18::Tana Toraja, Sulawesi
2.7.97 Friday
Day’s sightseeing took in the following:
Sa’dan To’Barana: leftover funeral structures; weaving center; roof repair observation. (Roofs are another main attraction. Toraja is landlocked but their houses and rice barns look like boats.) Yunus, adhering to Ramadan fast, suddenly doubled over in pain with stomach cramps – he had overslept so didn’t have time to eat before sunrise.
Rantepao: grocery store to buy a funeral gift (sugar, cigarettes) and liquor (for us)
Makale: we went to the funeral and watched the receiving of guests and gifts processions. It looked like whole villages of people dressed up in ceremonial uniforms lined up in turn to present various gifts, including pigs and water buffalo to be sacrificed. Families go broke putting on funerals. Then they line up the pig jawbones and buffalo horn "racks" on the front of their houses. This represents not only the magnificent sacrifices they attracted to their funeral, but also a debt incurred to others' funerals. (If someone sacrifices a water buffalo for your mother's funeral, they expect you to respond in kind when it is their turn.)
Rantepao: lunch at Karaoke restaurant. Yunus sings.
Nanggala: rice barns; house adorned with ancient human skull (from when humans were sacrificed at funerals). We barged in on a wedding party, but they were gracious about posing for pictures. They were drinking sugar-based liquor out of hollowed sugar canes but didn't offer us any.
All through Indonesia we've been seeing roadside stands with shelves of unlabeled bottles containing a pale liquid. We've been thinking this is the local hooch. Yunus thought that was hilarious. It is gasoline.
Marante: tau-tau cliffs. We were surprised to see skulls and bones scattered across the ground where old caskets had broken open. People apparently just leave these alone.
Rantepao: antique/handicraft shops
Themes
American music soundtrack. In the Novotel’s deserted restaurant last night for supper: Billie Holiday and bluesy horns. This morning: old country, R & B, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Tennessee Waltz. More prominent here in Sulawesi. Perhaps because Java and Bali are more tourist-aware and conscious of promoting the native music. Yunus says he learned English through songs.
Sacred places, ritual and ritual objects. Seeing the tau-tau [wooden effigies of well-to-do locals ensconsed in their own cliffside galleries overlooking a village] was the main reason we came to Sulawesi. We have seen a tau-tau "in captivity" and wanted to see them in their family settings.
Syncretism and common beliefs
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