INDONESIA

High price of death in Toraja

Land
Costly and macabre funeral rites are a dying tradition
for Sulawesi's young

A buffalo tied by the nose at Bolu market (Photo by Kit Yeng

Chan)

MARCO FERRARESE, Contributing writer

May 5, 2018 16:00 JST

RANTEPAO, Indonesia -- The deep sound

of gongs resonates across the hillside as
mourners seated on bamboo platforms
raise their heads in anticipation. Not so the
two dozen or so buffaloes grazing quietly
on the slope nearby. But the excited men
and women in the assembled crowd know
well that soon, one after another, the
animals will fall.

All it takes is a strike of the parang -- the

Indonesian word for machete -- to the base
of their necks. The beasts start bleeding to
death, quickly coloring the ground before
their hooves crimson. When each buffalo
collapses, the men and youngsters cheer
loudly, while the mourning women,
crouched on the elevated bamboo platform
that supports the coffin, release their high-
pitched cries of grief to the sky.

For centuries, this savage scene has been

the climax of any Rambu Solok -- the
week-long traditional funeral rites of
Toraja Land, in Indonesia's South Sulawesi
province, that help send the souls of the
departed to the afterlife with the gruesome
ritual slaughter of buffaloes.

"It's an expensive ceremony we must

perform when a relative dies, but we are
starting to do it in cheaper ways," said
Yudha Palinggi, 31, a teacher in a local
secondary school. "The less expensive
animals cost around 30 million rupiah
each (roughly $2,180). Based on the
tradition, the perfect Rambu Solok should
have a minimum of 24 sacrificial buffaloes,
each one of a different type and color. We
consider the shape of horns and hooves,
the color of the eyes and fur ... You can
imagine how the task of collecting all these
animals can become expensive and time
consuming, steering us away from our day
jobs."

With its elaborate and costly rituals, the

Rambu Solok tradition is increasingly
unsustainable for low-income rural
Torajans, most of whom struggle to earn
more than around 1 million rupiah per
month (about $73). And it is the better-
educated Torajan youths in particular who,
swayed by the globalized trends they know
through surfing the internet and watching
television, are less interested in keeping up
their ancestors' expensive traditions.

The week-long traditional Rambu Solok funeral rites are usually

organized in the hills in makeshift pedestals to host the
spectators. (Photo by Kit Yeng Chan)

To most, the costs of a Rambu Solok are

prohibitive when they face increasing fees
for higher education, leisure and
international travel. "These days we do
what we can," said Yudha. "We prefer to
save effort and money to cope with our
own life expenses, and thus we are happy
to sacrifice only three or four animals per
funeral."

This is quite a shift in Torajan traditional

culture, where death, much more than
birth and marriage, is considered the true
zenith of life. When a person dies, relatives
seek to impress by organizing a grandiose
public funeral celebration where, besides
killing buffaloes, the hosts must serve food
and drinks to hundreds of guests for days
on end.

Rambu Solok can last for up to 10 days,

with dances, buffalo fights, and of course,
the ritual slaughter that helped put this
region of Sulawesi firmly on the tourist
trail. Most travelers still come to Rantepao
exclusively to catch one of the gory funeral
celebrations.

Wooden dolls in traditional Torajan garb placed next to cave

tombs, representing the dead, in the rock face of the Londa
burial site near Rantepao (Photo by Kit Yeng Chan)

Locals acting as "freelance tourist guides"

often try their luck at scamming gullible
foreigners into believing that access to the
funerals is restricted to family members,
and charge high sums to bring tourists to
witness an otherwise public ceremony. But
in the end, few foreigners are able to
stomach the violent spectacle, and most
leave well before the last buffalo has fallen,
lifeless, to the ground. The carcasses are
then cut into pieces, and their meat is
barbecued and consumed on the spot, or
distributed among guests to take home.

Together with chickens and pigs, buffaloes

are the most important animals in Torajan
folklore. Most tongkonan -- the Torajan
traditional homes characteristic of the
region -- are adorned with wooden buffalo
heads, their roofs curved at both ends to
imitate the shape of the animal's horns.
Buffaloes not only represent the Torajan
ethnic group's strong ties to the land, but
also define a family's social status -- and
hence, must also reflect that status in
death.

Traditional Torajan <i>tongkonan</i> homes, shaped like buffalo

horns, use wooden replicas of the animal's head and real horns
as decorations. (Photo by Kit Yeng Chan)

"Things can get quite elaborate and

expensive depending on how many sons
and daughters are participating in a
funeral," said Sam, 46, a Rantepao local
who adopts an English name to offer guide
services to international tourists. "All
family members combined, we bought and
killed 60 buffaloes at my grandmother's
Rambu Solok," he said.

Tourism aside, Torajans have created a

grassroots industry around the different
stages of the funeral celebrations. At the
weekly Bolu market -- a dung and mud-
covered slab of concrete and bare earth on
the northern end of Rantepao's main road -
- sellers come from the surrounding
countryside to parade their buffaloes
before potential buyers.

"A well-executed Rambu Solok must have a

wide variety of buffaloes, all with different
physical characteristics. Albinos are cheap,
but if an animal has white patches on its
head or back, or green or white eyes, it can
cost up to 300 million rupiah or more,"
said an elderly seller who had brought his
buffaloes to market from the nearby village
cluster of Nanggala. Tethered to metal
poles and hanging ropes by their noses and
feet, the animals stand under the strong
sun, sharing space with dozens of other
beasts, and men who have come to shop
around. Rocking their heads and tails, the
buffaloes await the start of a tug of war
with their buyer, who will pull and push
them out of Bolu and onto the back of the
pick-up trucks that will take them to their
fates.

Buyers, sellers and buffaloes come together at the Bolu market,

a weekend-only event on the northern end of Rantepao. (Photo
by Kit Yeng Chan)

The height of the funeral season coincides

with the summer months after the harvest,
but can also stretch well into December
and January. Some locals say there is
always a funeral celebration going on
somewhere in the Torajan highlands,
because "the nature of life is such that
somebody always has to die."

Reflecting the high costs, it can be a long

time after a death before a Torajan family
is able to host the actual ceremony. While
family members collect the money needed
to perform a Rambu Solok, the corpses are
injected with preservatives that slow their
decay, and eerily kept in their former
homes, for months or even years -- or until
a bank helps out by offering a loan. "And
after the Rambu Solok, the bodies are
either placed in caves, hanging coffins, or
inside tongkonan-shaped wooden tombs,"
said Yudha.

In his peaceful home on the southern

outskirts of Rantepao, hanging next to
framed Islamic calligraphy and
photographs of his family members, are
pictures of Yudha and his cousins posing in
front of the iconic temples of Angkor Wat
in Cambodia. "We visited two years ago,
and I am planning to fly to Malaysia soon,"
he said.

"But when it comes to visiting Europe, I

have to wish that my family stays healthy,
and my savings can go toward the trip of a
lifetime, not a funeral," he added with a
smile.

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