators arrived with their pigs and left again. Hundreds of pigs, each worth at least 110 dollars, would be donated during the day. Big money is involved in a noblemanfuneral. It was estimated to take nine hours before everybody had passed. With so many visitors i was sure i had to sit on the hillside with the locals, watching the ceremonyground from there and studying size and quality of the parading donations. But no, i was taken almost directely to the tribune itself where shade, comfort and balok waited. I was told that foreigners often receive this treatment because foreign participants increase the status of the funeral. To start with i got tea and kueh made of riceflour, brown palmsugar and sesamyseeds. In colour and shape they looked pretty mutch like human droppings, but they were good. Now balok was served in half liter big bambootubes. Stupid as i am, i never said no thanks. The resault was me falling off the path and into a deep ditch when we left for Rantepao. The bambootube i still had in my hand when i reached the bottom three meters down-with its content intact! Cheers! i said to my worried guide three meters above me. The story about the falling tourist i would get to hear again a few days later, and like all stories it had grown conciderably.Wait and see!
On the ceremonyground it was a break in the parade. It was time for the ringdance. Blackdressed men stood in a circle, rythmicly singing Ma’badong-the song about the deceased persons life.
North of Rantepao is Sa’Dan, a tiny village without formal accomodation. I intended to spend the night here, counting on the accomodationissue to be solved. It unexpectedly did fifty meters after i had left Wisma Wisata,my Rantepao homestayaccomodation. The owner of the neighbouring homestay was sitting on his veranda and rounded me up for a chat. He was an old soldier and proudly demonstrated his knowledge about the russian AK-47, the americam M-16 and the belgian FNC. Now he wanted to hear what the norwegian army bite with so i gave him a resume on the AG-3 rifle, the MG-3 machinegun and the 12,7 heavy machinegun. An australian got the same question. He made it short and made a drawing of a boomerang. Now that we had became old buddies, the homestayowner decidd to kick up the door for me over in Sa’Dan. There he has relatives. In my diary he wrote an introduction where he ask that Teman saya-mty friend-get a bed for the night. Satisfied with the turn of events, i continued to the bemostop.
Half an hour later i was dropped off in the middle of ricecountry. Up to the left is a short dirtroad leading to Sa’dan witch only consist of a few houses and a school. I was heading for the, as my dooropener called it-district of To’Barana, witch infact is a couple of livinghouses, some splendid tongokans and a string of weaveryshops. Sa’Dan is known for its weavingcraft. Trouble is-they have a marketingproblem. When i arrived, eveal of the stalls were expressopened. Colourfull carpets, tablecloths and pillowcases appeared. They had striking colourcombinations like black and yellow, black and red, white and blue...I the stall witch had been open even before i arrived. In there a small,beautifull woman sat on the floor with a primitive loom tied to her waist. A crowd of local women gathered on the grass outside. Sitting with their legs crossed, they made a discrete but massive groupprressure, soon i negotiated the price of a pillowcasing she wanted 40 grand for. A moment later she said 35. I am sure the price could be pressed down quite a lot. People here need the cash, and a little is far better than nothing. I felt it would be unfair, and more important-her eyes were absolutely adoring when she smiled....!
My intended host, Salogang Rantelabi is doing business in Makale and is expected back in the afternoon. I left the backpack in his house in the meantime and took station on a sunheated rock down at the river. In a riverpool a couple of kids scrub their buffaloes witch seem to be in their 7th heaven. Buffaloes enjoy a good life here, but a risky one. The posts of the tongkonans are filled with horns from sacrificed buffaloes and jaws from pigs.This river is important to the torajapeople. Legends-witch not unlikely is history itself-claim this river to be where their ancestrors came up with eight large canoes some 25 generations ago. They went upstream as far as they could before settling down and start the Torajanation. To’Barana itself was founded centuries ago by Langi Parapak of the To’Baranafamily. How long ago i don’t know, but a major renovation took place in the middle of the 18th century-around 250 years ago.

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