toraja culture - Blogabond

“We bury the babies in this tree so the wind can waft away their souls”, explained Stefan, our local guide, as we stared up at the baby-grave tree in Kembira, Sulawesi. Its trunk was patch-worked with little niches, each the poignant final resting place of a baby, dead before cutting its first tooth. Death and burial, ruled by a complex set of long-established customs, are an ever-present feature of life in Tana Toraja, an isolated, supposedly Christian, though, in fact, predominantly animist community in the centre of this little-known, octopus-shaped, Muslim island in Eastern Indonesia.

Arriving in Tana Toraja was like stumbling upon a lost valley. Hidden behind a steep wall of mountains and unknown to Europeans until the twentieth century, its peaceful, pastoral landscape could, at first glance, be taken for Austria: green fields dotted with steep-roofed houses and animals grazing against a backdrop of misty mountains. On closer inspection though you see buffaloes, not cows, wallowing in lush rice-fields and houses that are not exactly your typical Alpine chalets. They are called “tongkonan” and are lavishly carved and painted black, red and orange in intricate patterns. Their curved roofs soar skywards, symbolizing the prows of the ships that carried distant ancestors to the island long ago. They can be neither bought nor sold but pass from generation to generation. The older ones proudly display rows of buffalo horns. Why? I found out as soon as I attended my first funeral.

written by

triejie on January 24, 2010 from Torajabernah, Indonesia

from the travel blog: toraja culture

tagged Culture, Indonesia and Toraja

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