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The long drive from the lowlands to the mountain stronghold of Tana Toraja opens up a breath-taking new world. The rugged mountains and verdant valleys are home to a people whose love of religious spectacle is equaled only by their hospitality. With majestic panoramas, captivating villages and dramatic ceremonies, Tana Toraja is the undisputed highlight of any journey to Sulawesi.
Upgraded roads, an airport and several star-rated hotels have opened the Toraja high-lands to visitors of all interests, budgets and schedules. The essence of the Toraja beliefs and way of life can be experienced without undue effort, as many interesting sites are clustered around the town of Rantepao, easily accessible by road.
A few minutes from Rantepao, artisans art Kete Kesu,a model Toraja settlement, produce bamboo carvings and other traditional handi-crafts. The village itself has several well-maintained Tongkonan houses and rice barns. Visitors unsure about the propriety of tramping around someone's village will be relieved to know that Kete Kesu has been converted into a living museum with the express purpose of displaying Toraja architecture and daily life. Other villages within sight of the roads, often sitting in an emerald sea of ricefields, display the Toraja penchant for baroque architectural adornment.
If the Toraja way of life is interesting, the way of deaath is fascinating mix of ritualk custom and spectacle. For the Toraja, the dead are as much a part of society as the living. At Lemo, cliffs rise precipitously from the ricefields like stonework condominiums.Crypts carved with prodigious manual labor high into the solid rock house the mortal remains of Toraja nobility. Set amongst the crypts, the striking tau-tau, wooden effiies representing the deceased, look impassively on the world below.
At Londa, a network of coffin-filled caves reaches deep intoi the limestone hills. Visitors expecting a solemn, well-kept grotto are often shocked and disturbed by skeletons tumbling out of wooden coffins, skulls and bones arranged, to Western eyes, according to some gruesome aesthetic. But the Toraja feel that since their ancestor's souls are residing in heaven, ensuring continued fertility in farm and field, it is appropriate that their earthly remains be on display for the pleasure of honored foreign guests.
While the valley between Rantepao and Makale
provides a glimpse of Toraja life, the real Toraja lies in the
surrounding mountains, accessible only on foot. In treks ranging from an
easy dayto a strenuous week, those with a moderate capacity for adventure
can experience authentic Toraja village life in charming mountain hamlets.
Even in the most remote-mountain villages, visitors are welcomed openly.
Long accustomed to foreigners stumbling unannounced into their settlements,
village leaders will generally arrange overnight accommmodation with local
family for a modest contribution.
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TORAJA
FUNERAL
Employing intricate cycles of ritual observance punctuated with marvelous pageantry and even bloody spectacle, the Toraja devote much time and effort to the care of their ancestors. The Toraja believe their forebears reside in heaven and participate directly in the welfare of the material world through their blessings. To conduct the souls of the deceased safely into the next world, the Toraja mount elaborate ceremonies which also serve to solidify bonds of mutual obligation among the traditionally suspicious clan groups.
Villages can swell to many times their normal populations as families stage enormous funerals, often yuears after the loved one has passed away. In the invariably muddy fields and pathways hundreds of chickens and pigs are summarily dispatched, while buffalo are slaughtered with great ceremony, young boys jostling to catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Events range from quiet prayers and solemn processions to stirring hymn singing and exiting battles between water buffalo, all conducted in a festival atmosphere of clan solidarity and reunion.
For visitors, this is a magnificent show, as the
ever hospitable Toraja will make arrangements to accommodate everyone who
attends the ceremonies. Even a yoiung backpacker stumbling into a Torajan
funeral is offered a space in the temporary shelters erected for
the occasion. The shelter set aside for tourists is generally in a good
location, behind the closest relatives and community leaders, of course,
but often far closer to the action than shelters reserved for distant or
impoverished relations. A well-behaved foreigner is considered an honored
guest, whose arrival from a far adds cosmopolitan element to the
festive occasion.
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TORAJA
BUFFALO
To many people in most part of Indonesia archipelago, gold is regarded as a guaranteed standard of wealth, but it does not apply in Toraja Land. The Toraja people treasure TEDONG or water buffalo are given special care by their owners and some even spoil them.
TORAJA farmers rarely use their buffalo in plowing rice fields as in usually the practice in other parts of Indonesia. The leave their TEDONG leisurely grazing while the owners till the rice-fields with hoes and the sweat of their brow. The TEDONG is given a daily bath and fed with nutritious fodder.
The TORAJAS recognize five different species with black or grey specks on their white skin are the most expensive. Each head costs rupiah 6 million or the equvalent of 20 ordinary buffalo. The BONGA, with specks from the nape of his neck to the head, are equivalent in price to 16 or 18 buffalo.TODI, with specks only on the forehead, costs about the same as 15 ordinary buffalo. The PUDU species or black ones cost 13 ordinary buffalo each, while the grey-skinned buffalo are detined to be slaughtered for traditional feasts or PELIANGAN.
Among the noble families, hundreds of buffalo are slain during a feast, which lasts for several weeks, even among the common people, the number of buffalo slain numbers no less than 25 heads. It is estimated that at least 60.000 buffalo are slain each year in Tana TORAJA.
A wooden sculpture in the form of a buffalo head
with a real horn decorates the main post of a Toraja house, an expression
of appreeciation among Toraja People for the TEDONG, symbol of their wealth
and prosperity. ...
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