Very trippy houses |
With no strict itinerary and a cheap promo ticket to South
Sulawesi purchased many weeks ago, I decided to head for Tana Toraja after
arriving at Makassar airport. It is most
well known for holding 3 day funeral ceremonies. Sounds grim I know, but after hearing a few
testimonies and reading a few bits and pieces, it seemed like it would be a
quite unique event in a place also renowned for a temperate climate and
stunning natural beauty. So off I went
on the super comfy night bus for ten hours. Eight quid for seats twice as large
as you get on the UK’s inappropriately titled National “Express”, with double
the legroom thrown in, and the ability to recline many parts of the seat. It was practically an adjustable bed. An additional bonus came when I stumbled
across a tin shack selling premium spirits at normal prices next to the bus
station. It takes special contacts to
get hold of any familiar spirits for less than fifty pounds a bottle in
Indonesia. In normal circumstances you can’t even buy them anywhere apart from
in nightclubs. So I got a bottle of Smirnoff for about fifteen pounds when I
was only looking for some peanuts.
I’m quite an experienced traveler now, so I immediately
smell a rat when a middle aged guy with a weathered face and a cold, distant
look in his eye offers to sort me out a package including hotel, food, driver,
guide etc. They’re always going to
charge more than it is worth and you don’t even get to see the hotel
beforehand. So I took the number of the man offering me just this kind of deal
as soon as I arrived at the airport, said “Yes mate, well aye” in Indonesian,
left the airport and turned off my phone. The best way always seems to be to
just rock up and see what’s around. I
found a guide as soon as I got off the bus in Toraja who took me to the funeral
ceremony at 9am after I had checked into a hotel. I was a bit disappointed if I am
honest. I had expected a variety of
ceremonial curiosities, and in fairness, had I stayed longer or even arrived
the day before who knows what I would have seen. Most of what I did see was a variety of
animal cruelty.
Next stop on the tour was a cockfight. I had no idea this was part of the itinerary. Maybe it wasn’t and my guide just stumbled across it and thought I’d be interested. I guess I was, again in a morbidly fascinated kind of way. As an aside, I find it quite odd that cultures worlds apart with no influence on one another both practice the same horrible ‘sport’. It isn’t open or widespread like here in Toraja – in fact I hope it doesn’t happen at all anymore but it’s no secret that gambling over cockfighting has and probably still goes on in the UK and probably many other countries. For those of you not in the know, this is how it works. 2 men hold one chicken each with one hand around their bodies and another firmly around their necks. They then force the chicken’s heads into close proximity with one another until they get angry and start pecking. Then the men take turns presenting their chicken to the other – in effect all tied up; its beak being held now too so the other chicken can peck away furiously, and then vice versa until both chickens are in full on fight mode. Then they are released and continue the script as written for them, while someone walks around taking bets on which one will get pecked to death first. Although I won’t judge (I think crowd psychology is not entirely blameless here with both the pigs and the chickens - considering the carnival atmosphere and the important social nature of the event it only takes a couple of people to do something cruel and it can become accepted as normal behavior), or maybe because I won’t judge, I find it quite fascinating to note how my and no doubt many other’s standards in any issue can be so flexible depending on the context of what is before us. If I had seen these events in the UK, I would have been disgusted to put it mildly. Yet the harsh truth is that we in the UK are just better at disguising our cruelty. There is little doubt that chickens are the most abused animal on earth, most of them living their lives in their own shit, developing arthritis in spaces barely big enough to fit their bodies and being force fed unnatural and carefully planned diets designed to aide maximum growth as rapidly as possible regardless of their suffering, while we happily eat their breasts, our eyes and morals shielded from the horrors that they suffer by the nice packaging. Yet many who happily snap up cheap supermarket meat would have been horrified by what I saw today. I’m not justifying it, because frankly I didn’t like what I saw, but then I also thought that these people for the most part have their animals roaming free range before these unfortunate episodes occur and that their culture is so far removed from anything I have ever been a part of that I should play no part other than that of curious observer. The fact that these events take place at funerals underlines this stance. Imagine if you will, at a wake in the Red Lion after the death of your uncle, a fascinated Inuit on a multi stop trip round the UK popped in and tried to stop anyone from eating pork scratchings because the pigs had suffered. It wouldn’t be so different. He’d probably get knocked out and would deserve it.
The same morning I learned of the existence of a caste
system here, not unlike that of the “untouchables” in India. The higher the caste of the unfortunate
person whose passing is being mourned, the more elaborate the celebration. The inequalities permeate life as well as
death though, with those on the bottom rung of the social ladder apparently
being denied the most basic of courtesy and respect by those higher up
according to my guide. He used the
following analogy, seeming not at all unimpressed by this harsh reality,
despite seeming a very nice chap otherwise.
Imagine if someone gave you a durian (the world’s smelliest fruit) and
said it was a tomato. You would know
straight away that it was a durian because of the smell. He basically said that even if someone from a
lower caste lied about their background or makes a lot of money, you would
still be able to tell them apart because they would stink. He actually referred to them as “the slave
caste,” a caste which if one is unfortunate enough to be born into, there is no
escape. From which caste my guide was I do not know. Those in the highest caste get priority in
their places of burial, the photo shown here is one of many rows of tombs in a
cliff face.
I was told that to be buried
here it costs one hundred million rupiah, which at ten thousand US$ seems
expensive considering the cost of labour here is so cheap, but maybe it’s the
exclusivity of the location and the fact that it symbolizes which caste a
deceased person is from which makes it so expensive. Regardless of the background, I found these
burial sites to be so beautiful, intriguing and tragic all at once, especially
when I saw one tomb with a young man’s photo outside of it. I also came across many smaller burial sites
with two or three tombs embedded rocks surrounded by rice paddies. The bodies are transported to their tombs
from the preceding ceremonies in miniaturized versions of batak houses which
are only used once and remain in the vicinity of the deceased’s tomb. From a purely aesthetic perspective this is
such an interesting tradition, in which intricately designed receptacles, each
with its own story, dot the forested and agricultural land all around. One wonders, were the population to
dramatically increase if this would be practical to maintain, though at the
moment settlements are very sparsely spread throughout the region.
Animal cruelty and cultural issues aside, the scenery here
has made my jaw drop like never before.
It’s not unlike Sumatra, but without obvious palm oil plantation
encroachment on the nature. Having said
that, I’ve only covered a radius of around 30km, so I wouldn’t be surprised if
such a problem was just around the corner.
During my excursion yesterday, following the gore-fest I was taken to a
café made of wood situated on a corner of a winding mountain road which
benefits from unobstructed views stretching endlessly into the distance. The problem is that, as I’m sure those who
haven’t developed skills in the art of photography will relate to, ordinary
cameras just can’t capture the magic.
Let down by my camera or my photography (lack of) skills |