February 18, 2004
My journey through the K-shaped island of Sulawesi (or Celebes) from the predominantly Muslim city of Makassar to the mainly Christian Manado was a peculiar one: I don?t think I have met a single person on this strange island who just wanted to be simply my friend. (Except for the friend who kindly took me to the city from the airport on my arrival and later to her family, if you remember. Although, strictly speaking she is not Indonesian but Chinese.)
They all wanted something regardless of their sexes: money in the first place, of course. If not money then free sex or anything like my small English-Indonesian dictionary I had in my hand. The latter was actually asked by a recordbreaker girl on a ship after her three basic questions of "whereyoufrom-whatyouname-youalone"' in less than 3 seconds. In Tana Toraja I met very friendly people who turned out to be lying continuously in the hope of receiving presents or financial help and I could not take a guide in any National Parks without they wanting to touch me all the time or very openly offering their services for money. (The fact that they usually thought I was only 18 or 19 did not help at all!) I got sooooo tired of it by the end that I was actually happy to leave at the end. (I had to leave, you see, for I truly feared if I stay any longer I might just bite off the head of the next 105874125th person who wants to know where I come from! ;)
Apart from this "minor" drawback I enjoyed getting to know the culture of these varied landscapes. Especially the one in Tana Toraja and the Togean Islands.
In Makassar I spent just as much time as it was necessary to see the infamous Fort Rotterdam with its small museum and for the writing of my post on Java and Bali. It was interesting to see how the local youth invaded the Internet place (the fastest so far!) after school to play the well advertised Japanese games till midnight sometimes. I know because I was virtually living there till they closed only going out for a the occasional game of finding the well hidden but very badly signed supermarket among the amazing amount of street vendors and the heaps of rubbish. It took me more than 1 hour to locate the one which was 3 minutes away from my writing place. You may ask why I went through such difficulties when there was a small shop selling pizza and the like just next door. Yes. It is because the intensity and seriousness of the withdrawal symptoms I had by that time: For Yacult (which is a fermented yogurt drink with L.Casei bacteria and I get addicted to it on the first days of arriving to Indonesia) and Manggis on the surface - and my boyfriend?s company in reality.
From Makassar my friend took me to her family in Palopo by her father?s new automatic jeep, which was driven by a hired driver. By the time we had arrived to our destination I realized that it is perfectly natural for her that the dinner, which consisted of three kinds of crabs fresh from the sea and was as nice as the Otak Otak on our way, was going to be served by the people her father employs to take care of their family house and shop. As for me, I needed a little time to adjust. Though not too long! Learning to play one kind of Chinese game at night and visiting the tomb of my friend?s mother in an interesting Chinese cemetery next morning was also all new and fascinating to me. She told me how Christianity is mixed with their ancient Chinese beliefs and I observed how the brothers and sisters all had to make sure that their mother goes to a nice place and comes back to her next life in a lucky way.
The same morning I set out for Tana Toraja. The land of long-boat shaped houses and peculiar beliefs set in a fairytale countryside often decorated with monotonous rice fields.
On the very same day I was lucky to have witnessed one of the last days of the famous funeral ceremony; the "Tomate" In Torajan language the latter simply means "dead person" and it is actually only used for humans. The same distinction shows here as during the ceremony itself where they do not put the body of the deceased in the ground like that of the animals. Instead they use a beautifully carved coffin or a manmade cave in a rock, which often takes a month or so to complete, or a little house made by bricks. The infants they put in a hollow of a living tree. Some of the burial sites I visited had the coffins hanged from cliffs, which seemed impossible to climb and many of the Tau-Tau (smaller or life-size carved wooden version of the deceased decorated with their clothes and jewelry) dolls positioned right next to them. These dolls were often stolen by people who do not respect this tradition, therefore the Torajan tried to place them as high as possible.
As a person who had never have seen live animals being killed before, it was a "slightly" shocking experience to witness the cock-fight where the looser actually died from the knife that was fastened to the leg of the winner cock. I don?t think I was ready to see this and even more so the following water buffalo sacrifices. I was definitely not ready for that! My whole body started to visibly shake and I nearly fainted as these sweet big-eyed animals were professionally massacred by their owner throwing a machete at their throat. I never forget the smell of blood (8 buffs, each about 400 liter) on the sunny ground and my wondering of just how quickly a life can end just like that!!!
I later leant that these sacrifices are necessary in order to accompany the deceased to his new life of the other world which is just like ours in the sense of society and community. This was actually the reason why they sacrificed humans the same way still not so long ago. (Can you imagine?!)Humans!! to give the rich dead his servants for the other life and the buffaloes to carry him and provide food for him.. He also receives rice, tobacco and presents from all members of his family and if he is really rich or the king of the Torajan these sacrifices can number up to anything more than 200 buffaloes and the like! The social status really determines the length (sometimes takes more than a month to prepare everything until which the deceased is bal mated or in modern days receives some kind of preserving injection) and grandeur of the ceremony.
Just before I left I saw the first days of a middle-class ceremony where the girls were dressed in clothing made from beads which resembles that of the American Indians somehow and their hair done up with Chinese style little gold sticks. They had (not the boys!) the well-honoured machete of the family tucked into their belt. They were beautiful and powerful even though they may only had 9 years behind their backs. These small swords are very precious and regarded with a lot of superstitious and supernatural power. I know because I got to see some of the very secret ones at Kete Kesu that other tourists were not allowed or invited to see along with the body of a tomate who has been waiting for his ceremony for a month and had slight chip offs from his forehead. The old women guarding the place told me stories of "pontianas" (ghosts) just like the man at the gate of one of the megalith covered burial sites.
The funniest moment for me was when after all these killing the final moment of the ceremony has arrived: their Christian priest made a long speech on how much the worshipping of totems are discouraged by God, during which the whole previously lively company of people fall asleep not fearing to snore out loud on occasions. J When the priest finished it actually took at least 10 minutes to awaken the people for the next vigorous activity. First, all the woman came crying loud around the corpse which lay in the coffin under the small version of the father house (the tongkonan,) decorated with the 4 traditional colours of red, yellow, white and black. Then the man picked up this architectural and carried it to its final resting place with the aid of long bamboo poles. I thought it was all over when suddenly they stared to shout and through mud at the coffin and make it lean to its sides. (In order to remind the dead of his life and ensure that the soul does not stay on the earth as a pontiana.)
Saying goodbye to this strange land (which is far much more developed than I thought before, with internet and everything), customs and the coffee plantations were not so hard for the reason I already mentioned: many of the people were professional liars and I, as usual, believed them in the first place because I would like to think that the people are innately good but they are often not. Even a 19-year-old boy! I can?t believe. There was one thing I was sorry about though; some of the local specialties like "kolak" (banana, coconut, ginger and palm sugar), the cinnamon cakes at the market and the fresh passion fruit and tamarella juices. Nyami! :D
I had to go back to Palopo to take a bus to Pendolo through the high fern tree dotted land. The palm trees were particularly attractive on the beach with the high cool mountains as their backdrop. Taking a picture however was completely out of the question! The bus driver mistaked himself for that of a rally driver never minding the 3 stops during the 8 hours for the replacement of the burst tires. On the bus all men usually smoke the "kretek" (clove cigarettes) and listen to the Cinta (love) songs at full blast which usually resembles the sweet and slow style of the seventies with one song lasting for a whole tape.
I reached the fresh water lake just before the light blue water right in front of my balcony turned to dark blue and disappeared into the sky. It was soooo peaceful there. Just what I needed right then. As I looked into the never-ending groundless sky and listened to the ever-present geckos my nerves started to unwind. I wish I hadn't rushed so quickly my way up to the togeans and stayed here a bit longer...
Next morning I took a small ferry across the lake which carried everything from livestock to motos on its tiny board. I stopped in Tentena for lunch which was one of the best fish curry I ever had! (Only later I found out it was the local specialty made of our home pet, the Goldfish...)
The 'Jesus loves me' sign of my Christian driver has changed into 'Allah helps me' after the changing of a kijang at the Muslim town of Poso. This town is one of the most troublesome in Sulawesi in term of religious fights but it was not here where I just missed an encounter of a bombing by three days but in Palopo. (You may remember though that when my boyfriend was here about 2 years ago he heard shooting and it was much more dangerous to travel than now.)
In Ampana I spent most of my night getting into intimate relationships with 3 local giant sized flying cockroaches. One of them was particularly friendly while I tried to sleep a little after the very unsuccessful request for them to leave the room. I don't blame him but when he wanted to have a closer look of my face by climbing on it the sheer size of him nearly give me a heart attack...
Next, I continued my biological pursuit by carefully listening to the many rats running around my bed in the cottage on one of the tiny islands of the Togeans where I was literally being the only guest for a week. Although the weather was not always in my favour (being the rainy season right now), nevertheless I had made many excursions around the islands in search of its different ethnicities (namely the Bobonko, who still do not see tourists so the children started to cry when I took a photo of them, the Togeans, whose folktale tells us that they are born as a nation from the yellow bamboo on the highest mountain of the island, the Bajau, who are otherwise called seagypsies and live in small wooden houses built above reefs because their main way of earning a living is connected to their extreme free-diving abilities for pearls. However, today there is many pearl-farms around the area, so they made a shift in the focus of their work: now they collect live fish such as the horrendously priced Napoleon fish, the trepangs, octopuses and Lobsters all being eaten by the Japanese and Chinese markets. (They must be very successful collectors wearing their handmade goggles for I did not see any of these creatures during my snorkeling.) The Bajau have an interesting custom: they put the newly wed couples into a boat and send them off never to see them again, so they have to build a house from the scratch where they want t live.
The Togean is one of the still not very well mapped out places of the world (with plenty of naming opportunities - I may have my name given to one of the coral drop-off I often visited under the equator!!:))) where you can find in one place all the 4 formations of the coral reef. The barrier and the fringe reef and the atoll. (I forget the 4th. Sorry. :)) On my discovery times I saw many wonderfully coloured and named fish like the angel, fairy, unicorn, butterfly, parrot, sweetlips, clown, bat, foxface rabbit, trigger, surgeon, lion, scorpion and squirell fish. The black tipped reef shark, the eagle ray with its doomed suckerfish followers, the schools of barracudas and the moray eel gave me a real adrenalin booster! Especially the shark. Even though I know they do not attack people on purpose but since the snorkeling people give out exactly the same vibration as an ill or dying fish they may get confused at times. (Not this time though. All I had was a lot of jelly fish stings and a coral cut which took a long time to heal because of the slimy stuff which the coral has often makes a bad infection.) Apart from fish I saw beautiful tiny christmas tree worms, fire and fluorescent corals, sponges and crabs.
One of the nights when I got bored swinging in my hammock and being the only provider of the local 'nyamuk' (mosquito) society I set out in search of the huge coconut crabs who live on the island. It's amazing how they can climb the tree so quickly with their huge claws! Also, some people like to keep cats as pets but here the local house pets were the fearless iguanas who occasionally stole into the kitchen in hope of some leftovers thereby playing a role of some kind of wastebaskets. :)
Time came to leave the island on the ship which were said to have been getting to Ampana in 5 hours but in reality it took 12 again. (The only thing I don't get is why everyone is saying 5 when it is always 12?! Indonesian Jam karet. I suppose...) Inside the ship the woman comfortably make their bed among the goats and the children, who are often put in a hanging sarong under the age of 2. As usual, man have openly offered their services regardless of their being married already maybe to two wives because the hope of 'kopi susu' (coffee with milk literally but here it means half white- half Indonesian) children is a lucrative business in show business throughout Asia. They are so crazy about white skin that sometimes it rally made me angry.
In Ampana I stayed with friends at the local NGO because I had no opportunity to use ATM in or around the Togean. Unluckily, I got a bacterial infection again from bad water (or from the smelly Durian I tried?), so I had to see the doctor. But before that I observed again how naturally these people treat the naked body. My new friend (a girl who was very friendly but spoke very limited English) gave me a stomach massage with some smelly traditional oil, which actually did not make me feel better at all but at least I smelled bad now, too. :)
This reminds me the story of my other friend who has recently visited places in Bali where woman still wear nothing over their upper body and thereby expose their breasts openly to the world. The Indonesians are just as natural with the winds coming out in either sides of their body, so when traveling here do not be surprised if the beautiful smiling shop assistant at Matahari burps loud into your ears or people fart so loud without even the faintest blush on their face! (It is actually the same in Burma, where the very respectable monks of the monastery I stayed at would do the same any time during their talking to me...)
Languages of the world can just as easily be culturally fascinating as the above. I think every language tale tells about its people and their way of life. Eg: there is a Burmese saying 'Work like a Chinese, save like an Indian and do not waste like a Burmese.' which pinpoints the sad truth about personal wealth in the country of Myanmaa. About the Lao they say: In Vietnam the folks take very good care of their rice fields and in Lao they listen to how it grows.' which supposed to show the very laid-back nature of the latter people.
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) provided a continuous source of amusement for me. (I had to learn some since in many places that was the only way to communicate. Nevertheless it does not take too much effort since there are no tenses or conjugations but instead you just need to put the words after one another.) Let me share some of the interesting words which may be confusing: 'air' is water, 'bibi' means aunt (not a wound as in Hungarian), 'ember' means not humans but bucket, 'kaki' means leg (not 'shit' as in H.), 'orang' means person not monkey, 'buta' is not stupid but blind, pala' is nutmeg, beszar' is big, 'cat' is paint, and 'hati-hati' is careful. 'Pompa bensin' does not mean elegant petrol but a petrol station and 'harap' is not bite but 'must not'. Also there are some cute ones, like 'tas' being taska (bag in H.) and 'pasta gigi' means toothpaste. On one occasion at the high-class 'tomate' in Toraja I mixed up the two words 'kelapa' (coconut) and 'kepala' (head) and asked the head of the 'desa' (village) an eyebrow-raising question. :)
By the way, eyebrow raising seems to be a habit here and many folks are experts on this matter. The proper way to do it is move it very quickly upwards as many times as you wish. The number of times should be adjusted to the level of excitement you feel and best results occur when noone can see your eyebrow any more. Only a blurr...:) The funniest thing however was to observe some black faced tailless monkeys to do just exactly the same in the Tangkoko Nat Park near Manado.
These monkeys remained calm and continued to play around when I finally found them in the jungle and approached them nearly 1 meter close! I felt like my childhood role model must have felt when she was let to approach so close to the chimpanzees in an African jungle. Except that I had to LOL when they started this eyebrow thing because when they moved it their punklike hair also moved the opposite direction. :D
Apart from beautiful aged (sometimes 200 years old) huge ironwood, teak, ebony and ficus trees, which have mastered the art of gothic architecture with their roots long before the humans, I have seen the red peaked endemic hornbill, countless butterflies in all colours of the rainbow and sizes as big as my hand. Still, the cutest attraction to me was the dusk and dawn watching of the smallest monkey of the world, the Tarsius Spectrum. With its 10 cm maximum height and those relatively huge red eyes he is undoubtedly the winner of my heart! I was lucky to take a good picture of one of them turning his head completely around in an unbelievable fashion. Sooo cute! I knew immediately that I have to change my plan of sending Geckos (my other favorites) to my boyfriend for his upcoming birthday! ;)
Actually, the forest was not at all without dangers. I had to realize it when I happily trodded along the many fluorescent mushrooms and the fireflies, which together with the nearfull moon provided ample light to follow our paths in the dense undergrowth without any additional aid, when my guide suddenly lit up and aimed his torch at a nearby tree. For my enquiries of what he was looking for he simply replied:? Tarantulas'. You can imagine how quickly I forget about staying the whole night in the jungle!
Although, I still think that human beings are the most dangerous ones of all. Here in the protected area you can hardly see any Cuscus because the villagers still catch and eat them nevertheless of their becoming rapidly extinct. :(
At this park, by the sea, I very much enjoyed the solitude of listening to the sounds of the forest at especially those early and late hours when they are the busiest. Watching the black sand dunes at the beach as each of their own special bays are being filled with the white foams of the once powerful waves is really mind soothing. Every time the foams gently draw their lines of simple arts on the black volcanic sand the ever-changing nature of things came into my mind.
Speaking of nature, there is an amazing thing I have to tell you about! One of the 200 years old giants in the forest looked like a mind boggling tower of continuously intertwining roots reaching as high as 30 meter and having a hole inside to allow you to climb up the tree! I did so and met just who? My favorite, the Tarsius. He was sleepy and surprised so he moved away reluctantly on my arrival. Later I found out that this was not a real tree but a ficus which slowly surrounded a huge tree and then killed it a long time ago when it was already enormous. (Unfortunately, the pictures will not give back the experience when you'll see them. :()
After this wonderland I headed to lake Limo, which have highly sulphurous fairytale like colours and climbed the Mahawu crater all alone in a more than eerie foggy atmosphere. The wind actually only lifted the thick blanket of smoke from the strange coloured lakes below for a little while, just enough for me to have a better look. Inside the crater the animals were more quiet or altogether non-existent. It did not rally help me feel at home...
The land I was trotting on for a while now actually belongs to the Minahasa people, who are whiter than the rest of Sulawesiens and had very strange burial customs themselves. They used to write the illness of the deceased on his grave, as well as providing information of his hobbies, character and physical appearance. These folks also famous for their very spicy food which includes a regular staple of dog and forest rat meat. (I couldn?t try, sorry. Especially when I thought of the too often sad states of the dogs in this country.) These people are mainly Christians and therefore they build churches, not mosques, but they still use the same shockingly honest designs as the many mosques being built by cements right now in the other end of the island. The winner is the one with three huge cement crowns on top...
My plans of visiting the famous spice islands of Maluku has gone to smokes by the end of my journey. I was a bit sorry for that because the book of Giles Milton (Nathaniel Nutmeg) really raised my interest to see them. But I wanted to smell the Frangipani trees of arty Bali very much by then. It happened that my airplane ticket to Bali from Manado, with two flights, cost less than the one from Bali to Makassar only. Which was a nice surprise. As well as seeing through for a moment in the candy floss like clouds filled with lightings and be amazed by the bright sunset playing shadowgames on the Agung volcano.
Back in Bali I made a plan to go and try surfing but nature thought otherwise. A couple of days ago I just missed a gas explosion in one of the mountain towns and so I only saw many houses being on fire. Her in Bali the opposite element made me immerse in the temporary swimming pools which we 1 day before still called streets.
I won't bore you with more long descriptions on how I did not sleep last night because one of the local pickup girls and a very little educated tourist made such loud love under my window. Neither do I describe the fascinating looks of surfer society.
Tomorrow a short visit to Singha (lion) land where I already have a friend I met in Sulawesi. She has a very interesting life story but I know it is too much to read already.
So take care, keep on dreaming and have fun!
Tiglis