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Reinhard Kuchenbäcker Premium MemberThe company name is only visible to registered members.Paying the decorators in buffaloes
Paying the decorators in buffaloes
By Paul Miles, Financial Times
Published: Sep 29, 2007
In the orchid-shaped island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, the Toraja people live in intricately carved and decorated houses known as tongkonan . Although no inventory has been done, experts estimate there are as many as a few thousand such homes in Tana Toraja, a 4,000 sq km area of highland bamboo forests, where the natives weave textiles, rear ceremonial buffaloes and grow rice and coffee.
Traditionally tongkonan have been reserved for the elite, noble class but in recent years they have become increasingly popular as status symbols.
These homes always face north to the river that marks Tana Toraja's border and up which, it is said, ancestors voyaged. They are raised on wooden pillars and have soaring, saddle-shaped roofs, traditionally of bamboo and palm leaf but now more often made from convincing imitation bamboo and corrugated tin. Wooden walls, with small shuttered windows, are carved and painted with natural dyes in red (which signifies life), gold (wealth), white (spirituality) and black (death). The designs - suns, buffaloes, cockerels, pre-Christian crosses and up to 100 other motifs - reflect the traditional hierarchy and way of life of the Toraja.
Opposite each tongkonan is a similar but smaller building. This is the rice barn, or alang , from which only women are allowed to take rice, climbing up a notched bamboo ladder. The barns stand on smooth palm wood pillars, too slippery for rats to climb. Underneath, on a platform, the family sits and socialises. All around them are the elaborate symbols of their culture.
It is not just the buildings' superficial decorations that have significance but the shape and design of the structures themselves. Locals say the roofs are built to resemble the canoes that the Toraja forefathers paddled up the Sadan River. But anthropologist Kathleen Adams, who has studied the Toraja extensively, says this is most likely a "romantic" interpretation. The roof is probably shaped instead after a woman's necklace. Another theory is that it echoes the horns of Torajans' buffaloes, which are reared for ceremonial slaughter.
Carvers who decorate a tongkonan are paid in a number of buffaloes. The docile beauties cost about 5m rupiahs (more than $500) each and an albino can fetch more than 10 times that. The total cost for a new dwelling can be tens of thousands of dollars. But a tongkonan is the centre of a family's universe, so considered worth the expense.
It is also said to be a representation of the cosmos. According to Adams, "the space between the supporting pillars traditionally housed prized buffaloes and pigs.
"This is the realm of animals and a favoured haunt of malevolent beings such as the batitong - part-human, part-spirit creatures with glowing lights on their heads who suck out humans' livers and consume small livestock. Moving up a layer, the rooms in the tongkonan represent the earthly realm of humans and, finally, the rafters and roof of the house are associated with the heavens."
Traditional tongkonan have small, dark rooms, which are smoky from an open fire used for cooking, though nowadays many families cook in a nearby outhouse.
The most famed ceremonies in Toraja culture are elaborate funerals. The body - preserved with formalin - is kept inside the tongkonan in an open coffin for many months or even years. The clan saves up in the meantime and decides on festive arrangements, such as where to hold buffalo fights and who will bake the cakes. (In one case, the body waited for decades while the family debated.) Finally, after days of animal slaughtering and a Christian church service, the coffin is carried to the mausoleum in a palanquin shaped like a tongkonan .
These wonderful houses are indeed life and death to the Toraja.
paul@paulmiles.co.uk
How to visit
A few thousand overseas tourists visit Tana Toraja each year. It is a nine-hour drive from Makassar, the capital of Sulawesi. In Rantepao, the capital of Tana Toraja, the Toraja Heritage Hotel has comfortable rooms in ersatz tongkonan . From here you can do guided day tours to visit villages of the genuine article. Families welcome tourists to observe funeral festivities (mostly in July) in exchange for a gift of money (or, if you are feeling generous and strong, a live pig). You will have fine fodder for dinner-time one-upmanship back at the hotel if you get to see a tongkonan consecration ceremony ( mangrara banua ). The "traditional village" of Kete Kesu has some impressive ancient dwellings (and graves) and the village of Batu Tumonga has a basic guesthouse with rooms in small tongkonan -style buildings with leaf roofs that have sprouted a forest of ferns.
- 01 Oct 2007, 08:24 am
