Toraja

Hi All,

Our last stop in Indonesia to visit the Toraja tribes people involved a network of transport links... First, we caught a flight from Labuan Bajo (Komodo) to Makassar on the island of Sulawesi. Boarding the propeller plane with just 10 other passengers felt like we were in the first scene of a horror movie as we looked around at all the empty seats. Thankfully the flight went smoothly and we quickly found a taxi to take us to the bus station. There we waited a couple of hours for the surprisingly comfortable night bus that took us on the 10 hour journey to the town of Rantepao. Although we had actually managed to get a few hours sleep, we were pleased when the owner of the guest house showed us to a comfy bed at 5am!

Having caught up on some sleep, we stepped out of our room to an incredible view of rice paddies, mountains and Toraja houses in the distance. Their houses are iconic and symbolise the boats their ancestors used to sail to Sulawesi over 1000 years ago. They are architectural marvels. The 100 year old ones with bamboo roofs are especially impressive. The new builds favour corrugated iron for its durability; much like our thatched cottages being replaced with tiled roofs.

The Toraja are known for intricate carvings and bead work but it is their elaborate funeral ceremonies and burial rituals that set them apart from any other civilisation we’ve seen. When a person dies they believe that they are merely resting or sick. They are embalmed with traditional herbs or nowadays formaldehyde in a form of mummification. The deceased stays in the family home (in the most north bedroom) until the arrangements have been made for their funeral. This commonly takes between one month and five years! Although, our guide explained how some people remain ‘resting’ for as long 50 years while their family save up for the ceremony!The funerals involve the giving and receiving of gifts ranging from cigarettes to live pigs but the focus is on buffalo sacrifice. The higher your social class, the more buffaloes are killed over the 5 day long funeral ceremony. People of the highest class must have a minimum of 24 buffaloes sacrificed to transport them safely to the afterlife.

Our guide took us to a middle class funeral ceremony- not your usual tourist hot spot. Everyone in the village as well as guests from far and wide were present. We were made very welcome and surprisingly did not feel like we were intruding. The family greeted us in the traditional way by offering us cigarettes which we politely declined so were then handed coffee and sweet treats instead - much more up our street. On route to the ceremony our guide suggested we bought a box of cigarettes (10 packs only £7.50) to give to the family as gratitude for hosting us; not our idea of a suitable gift but we of course agreed to follow the traditional custom. The scene we found ourselves in was a long way from a English funeral. A hundred or so people were sitting in temporary bamboo ‘houses’ chatting, smoking and drinking palm wine. Meanwhile, as new guests arrived, the men carried with them live pigs strapped to bamboo as offerings to the family. The important guests paraded around while a priest gave a sort of chanting sermon thanking each family for their pig. Then the men from the family carried in the coffin and lifted it up a ramp where it would stay for the next five days of festivities.

We had prepared ourselves for what was about to come... the customary killing of a buffalo by slitting its throat. This was preceded by the sacrifice of a pig. A man emerged with a sharp, long knife which he used to kill the pig quickly with a well placed stab to the heart. Then the buffalo was brought in. We are both fond of animals but enjoy a burger as much as anyone so feel it’s important to see where your food comes from and accept that the meat we eat is killed for us. That being said, this was a little graphic. The buffalo was tied up and then had its throat cut with one blow before it staggered and fell. The animal was dead within a minute so the whole process felt relatively humane. To our surprise there was no cheering or obvious celebration, instead people continued talking amongst themselves whilst men set to work butchering the meat. The sacrifice provides food for the funeral feast that will follow and meat for the community. The horns are also kept and used to adorn the front of a house as a symbol of wealth. Feeling surprisingly okay about the whole ceremony, we said our goodbyes.

Over the next couple of days we visited some different burial sites. The oldest was inside a cave where rotten, wooden coffins balanced precariously from beams protruding from the walls. Given the age of these, it was unsurprising to find that many had fallen and lay open on the ground. This meant that there were various bones and skulls littering the interior. Our guide explained how they were left like this because to move them to a new grave would require another expensive, elaborate ceremony so it was best to leave them undisturbed. Babies were buried differently as traction dictates that they are a gift from nature. Therefore the ancient belief was that they must be returned to nature. Old customs required their burial inside a live tree, sealed with a door made of natural fibres. The last of these burials was around fifty years ago but the graves are still visible. Today the death of a child is marked with a simple, intimate family ceremony free from animal sacrifice. Stone family graves are now the preferred burial site. The family pay ‘grave makers’ to chip square caves into granite cliffs into which many generations of coffins are laid to rest. Outside many of these are effigies - a wooden carving of the deceased. These mark the graves of the noble class who could afford a high class funeral. In some cases 2-5 metre high granite carved towers called megaliths are also erected to mark the funeral site. Modern family mausoleums are also used by some families as the space can accommodate many coffins.

We know this all sounds pretty heavy but what we came to realise is that culturally we just value different celebrations. They treat funerals just as we do weddings in the western world. While we may spend almost a years salary on one day, they spend an equal amount on funerals yet have very simple, small weddings.

Having learned about their customs we spent two days trekking through rice paddies to a mountain guesthouse with an incredible view above the clouds. We even stayed in a traditional Toraja house with a modern(ish) interior - thankfully we didn’t have to share with any ‘resting’ occupants!

We now have a long journey with multiple buses and planes to reach our final destination - the Philippines!

Love R and D xxx