Toraja: Just Plain Mental

In January, we went back to Toraja, the highland area of Sulawesi that’s famous for its gory funerals, not to mention burying babies in trees.

And, my god, even by Indonesian standards, even after tourist development, Toraja still has a WTF factor that’s quite extraordinary. By which I mean that folk hanging out their laundry in front of sacrificial buffalo skulls barely raises an eyebrow.

Herewith a few WTF moments from our overnight hike in the countryside.

We’re in a tourist restaurant in Rantepao, watching buffalo wrestling on TV, while we await our buffalo steaks. Toraja has its very own TV station, Toraja TV, which, like the rest of Toraja, is utterly obsessed with death and covering the latest and most elaborate funerals.

To add an international feel – or perhaps because the departed likes football – the buffalos appear to be done out in football colours, with the names of favourite players. I believe it’s Barcelona versus Liverpool, but the camera keeps panning away to dignitaries so I can’t get a fix on the names, and both of us are terrible on footie, anywise.

I get chatting to the owner about funeral practices, and caste. He says, “Oh yes, we used to have four castes, but since independence we only have three.”

“Oh,” I say confidently. “So you lost the priest caste?”

“Not exactly,” he says, which is about the closest I’ve heard an Indonesian get to “no”. “We used to have a slave caste, and they could be sacrificed at funerals. But with independence they got rid of slavery.”

We’re hiking through the countryside. I see a striking tree with red berries dangling from its trunk.

“What’s that for?” I ask Daniel, our guide, who’s been informing us about the traditional uses of various trees as we walk.

“Oh,” he says. “We used to bury cats in that.”

“Cats?!”

“Yes,” he says, explaining that in the old religion, Aluk To Dolo, you couldn’t pollute the earth goddess by digging holes in her to bury dead things – the old beliefs die hard here, making Toraja arguably Indonesia’s most litter-free region. “We eat dead pigs, buffalo, chickens, and dogs. But you can’t eat cats, so we’d leave them in the trees.”

We’re white water rafting, and admiring the rather stunning dinosaur-style aquatic lizards that are called sailfin dragons in English, or iguanas if you’re in Sulawesi. “Enak!” (tasty) exclaims one of our rafting guides.

“Are you Minahasa?” I ask in my still embarrassingly basic Indonesian.

“Yes!” he says. “How did you know?!”

Well, because it’s a) a bloody lizard and b) almost certainly an endangered species and you’re planning on eating it, is how I know. We eat dog for the first time that evening – when in Rome, and all.

Most Torajans are proudly Christian, despite their funeral practices, ancestor worship and extensive sacrifices, and like a lot of Indonesians manage to blend their traditions and religions rather well. The estate agent we found our house through is marrying the most modern, Jakarta-educated Torajan chick later this year, and will have to wear ceremonial axes, not to mention fronting up for sacrificial buffalo. (He’s Italian, and his parents are a little WTF-ed by the buffalo.)

So when I see golden Merry Christmas bunting fluttering above the skulls of sacrificed buffalo in the tongkonan house we’ll be staying in, this isn’t a particular WTF. For all its natural beauty, not a lot happens, apart from farming, funerals, preparing animals for funerals and eating animals from funerals, in the Torajan countryside, so I can see how one might want to make the Christmas magic last all year.

Still, back in town, I can’t help noticing that the Christmas lights are still on. There’s a giant cross towering over town and a number of miniature tongkonan houses with some absolutely splendid fairylights all around the streets.

“Isn’t a bit long after Christmas to have the lights still on?” I ask, channelling my mother, who is rigid about everything festive being out by Epiphany.

“Oh,” says Daniel, cheerily enough. “I think they usually leave them on all year.”

Daniel Pasapan is an outstanding guide – you can contact him on danielpasapan AT yahoo DOT co DOT id. Conventional wisdom is that if you want to see funerals you should visit Toraja in August-September: in fact, they happen all year round and we passed several on our hike.