In the village of Kete, the friends and relatives of the dead man, Mayanna, have been preparing
the ceremony for several days now.
Mayanna was a puang, that is, a noble, and therefore the ceremony must be very special,
attention paid to every single detail. Once they have finished decorating the village,
they must build another one, not far from here, to house the guests. That is where the
funeral will be held. For Mayanna’s family, this will mean absolute ruin, and it will
be several generations before the debt, some five million pesetas, is fully paid off.
To raise the money, they have had to sell rice fields and cattle, and request loans from
the wealthier relatives. But they must impress the gods, and if Mayanna is satisfied, the
family will be sure to go to heaven.
Kete is a typical Toraja village composed of two parallel rows of houses built on stilts
and called Tongkonan, which symbolise the union of the family and the clan.
The enormous roofs are made of layers of bamboo canes sealed with a vegetable paste extracted
from the bamboo itself, which makes them waterproof absolutely vital when the rainy season arrives.
The façade is decorated with geometric paintings
and each colour has a meaning: red symbolises human life; white is the colour of bones,
a symbol of purity; yellow represents the blessing of God and power; and black means
death and darkness.
A carving of a buffalo head decorates the central part of each house. Numerous horns
from animals sacrificed at past funerals give an idea of the wealth of the family and are
tied to the central pillar that supports the roof.
These houses are closely linked with Toraja traditions, and one of their functions is
to serve as a constant reminder of the authority of the noble families whose descendents have
maintained them and may not sell them.
But the strangest thing about this architecture is the shape of the roofs, and there are a
number of theories about the origin of this.
Some say they represent the horns of a buffalo,
others that they point the way towards heaven. But the majority believe the roof looks more
like a boat, its pointed ends representing the prow and the stern.
The houses face north,
possibly because their ancestors came from that direction in boats which, when they arrived,
were turned upside down to use as shelters.
The origin of the Toraja is to be found in the foothills of the Himalayas, and in the
past they were fierce head-hunters. After the invasion of the Bugui people, 600 years
ago, the Toraja were driven into the centre of the island, while Muslims occupied the
coasts and the lowlands.
The mane Toraja means “Men of the Mountains”.
The inhabitants of Sulawesi have always had a very close relationship with the sea. Along
the beaches they continue to build, in the traditional way, the pinisi, the famous Indonesian
boats that for centuries now have crossed these seas, trading and transporting goods
among the 14,000 islands that make up the Indonesian archipelago.
These men belong to the Bugui ethnic group, considered the best boat builders and sailors
in the Indian Ocean. Such was their supremacy in these seas that, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries they established important trade centres, in what today is Singapore,
the island of Borneo and the Malaysian peninsula, controlling marine traffic in the South China
and Java Seas.
But there is another ethnic group which lives in even closer contact with the sea.
In fact, they could not conceive of life without it. That group is the Bajau.
At the other end of the island, in the calm waters of the Gulf of Tomini, these nomads
have for centuries conquered the sea. They live out their lives on these small, fragile
boats called leppas, where they are born, marry, reproduce and die.
In them they move along the coast, propelled by the winds andthe currents, and rarely set foot on dry land.
Such is their affinity with the sea that when they come on land they feel unhappy.
They say that, just as a turtle or a fish would die if it were stranded on the coast,
without the sea they too would die, for here they feel they are free.
Their origins remain unknown, though some anthropologists believe they come from the
south of the Malaysian peninsula. Apparently, at the start of the seventeenth century, they
were forced to abandon their homes, due to the constant tribal conflicts and political instability.
They sailed along the coast of Borneo, then headed south of the Philippines,
eventually arriving on the eastern coast of Sulawesi.
They, however, claim their ancestors set out to sea in search of their lost princess.
According to this legend, the princess was
bathing on the shore when a sudden storm carried her out to sea.
She managed to cling to some tree trunks and for weeks drifted,
before finally reaching Sulawesi.
When the Bajau found her,
they decided to remain and live here.
Since then, innumerable legends have surrounded these Gypsies of the Sea. In the eighteenth
century, they contributed to the maritime expansion of the kingdom of Sriwijaya, and
two centuries before had fought to defend the Sultan of Malacca. Some of them became
famous pirates, spreading fear among the traders, and their journeys across the seas became legendary.
For centuries they held sway over this blue desert.