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| A poster in the Peace Corps office in Surabaya. |
Why did I join Peace Corps? As I sit in a quiet, cool, clean hotel room the day before my official close of service I think that one of the answers to that question is because I learn best through direct experience. Distancing oneself from the immediate influences of culture by sheer physical boundaries, as far as planes, trains, boats, buses, horse and buggies and your own feet will take you, is a kind of learning; a very important kind that is not emphasized enough in our product-oriented work styles. For me, the accumulation of knowledge isn’t just enhanced by a personal application of the subject, it is dictated by it.
The above picture is a few of us volunteers with Country Director Nina (far right) ringing the gong during our close of service "ceremony" in the Peace Corps lounge with staff. Ringing the gong is a time-honored tradition with Peace Corps volunteers to say "so long and thanks for all the fish" to the Peace Corps staff.
Part 2: Traditions of death and moving on
6/14/16
It has been a week since I left Karawang, but only four days since I left the main island of Java via plane from the foreign eastern city of Surabaya. Chad, a friend from Peace Corps who I'm traveling with, and I flew to Makassar, capital of Southern Sulawesi, then took a ten hour bus ride to Rantepao, where some of the more hardy tourists go to see the fascinating funeral rituals of the Torajan people. Today is our final day in Rantepao and I don’t think either Chad or I are feeling terribly motivated to “make the most of it”. Tomorrow, Insy’allah, we will take an early plane to northern Sulawesi. I say Insy’allah (meaning God-willing in Arabic and used with the same frequency as "bless her heart" in the South) because Indonesian travel can be 1-3 hours on either side of your ETA on a good day. Suffice it to say, travel in this country can be very nerve-wracking for the itinerary-focused among us. Once we arrive in the north part of the island, we will still have six days in Sulawesi, then early on the 21st we fly to Bali, where we will go our separate ways back to America.
I wonder when the feeling of leaving Indonesia will hit me. As long as I’m still speaking in Indonesian with locals and walking on solid ground here, the inevitable departure feels a long ways off. The locals and my Indonesian friends back on Java both declare me fluent but that is only because they’re impressed with my ability to communicate my thoughts and show off one or two Torajan words that some local kids splashing around in a river taught me on our second day here. They wouldn’t say the same if they were to look closely at my grammar, or lack thereof. The respected title Ibu Guru, "miss teacher", still follows me around, like when our local guide introduced me to some Torajan locals as ibu guru from Bandung (they refer to the more well-known cities around the area that I lived in, like Jakarta or Bandung, since many people in Sulawesi would not have heard of a smaller city like Karawang). I enjoy that most people in Toraja Land have been eager to talk with me in Indonesian instead of in broken English. It’s selfish, since my reason for being here in Indonesia is to teach English, but I feel we have a more complete conversation that way.
The words in Torajan language that I have picked up so far are:
- Misa (Torajan) – satu (Indonesian) – one
- Da-dua (Torajan) – dua (Indonesian) – two
- Kurre semanga’ (Torajan) – terima kasih (Indonesian) – thank you very much
Busyness, doing a rushed job of something, begging off from house guests because you have work to complete: none of these are Indonesian qualities. Quite the opposite. Most Indonesians I've met take pride in their culture and their traditions. Generally-speaking, Indonesians are "people people". They are also extremely proud of their region and country, in that order. This is my second jaunt off Java and Indonesia opens up yet another several hundred layers. It may seem daunting, given the diversity from region to region, to just go travel around other islands, but bahasa Indonesia, the national language that Sukarno enstated as part of his nationalist agenda to unite the islands, is still the glue that connects the inconceivably large area that is Indonesia with the outside today: all 17,500 islands (only ~1,000 of which are inhabited), which contain 34 provinces, ~300 native ethnic groups and more than 700 languages and dialects. As a traveler, you can get along with surprisingly little bahasa, which speaks to the welcoming attitude that most Indonesians have towards tourists.
In every place I’ve visited, religion plays a driving force in people’s lives. Back in West Java, my experience was mainly with Islam, but on our routes through southern and northern Sulawesi and then Bali we've met Protestants and even some Buddhists in Sulawesi and Hindus in Bali. Yet in the places where it seems the whole town will gather in mosques and churches, culture still trumps religion in dictating people's way of life.
If ever you wanted to see an especially good example of a pocket of the world where tradition erodes the boundaries of religion, race, culture and even time, Tana Toraja (Tana meaning land, so I will hereafter refer to it as Toraja Land) in Central Sulawesi would be the place to go. Here is one of the most interesting examples still thriving in the world today.
As this fascinating National Geographic article explains, life revolves around death in the mountainous highlands of Tana Toraja. In a place so lush and green and beautiful it is strange to think that people are so focused on the afterlife, but maybe it's because they live in a self-described Eden that their journey to another world becomes the largest preparation of Torajan people's lives.
Even after a member of the clan "dies" by medical standards, they are only referred to as "sick" until after their funeral is held. This can take a year or even longer, during which time the family and friends still share their lives with the "sick" person, even bringing them food several times a day, and save up money for their funeral. Do they expect the corpses to eat the food? No. I think the author in the article I mentioned above explained the traditions beautifully, describing how Torajan people see death as more of a process. Keeping the dead in sight for such a long time doesn't mean that they're in denial, rather, death is a part of life, a presence throughout their lives and it, too, takes time and deserves attention. In the end, they don't fear death as much as we do because they interact with it. They don't try to hide it behind hospital curtains and closed doors.
During the year when the deceased is still "sick", families save up money for an elaborate funeral ceremony called a tomate. Relatives living in Singapore, Australia or even further away are obligated to return to Toraja to participate in this funeral ceremony if someone in their family dies. It is not like a wedding invitation or a simple "come if you can." They have to drop everything and come. This may be the first time that many family members even meet other members of their family.
Chad and I got to see the first day of a tomate ceremony during our stay. The whole ceremony can last up to a week. A week of gruesome animal slaughter and bloodshed, by our Western (double) standards.
Small houses with roofs shaped like buffalo horns are set up around a large field. Family clans sit in the different houses, which are numbered to facilitate orderliness with such a large amount of people. Everyone watches the family procession to the main house, then a priest speaks into a microphone about the deceased. The funeral we saw was for someone's grandmother. Your level of status will dictate how many animals are sacrificed. Buffalo are sacred to the Torajan people, because they believe the deceased must ride on the backs of their spirits to the second world. More to come on that.
One family sits in their tongkonan (the small houses with the buffalo-shaped roofs) and watches other families arrive and socialize. Numbers and letters correspond with that family's importance in relation to the deceased's family, with one being the building that the deceased' closest relatives sit in.
Food servers come through, passing bound pigs lying on the ground.
People from the government come around and mark the pigs and record which family gave them for taxing purposes. Very close records are kept of the weight, size..etc. of each animal because families are required to reciprocate in kind when one of theirs dies. These records are carefully kept and can be accessed years later, whenever your time comes.
On our second day of touring with an official guide he took us to see the deceased's final resting place: big rocks.
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| The little people you can sort of see are wooden effigies made by special wood carvers. They're usually made of wood from the jackfruit tree and are supposed to guard the deceased. This was one of the most famous rock graves in Toraja, called Lemo. |
To understand many of the customs of Torajan people, you must first understand their beliefs in the Afterlife. Our guide explained the Second World to us, drawing a map in the dirt in front of a tree which contained baby graves. As proximity to the heavens is paramount in Torajan burial traditions and reveals status, babies, who are holy, are placed in trees to quicken their path to the second world. Again, Torajans do not believe in burying their dead in the ground.
Death is anything but sudden, according to Torajan beliefs. Rather, it is really looong road trip. After hanging around their families' house for a year as a spirit, pickling nicely in formaldehyde inside their sick body and receiving regular attention from the family as if they were still alive, their casket is brought to a prepared arena. A man with a microphone will speak over all of the 50 or so clans who have assembled on the clear breezy day, usually in June or July; family that has travelled a great distance and has a lot of catching up to do with people they sometimes have not ever met, and talk about the deceased's life. At some point, several strong men will carry out the casket with the year-old "sick" person and place it in the center of the arena, which is surrounded by the small houses pictured above. They will cover the casket with an old cloth before bringing out the buffalo. The handler will speak a few soft words into its ear as they tie it to a stake in the ground, lift the rope through it's nostrils skyward so it can watch the passing clouds and then thrust the blade through its neck with a sudden decisive gesture.
A few dozen sacrificed buffalo and pigs later, the spirit of the deceased is now ready to make their journey to the second world, called Puya. Our guide assigned roman numerals to the earth, which he is pointing to in the picture above, and to Puya. In between the two spheres he drew a road and described it as a long, cold journey through a mountainous pass. The spirit of the dead would need a buffalo to ride and pigs to eat along the way, thus the sacrifice. When I asked whether the spirits of the animals received a place in Puya as well, he drew a wider circle around World II and said they hang around outside.
Part 3: Island paradise
Chad and I not only saw cultural wonders, but natural ones as well. After making it to the airport in Southern Sulawesi with a surprising amount of time to spare, we flew north to the capital of northern Sulawesi, a city called Manado. After watching kids jump off the docks into the murky, polluted water for an hour or so, and after a bumpy ferry ride which caused Chad to swear off all non-air travel ever again, we were in paradise, aka Bunaken Island. We didn’t have time to see the city center or meet any locals who weren’t at the place we were staying, but we were social with the fish while on Bunaken!
Thoughts from under the sea: the underside of the ocean surface is like an undulating blanket of stars: brown particles of sea plants and trash catch the luminescence of the sun. Right up until the drop off, the water is clear and thoughts pop into my head in small bursts of color and twisting designs. There is a veil of grit, from beyond which anything can emerge: a sea turtle swimming nose-first to take a breath at the surface, parrot fish, flashes of blue windows on the sides of fusiliers, two large box fish meandering along, a few large tuna and more.
We caught a small current and were swept over the coral garden for a few seconds, not very quickly, but I felt like I was flying. I got a look at the immense scale of the reef we were on, which went down for miles. With all the ferns and small vine-like tree plant things drifting eerily in the currents, and the massive diversity of life pecking, clouding around, digging, co-habiting and peeking out of this vast, living tower that was the coral reef, I felt like I was discovering a subterranean prehistoric garden of unearthly delights.
Careful not to brush the coral with my fins, we left the coral garden behind and swam into that blue nothingness, through clouds of grit, until a blue ladder appeared, attached to the underside of the boat. Once you’re skimming the waves in the boat and the water is pouring out of your ears in small waterfalls, you look out at the long, even sheet of blues and wonder at the uniformity of it. As soon as you’re above the surface, it’s hard to remember the details of the color and the fish you saw. It would be a good idea to invest in a guide book on the marine life or even a gopro. Without proof in front of me, I feel like I’ve left a world behind and not taken anything with me except for feelings and impressions. It isn’t a bad feeling and when I close my eyes, clouds of fish pass across like shadow puppets behind a screen and it’s enough to know that the memory’s in there somewhere.
On our second evening, Chad and I went for a sunset snorkel in the resort’s awesome “front lawn” and saw two large grey animals beyond the edge of the reef that looked at first like dolphins, but with flatter and more rounded noses. Chad caught sight of their tales, which were shaped like a dolphin's. We looked it up and thought we might have gotten very lucky and seen pilot whales, but our hosts at the hotel and other guests unanimously agreed that they were more likely sea cows, or manatees. The staff said there had been a sighting of two pilot whales two years prior and then they turned up dead last year. Even so, it’s hard to tell because they returned to the murky beyond as quickly as a dream dissipates into darkness (or, more precisely, in the time it took me to try to get Chad’s attention).
We took the resort’s boat back to Monado after our thrilling marine adventures, and then an 8,000 rupiah (sixty cents) bus to Tomohon an hour away, a interesting mountain town from which we could base our day trips to volcanoes, extreme markets and other hiking.
6/23/16
The feeling of leaving has finally hit me. We are now hanging around Ubud and there’s plenty of hippie new-age stuff to do and monkeys/rice paddies/temples to see but it feels a little contrived. Ubud is full of leisurely wandering to the next object of wonder, following the line of tourists, jostling for elbow room and selfie space. I thought of Elizabeth Bishop’s line from her poem Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance: “the Seven Wonders of the World are tired and a touch familiar, but the other scenes, innumerable, though equally sad and still, are foreign.”
I would highly recommended watching a traditional Balinese fire dance while in Ubud. Dancers act out a story from the Hindu epic, the Ramayana while a chorus of men chant the storyline and sway dramatically. Continuing with our cultural theme of the trip, we saw many Hindu water temples and small offerings in the forms of flower/snack baskets left out in front of stores and homes, which the ants and other insects accepted on behalf of the god spirits.
A few days later, during my two day layover in Kuala Lumpur, a cab driver asked me if I knew where the word Indonesia came from. Embarrassed, since I'd lived there for two years, I admitted I hadn't given it any thought before. The cab driver, named Krishna, told me that Indonesia meant “nation of hindus”: Indo = hindu and nesia = nation. It suddenly felt appropriate that I had worked my way from west to east, where the most ancient culture of Indonesia had been pushed to, before returning to the west.
I would highly recommended watching a traditional Balinese fire dance while in Ubud. Dancers act out a story from the Hindu epic, the Ramayana while a chorus of men chant the storyline and sway dramatically. Continuing with our cultural theme of the trip, we saw many Hindu water temples and small offerings in the forms of flower/snack baskets left out in front of stores and homes, which the ants and other insects accepted on behalf of the god spirits.
A few days later, during my two day layover in Kuala Lumpur, a cab driver asked me if I knew where the word Indonesia came from. Embarrassed, since I'd lived there for two years, I admitted I hadn't given it any thought before. The cab driver, named Krishna, told me that Indonesia meant “nation of hindus”: Indo = hindu and nesia = nation. It suddenly felt appropriate that I had worked my way from west to east, where the most ancient culture of Indonesia had been pushed to, before returning to the west.
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