Strifing the tip of Sulawesi

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From Terminal Mallengkeri i took the southbound kijang, Bira on the very southern tip of Sulawesi is my destination. South of Makassar the peninsula is dry and unproductive compared to the rest of the island. Agriculture isn’t as big here as further north. Instead people find their livehood in fishing, boatbuilding and saltproduction. Some places the beaches are littered with smalloutrigged canoes, other places there are saltmakingsites with large square ponds. At high tide water is let into the pond where it is sunevaporated before a new batch of water is let in. When the saltlayer is thick enough it is collected, dried, packed and distributed. Salt has for a long time been important to many locals, especially women. These days,however, localproduced salt from all over Indonesia has problem competing with salt imorted from India and Australia. On Java forexample, 1500 saltworkers had to give up and find something else to do. Many went into construction.

Bira and the surrounding villages look prosperous. The explanation is the seafaring business. The soil is not good so people became seaoriented. For centuries they were involved in the trade on the Moluccas. Every year they headed there at the end of the western monsoon. When the easmonsoon started blowing the oposite direction, they followed it to Java, Aceh on the northwesternern tip of Sumatra and onward to Malaysia. When the westmonsoon once again arrived, they went home to maintain their boats before heading for the Moluccas. They followed the same pattern as the bugis did. The Biravillagers often are labeled bugis themselves, but they claim they are not at all bugis, only closely related to them. The prosperity visible today is a resault of the big boom during the depression between the worldwars. In those days, tiny Bira had a fleet of over 300 large schooners. Not wihout pride locals tell they got running water in their houses before WW2. Problem is-the pipes installed back then are the pipes used today.

Sadly, the part of Bira where accomodation can be found has turned into a touristic site. There has even been set up a gate charging visitors to enter that part of Bira. Do as me, enter in the late afternoon and avoid beeing charged those bloodmoney. Bira is not as bad as Kuta in Bali-but that has more to do with the size of it than anything else. Bira still is countryside. Here are several hotels and bungalows, a good budgetoption is-or at least was-Riswa Bungalows, three minutes walk away from your snorkellingground. Just be prepared for mosquitos in the evening. Bira has an ok sandy beach, some distance out there are corals. Not walls or spires but a floor of branchcorals where cracks and hollows provide shelter for countless small creatures. There are blue fishes, red, white and green fishes. There are yellow and blackstriped fish, macerellpatterned and spotted fish. Just under the surface a school of larger fish swim. They aren’t barracudas, but they look quite similar. A lobster hiding in its hollow. A turtle flying over the deeper part of the coralfloor. Here are things to enjoy, but compared to a place like Bunaken in Northern Sulawesi, Bira is not even worth mentioning. I will take you there later. My reason for visiting Bira actually is boatbuilding. In Bira itself few boats are buildt, i only found a beautifull little outrigged cano ready for launching. Complete with the watchfull eye painted in the bow, supposed to see all dangers ahead. A tradition dating back to antiquity. However, Bira it is a practical base when visiting the nearby boatbuildingvillages, situated more or less along the road to Makassar.

Tana Beru is the boatbuildingcapital of Sulawesi. Along the sany beach one simple yard is replaced by the next one. As mutch as 50 boats can be under construction here at the same time. You will find boats in all stages of construction, from boats where the keel just have been laid to boats days or hours away from the launching. In Tana Beru, the builders try to keep their traditions alive as mutch as they can. Constructiondrawings still are unheard of. It has been knocked into theirhead by training and experience. A big element of feeling is present. The builders, at least the masters, start their career early. Often before 12 years of age. They start with the simplest tasks like drilling holes. Over the years they gradually learn every side of the boatbuildingprofession until they one day become true masters. The boatdesign isn’t fixed, they have allways experimented with new designs. The now unusual Palariversion had elements from a 16th century portugese caravelle. Todays pinisiq schooner have elements adopted from 18th and 19th century european schooners.
A big schooner take a year to complete-if everything go according to plans. Late delivery of material typically delay construction, causing boatbuilders to do something else. Getting them back can in itself be timeconsuming. Ironwood, now almost dissappeared from the forests, is the prefered material. These days they have to use other and less durable materials like the marantiwood. With the new materials, a boat might only live for ten years, compared to fifty years or even more for a ironwoodboat. New boats might have to be cleaned for growth as often as four times a year.

Spirits and magic are reasons for trying to keep the hullshape as little changed as possible, despite some moderations to accomodate engines. Electrical equipment are used because the demand for shorter constructiontime has started to build pressure on the tradition. Still the old tools are not thrown away, you will see it used. And metalnails are few. Wooden plugs still dominate. Modern glue has arrived to Tana Beru, but natural fibers and bark are used to tighten the hull. Tree is still shaped using heat and steam, it ensures rocksolid parts. Like Indonesia itself, the boatbuilding in Tana Beru mix old and new.

There were many rituals connected to the boatbuildingycle. The keelseremony is one of the very few seremonies still possible to come over-on very rare occations. Don’t count on it! The keel is made of several parts, the parts beeing fused together are given names associated with certain human parts. The relevant part are fused together, declared as married and left alone so they can enjoy their weddingnight on their own. For the occation, a weddingcake is made.
The original launchingritual luckilly has gone. Among other things it involved dragging the boat over seven firsttimepregnant women. It was supposed to ensure the boat a good and lucky life. Obviously, the women didn’t get mutch of that!

I was walking along Jalan Ahmad Yani when i got arrested. On Ahmad Yani there is a large policestation with a guardhouse at the entrance. The guys on duty were close to boring themselves to death and wanted to chat with the bypassing tourist. I was more or less ordered into their office.
-Name! Nationality! Where do you stay! Curiously they studied my books and the passport where a stam fromp Nepal looked back on them. Where is that, and why going there?? Now we started a conversation on an interresting mix of english, indonesian and fingerlanguage. Quite surprising how mutch one can say when everybody cooperate. The conversation only was interrupted when two of them had to lower the “Merah Putih”-“red and white”-the indonesian flag. Guess its colours! Coffee was served in generous amounts. Then one of them, a relatively bigbellied guy with three stripes dropped the bomb: “Aj-am Osam-a Bin Laden” he proclaimed. Silence. Deep silence. We are rich, i said tothe others-a rumour circulated in indonesia then, saying there was a $ 100 million reward for Osamas head.Then i went to the other side of the taple, putting a heavy hand on “Osamas” shoulder proclaiming he was arrested in the name of worldpiece. Silence again, then he screamed out in laughter. Indonesian policeofficers on duty definitely aren’t used to jokes in their office, for good reasons-it must have been a great change. I left the office without the reward, but wit a couple of new adresses in my book and an advice of watching up for pickpockets.

I was starving when i arrived at “Isteri Duas” warung well after sunset. The first question i got wasn’t “what do you want for dinner?”. Number one was-Do you remember my name? Framed in an inquisitorial eyeglimpse. Question two: Where had i spendt my time yesterday?? You weren’t here!!! I was partly forgiven when i telling her i had spendt the night in Bira-not in another Makassar warung. Now we could start on the foodissue.

North of Makassar is Maros, a good stepstone for several local attractions. None of them are “worldclass”, but put together they make up a good excursion. The hourly bus to Maros run along Ahmad Yani, but you have no guarantee witch side of the road it actually leave from. The first Marosbound bus i lost because it left from the oposide side of the street. I crossed the street-and almost lost the next bus too as it still arrived on the oposite side. Hectic running saved me.
I start at Bantimurung, a recreational spot for exhaustpoisoned citydwellers. Today i almost have it to myself, don’t even think about comming here in a typical holliday. You will have to line up in order to breathe!
You arrive in a recreational park with bathingpools and pickictables in the bottom of a limestonevalley with steep, forested walls. In the inner end of the valley there is a scenic waterfall, sadly the immage is partly destroyed by a stair and a rusty waterpipe. But climb the stairs and you enter a narrow gorge wher the river is more like a channel. The surface of the walls are crumbling limestone and covered with small formations holes, cracks and rings that the roots of the trees creep into, allowing the forest to stand litterally rocksolid even in a vertical wall. At the end of the trail is THE tropical dreambatingpool. A sircular pond with white sandbottom and greenish water. Around it cliffs covered in emeraldgreen vegetation. But beware! Look carefully and you will see an innocentlooking whirpool in the middle of the pond. It reveal a sinkhole where water is dragged into an underground watersystem. Nobody knows it size. A dip close to the beach might be ok, but if you get to close to that whirlpool-you will certainly get to know that underground waterways-but you will never be able to tell anybody your story. Some years ago a tourist actually went down, no trace of him found so far. Instead watch the birds catching fish around the whirlpool, look at the beautifull butterflies in the forest and stick to your beachpicnick! And pay the caveformation a visit. When you stand inside it, the stones in the opening make it like looking out from inside the mouth of a wellteethed dinosaur.

Two succeeding bemos packed with schoolchildren take me from Maros to Gua Leang Leang. Here are mountainformations reminding a littleabout Ayers Rock in Australia, and here too there are caves with ancient rockpaintings. Sadly most of them are now closed to visitors, only one cave featuring a hand still is open. That hand, as simple as it is, is for me like a personal greeting from an unknown person witch has been dust for millennias. One summerday 5000 years ago he abandon his daily tasks with fishing or hunting and walk to one of his tribes sacred places, a cave. He bring with him red ochrepowder witch was sacred even to the neanderthals. Maybe it represented blood and thereby life itself. In 40 000 year old graves the deceased are covered with ochre, possibly it is the birthblood issued when they are borned into the next world. Our unknown friend fill his mouth with the powder, put his hand on the rockface with slightly spread fingers and blow the now moisted ochre over it creating a white hand and fingers with red around and between them. Who was he? An old man with most of his life behind him? A young man hunting deer and flirting with the girls? Or was he infact a she? Had he some sort of worries this day, or was it a celebration? Maybe he just passed an important test or had made a major achievement. Beside the hand is a primitive buffalofigure drawn with charcoal. What is it actually-an everlasting scalp after an huntingvictory. Maybe it is an image illustrating a now forgotten legend. Do i actually see the totemannimal of the drawer, or is it an image of one of the gods or spirits reveared by the tribe? Think over it, if our sivilisation is forgotten and somebody in 5000 years find a christian cross or an illustration of the last supper, do you think he wil be able to know what this really is? No Sir! Maybe the same is the case here. It certainly must be the case with some of the rockart found elsewhere in the world. All we can do is ask, the rockfaces are silent, their creators gone.
At the foot of the mountain is a park with naturally eroded obelisks standing up from the dry soil. The elements have shaped them over the centuries and the resault is a fantasytriggering collection of sculptures. Among them you will find demons, fantasyannimals, supernatural beeings. The figures we see today aren’t those seen by our stonagefriend, but i am sure he walked here too. Maybe those pillars were sacred to him and his tribe. All i need to do to enter the area in the 21st century is paying some rupiahs. The stoneagepainter maybe had to go trough a ritual cleaningprocess before entering, maybe he only could go there on certain occations. One can speculate forever.

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