Tana Toraja: Mud Trekking
The night before we were set to start trekking, it rained buckets. Not your run of the mill buckets, but big sheep-dipping buckets. Buckets you might use to put out a forest fire. All night it poured, and in the morning it was still going. But right in line with our guide Gibson’s prediction, it stopped by nine and we were able to go out.
Our first stop was the buffalo market, held every six days in Rantepao. This is where many of the buffalo used in funerals come from, though since now is low season for funerals, the cattle most in-demand are young ones that people will buy to raise themselves. A buffalo, once bought, is thoroughly pampered. Often a child is assigned to take care of it, washing the buffalo frequently, feeding it grass by hand, and bringing it to wallow in mud pits. Despite the good treatment, the buffalo are not generally kept tied up when they’re not being led someplace by the nose, as they could easily damage the walls of the rice terraces, causing a cascading disaster.
By numbers and drama, though, the market was dominated by the pigs. There were pens along one side where pigs and skilled men shared space, the pigs dwindling gradually in numbers as the men swiftly trussed them to bamboo poles and handed them out of the pen. Others waited to take the pigs to the selling area, where long aisles of proto-pork lay prone, ready for purchase. Most were quiet, almost asleep, but plenty squealed protest against their no doubt uncomfortable position, making the aisles a tremendous cacophony of pig noises. The pigs that don’t sell get brought back to the farm to run around another week, so no doubt the quiet ones were veterans of the market who already knew what to expect.
After visiting the market, we set out by bemo (public minbus) and then ojek (motorbike-taxi) to reach our starting point, which was approximately the spot where the road became too rough for the motorbike. We had a little distance on the road before turning off through a village and onto a forest trail that Gibson knew. This trail was steep and evidently used as a shortcut to walk between villages, though we didn’t see much evidence of recent use. The locals generally prefer to get around in vehicles, which are cheap because gasoline is heavily subsidized here. In fact, I asked our guide what the Indonesian word for hiking is. He said he had pondered the same question with a German expat he had guided several weeks ago, and the conclusion they came to is that there isn’t really such a word, since Indonesians don’t have a tradition of hiking. The best they could come up with together was “buleh masu kampung,” or “white person visitng the villages.”
The trail was muddy and slippery with last night’s rain, and we slipped often – Roxane at one point accidentally pulled a garden hose / irrigation pipe loose, releasing more water all across the trail until we fixed it. We tromped through palm forest and a cacao plantation, coming out eventually in a rice paddy, which we traversed atop the dikes separating each terrace until we reached another road. We rested and snacked at a pondok, a shady gazebo-like structure usually erected by local youths as a meeting place, hangout, and respite from the midday sun. These are everywhere alongside Tana Toraja’s roads, and we often see people lounging or sleeping in them as we drive by.
We stayed the night in the village, at the house of Gibson’s cousin. Shortly after greeting us, the cousin had to head out to a church function. Interestingly, a majority of Torajans are now Christian, and though the church has ended or altered certain beliefs, it finds the core of Aluk To Dolo to be compatible with Christianity, and so people here happily practice both sets of beliefs.
The rain set in again, and we neglected to bring our playing cards or Tantrix, a tile game we brought from New Zealand and have been playing a lot lately. The family was busy, so we spent an intensely boring hour or so staring at the walls. Boring walls they were, too. Torajan homes are sparse, generally with no furniture and few wall decorations. Here the only hanging objects were a failed clock and a series of pages ripped from a calendar of Jesus images. Finally Gibson found a deck of dominoes hidden in a corner, and we gambled with the candies we brought to give the children until Gibson had won all of them from us.
The family also didn’t eat with us. Evidently a common way to honor guests in Indonesia is to serve them first. However, once everyone had eaten, our hosts finally joined us upstairs. Only the father of the family spoke a little English – his parents spoke none and his children, who were no doubt learning it in school, were too shy even to come over and accept candy from us, let alone say anything other than a squeaky “thank you” after we walked over and practically forced it on them.
So we all spent an awkward hour beaming and nodding at each other, managing to express silently that we were mighty pleased to meetcha dontcha know. Then the grandmother of the house offered Roxane some betelnut, something she’s been dying to try. This broke the ice but good. As grandma demonstrated how to put together the three ingredients, then chew them and stick the wad under the lip, our hosts kept giggling at this buleh who found such a commonplace thing so strange and new. This in turn set Roxane off laughing until she could barely keep the black wad under her lip. But she gamely held it and spat (as with chewing tobacco) for several minutes before finally spitting it out.
Now that the ice was broken, I felt more confident uncorking my stammering Indonesian and pouring forth a description of Roxane’s and my journey. It seemed like people mostly understood me, so I kept going, and had a very nice evening of practicing my language skills, though mostly when our hosts spoke I needed them to repeat it a good three or four times before I understood fully. It was very handy having Gibson with us to fill in words I didn’t know in Indonesian. After we exhausted talk of places travelled and our family members, we wound up on the topic of politics. I was able to express that “Bush liked war” and “Obama is smart and speaks good,” but when I tried to explain why bailing out General Motors would be a bad idea for the long-term health of the American economy, my command of the language failed me completely.
The second day was even muddier than the first. There was no more forest path. Instead we were walking among the rice terraces all day. This had its own appeal – the terraces are intricately and cleverly built to maximize cultivable land and also allow easy control of the water level in each paddy, which has to be adjusted constantly throughout the growing season. From one paddy to the next, water is held back by a small earthen dike that rises just as high as the highest level the water will reach. A notch is cut somewhere along the wall to allow excess water to flow through. These notches are always offset from each other so the water slows between each one, preventing it from building up too much velocity, which would erode away the walls.
It was along top the sturdier of these many interconnecting dikes that we made our way, crossing the bigger waterways on rickety bamboo bridges. Our feet were utterly filthy, it was hot, and once Roxane slipped into the mud of a paddy. I thought “What have I done? I’ve finally got her out trekking with me, and the conditions are horrible! She’ll never coming hiking again.” But as a matter of fact she was having fun in spite of the difficulty and wanted to do it again soon.
We returned to our hotel in Rantepao after lunch and sat around playing games, drinking tea, and sorting pictures. In the evening Gibson brought over a jug of the local homebrew, called tuak or palm wine, and a couple of friends who also guide. We spent the night drinking the sour, milky-colored stuff from cups that Gibson never allowed to reach less than half full. At some point another local friend showed up uninvited and already wobbly, and said “Ah, I see you have palm wine! Okay, I’ll help you out. But,” and here he looked much afflicted, “please don’t get me drunk!” He was a cut-up, though, and received in good humor.
The next morning, as we were readying to catch our eight-hour bus back to Makassar, we got a text message from Gibson: “I am sorry I cannot meet you to say goodbye this morning. I am sick, maybe because of palm wine last night.”