Death Makes a Holiday

The entire village seemed to hold its breath as the man faced the buffalo. He pulled on the nose ring rope and the animal stretched out its head. With a quick movement, he sliced the buffalo’s neck open with a long knife, and we all watched it die.

I was sitting in a tiny village in the Toraja region on the island of Sulawesi, a wildly-shaped island of Indonesia that straddles the equator. Toraja is known for its rich local culture, quite different from the rest of Indonesia. The thing to do here is get yourself invited (even if you must invite yourself) to a village festival, funerals being the most elaborate. I managed this through a local man named Hennrick I had met the previous evening, when I had arrived in the small town of Rantepao. I hired him out to take me to the funeral that was happening the next day, and to some other sights, most of which seem to deal with death.

It’s hard to die in Toraja. Families sometimes save money for years after a death for a proper funeral. For this one, five buffalo, a substantial investment, were sacrificed. This signified a decent status level, but nowhere near the twenty-five or even a hundred buffalo that a major leader would command.

And the entire village didn’t really hold its breath over the buffalo. It was only me. They were used to this.

This water buffalo is about to die

We had arrived early in the village, carrying a gift from me: a 20-liter jug of the local palm wine called tuak, which we had balanced with the two of us on Hennrick’s motorbike. This cost me about twelve dollars and is an entirely proper gift to bring. I was introduced to a village elder calling himself Peter, who quickly brought out cups and poured for all. Peter also brought me a hunk of grilled pork and some rice folded in a large bamboo leaf. He hacked up the pork with a crude knife and we ate everything with our fingers.

The woman who had just died, whose coffin was sitting nearby, ranked five buffalo. The five were led into a central area of the village, and one by one were ritually dispatched while we all watched. I had never seen an animal killed before. Some of the initial knife cuts were clean, but a few were not and the buffalo struggled. The animals’ death carries the soul of the dead person along the way to the next place, in a ritual known as rambu solo’, smoke descending. More guests from nearby villages arrived, carrying loudly squealing pigs tied to bamboo poles. Women in black prepared food, tea, and coffee, and everyone settled in for an all-day event. As a guest, I was welcome to hang out as long as I wanted. Toraja culture revolves around village life, and it’s not to be missed.

Bringing in a pig to the village.  The pig won’t last long either.

I made several friends in the village, people who wanted to have photos with me. One woman put a baby in my arms. Others called out to Hennrick to see if I was single. The now-slain buffalo were being skinned, then cut up for distribution to the guests. What you get depends on your status. The children were given hooves tied on long strings, which they dragged behind them like toys. The family was threatening to give me a leg, and I figured that I should leave gracefully before being saddled with a hunk of meat.

This obsession with death in Toraja means many regional sights involve the formation and décor of graves. Hennrick and I rode to another village called Londa to see graves set in cliffs, high above the rice fields. The rectangular openings are carved into the rock and often nine or so bodies can fit inside. They are sometimes decorated outside with wooden effigies called tau-tau. We next saw graves for babies set into living trees, then wandered through a cave full of more graves, tau-tau, food offerings, and lots of skulls. I’ve never been so surrounded by death.

Woman in the village bring in the food

Because of decreased tourism, there are no flights anymore into the Toraja region. One must fly to Makassar, the nearest large city, and take a nine-hour bus ride to the small town of Rantepao in Toraja. Bus companies such as Litha, the one I used, provide comfortable and quite reliable rides over smooth roads.

Rantepao is decently set up for visitors, with hotels at several levels from flophouse to resort. Foreigner-friendly restaurants line the streets, with menus that include sandwiches and fries along with Indonesian dishes and regional Toraja fare such as buffalo with black sauce. I ate in my hotel restaurant the first night, dining on grilled fish and stir-fried vegetables, along with a double-sized bottle of beer, very common there.

Some restaurants have a few specialties that must be ordered in advance, such as fish cooked with lemongrass in a bamboo stalk, split open for you at the table. Although the fare is tasty, all the tourist restaurants in town seem to serve the same things, and the prices aren’t exactly rock bottom. A meal of a main dish, a side, and a beer is close to seven dollars, pretty good by Western standards but about three times the local rate.

So I went local. Rantepao’s central square holds the market by day and food stalls at night. The main street, Ahmad Yani, is also lined with eateries at its southern end. The local places have much more life and you get the added fun of astonishing the vendors, who don’t expect you to drop in. One evening I needed a few minutes to convince a stand owner that I really did want to try his food. He was making a thick pancake, folded over a filling of sweet red bean paste. I left him shaking his head, astonished that a foreigner would want such a thing.

With or without a village or a funeral, the landscape in Sulawesi is worth seeing

Besides eating, there’s not much to do in Rantepao, especially in the evenings. The larger hotels have restaurant-bars; some may even have a lounge singer. My hotel restaurant featured a guy on a Yamaha keyboard, gently crooning standards such as “Wild World” that didn’t make me feel like hanging out.

Local entertainment may not be much better, though it makes for a more memorable experience. Here again one benefits from a contact. My driver Hennrick took me out that night to some places just outside of town where I was the only foreigner. Our first stop was a very dark bar where a low murmur of surprise arose as I walked in. Hennrick led me to a table in the corner and almost immediately two girls came to join us. My apprehension was groundless; they knew him and were just saying hi, nothing more.

Indonesians like to sing when they step out. A karaoke screen hung above the door, and a microphone was passed around the tables. The bar had a rural, slap hazard feel to it, as if someone had set up in an old barn with leftover electronic parts. Hennrick sang two songs and then the power went out, resulting in a scramble for candles and a rebooting of the karaoke system when it was restored.

I only hired Hennrick for the one day, figuring that it would be easy enough to go around on my own. Most hotels can arrange a motorbike rental, or even a car and driver if you want. A 100cc motorbike with an automatic clutch is yours for about six dollars a day. The small four-speed bikes are easy to control if you’ve ever ridden a motorcycle, but Indonesia may not be for beginners. Traffic is very light but there are no speed limits, traffic lights, or stop signs. They drive on the left side of the road.

There are numerous other villages to visit around Rantepao. Some even have sights that don’t deal with death. Nothing is very far, and with my hotel-supplied map, I never got lost for long.

I stopped in tiny Ke’te Kesu, home of an often-photographed double row of traditional wooden houses shaped like boats, or like buffalo horns, depending on the story. They are meticulously kept up by the families, and a new one was being built when I was there. Young men were painting a complex design on several boards. A woman came out, wrote down her address, and asked if I could send her a small bottle of perfume from the States. Sure.

Traditional village houses, shaped like buffalo horns

Several grandmother types invited me to climb up and visit their houses. Their houses were all mini souvenir shops, selling wooden plaques, small tau-tau figures, and buffalo horn carvings. I left a trail of disappointment because I didn’t buy anything.

On my last day in Toraja, I rode north to Batutumonga, a mountain famous for its views. The landscape quickly turned dramatic, with more hills, water, and step farming. I would shoot more than 100 photos that day. The landscape was striking and beautiful with its cliffs, curves, and rice terraces, and everything was so impossibly green.

My shortcut back to Rantepao was a big mistake. I took the most direct road, not thinking that in a mountainous region, that means straight down. The narrow road had once been concrete. Now it looked like a giant had taken a sledgehammer to it. There were almost no flat spots left.

“Yes, just go straight,” two schoolgirls walking next to me said. “But be careful, the road is very bad.” Well, yes. They were watching me, so of course twenty seconds later I embarrassed myself by almost wiping out, twisting sideways on the motorbike. I recovered, but the incident left a bruise that lasted longer than the rest of my trip.

Back in Rantepao, I paid eight dollars for an hour massage at Mama Spa, and later went to eat still smelling of the massage oil. I ate too much, but I thought of Hennrick, who had said to me “Life is short! Enjoy it!” For a land obsessed with death, life seemed pretty easy and relaxed here.

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