The World is a Book...(1)

A stubbornness, that was how this journey started. It was spring 2008: “The Borneo rainforest is one of the few remaining natural habitats for the endangered Bornean orangutan. It is an important refuge for many endemic forest species, including the Asian elephant, the Sumatran rhinoceros, the Bornean clouded leopard, Hose's civet and the dayak fruit bat”.    After reading these descriptions, my head began to spin around, to imagine, to plan. It was like an itch that you were not able to stop, like a kind of fever burning inside you.

I felt the compulsion to go abroad,  far away, forget our cultural attachments. I was excited thinking about the chance to observe the Bornean orangutan and other Indonesian species.

Why Borneo?  I was looking for expeditions beyond, looking to explore and feel, looking to discover and to receive the natural and cultural impact of new lands, new countries, new scenery. To breathe spicy aromas, exotic scents; to regard noble, curious and proud glances; to be illuminated by honest and shy smiles.

 

Indonesia map

But, goddamn!!! The plan began to unravel. We wanted to travel in January 2009 to Indonesian Borneo, but the monsoon season reigns over everything at that time, and this is the wettest season. We had to change our plan, but not too much,  because it is a huge territory and the monsoon only affects some areas. We decided to go ahead, focusing on the Malaysian-Indonesian region but we had to be selective because this is a vast area. According to a 2002 survey by National Institute of Aeronautics and Space , the Indonesian archipelago has 18,307 islands. The island is divided among three countries: Malaysia and Brunei in the north, and Indonesia to the south. Approximately 73% of the island is Indonesian territory.

The search was getting a bit frustrating because there were a lot of  places to go, and time and money were dictations to us. During this desperating hunt, while I was taking part in travel blogs and reading travel guides,  I discovered the Toraja, on Sulawesy Island. Formerly known as Celebes, it is a large, extraordinary mountainous island between Borneo and the Maluku Islands (aka The Moluccas). As I was saying,  I found the Toraja, an ethnic group that lives mainly in the region of Tana Toraja and has a strong ethnic identity. I became captivated by the data that I was collecting about their culture, their identity, and their ancestral houses,  but above all by their funerary rituals.

In this part of Indonesia,  big,  strident funerals form the centre of social life. In this culture, the bodies of dead relatives are cared for years after these relatives have passed away.

In the highlands of Sulawesi Island in Eastern Indonesia, there is a community of people that understand death not as a singular event but as a social ceremony.

In Tana Toraja, the most important social event in people’s life are not weddings or births, but funerals.

The coffin place during the ceremony

These funerals are characterized by elaborate rituals that connect people in a reciprocal debt based on the number of animals - pigs, chickens and specially water buffalos –that are sacrificed and distributed in the name of the deceased.

 

One of the water buffalos presented

These rituals can last from a few days to a few weeks. It is not a private and sad ceremony, however, a publicly shared transition. These grandiose ceremonies clash with our own concept about death and mortality.

The Toraja people do not see physical death as a true death. In fact, a Toraja member is only truly dead when the extended family can get together and can collect the necessary resources to perform a funeral ceremony according to the status of the deceased. And the ceremony takes place in front of the whole community, who participate in it.

The deceased widow heading the procession

Until the funeral, the body is placed in a special room in the family home, whose residents live with the bodies of their dead relatives.

After the ceremony, the deceased are buried and you can see some niches for this outside the town set into cliff,  even inside some trees.

Some niches inside a tree

They usually make some wooden figures –called tau tau- that set on the top of the area on a kind of  balcony, where the dead have been buried.

 

Tau-Tau figures into a cliff

The journey around Malaysia and Indonesia was very impressive and exciting, going from Kuala Lumpur to Malacca, staying at Langkawi Island, spending some days in Java and Sumatra,  islands that tempt the imagination with the attraction of adventure. They are islands of extraordinary beauty, which  bubble under the power of natural eruptions of steaming volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. They also have idyllic deserted beaches.

Nevertheless,  the main course was waiting for us, Sulawesi was on hold . Although we had made contact with a local travel agency,  the situation was uncertain. We had doubts that our stay there would coincide with some of the funerary rituals because they mainly take place in the summer time.

Tongkonan shapes

It is also necessary to mention the amazing, ancestral houses of the Torajan people, called Tongkonan, which have  distinctive oversized,   boat-shaped roofs.

 

A Toraja man explaining the Tongkonan restoring process to me 

Restored Tongkonans

But the same day that we arrived at Makassar airport –the provincial capital of South Sulawesi- our contact there asked us that if we wanted to attend a funerary ritual in the  Rantepao district. We said: Yes , of course we do!!!

But the location was tricky. The island is extremely mountainous and we spent six hour by car to get there. You can imagine how incredible and frightening landscapes were that we saw on our way.

In our case,  the rituals would last five days. In the first two days, which were the most exciting for us, the family of the deceased receives presents from the other relatives and the extended family.

A procession snapshot

It was just as if you were taking part in a movie filming, such  as Gladiator or some other Romans themed movie. The ceremonies are colourful, vibrant, lively, and strident.

A never-ending parade takes place, in which every family, dressed in their finest, is presented by a speaker, who shouts out their presents, mainly live animals.

The speaker shouting  out the presents

We spent almost seven hours there, and the rituals would be continued. In the following days, they sacrifice and distribute the animals among the Toraja community and there is also a final ritual in which the body of the dead relative is buried in one of their sacred places.

It was the most powerful and amazing event I have attended. They experience death as a social process and not just a biological one. This philosophy not only changes the way they die, but also the way they live:  Life that doesn’t end with death.

Children during the funeral ceremony

(1)“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page”

St Augustine.

Scissor Sister