Tanah Toraja- where everyone goes to Heaven
We travel into South Sulewesi through the gateway of Makassar and the coastal town of Pare Pare, taking an easterly turn onto the road that leads to Erotic Hills. The driver stops, we alight into a small hillside warung with a large viewing platform and face the most verdantly covered yoni. Labial forested folds flow from a protruding mound and it’s welcome to Tanah Toraja, land of the not so living dead: Tanah Toraja. Where the people live amongst those departed, where an empty chair may be reserved for the not long deceased and where you may, if you are lucky, be introduced to a corpse or two and be expected to pose alongside them for pictures. As relevant as people are alive, here in Tanah Toraja they are very much more important once dead, important and expensive.
The job of the dead is a tough one, and must be well prepared for, for on their journey to the afterlife they must bring gifts for the gods in order to speak well of those remaining on the earth, to bargain for them the fruits of life, the bounty of crops and the health of their children. They will need buffaloes, scores of them, they will need sacrifice and cigarettes, plenty of them too.
August is the month to visit if you want to see this pagan culture at its best, with animal slaughter and rivers of blood. Any fan of contemporary horror would be half at home in the hills of Rantepao, with its animist culture and worship of bones. Fans of True Blood and drama of that ilk would feel immediate comfort here, where market days are benign cover ups for dark art rituals, where the humble blacksmith pursues his trade in the knowledge that he alone possesses the magical powers to invigorate the weapons of choice, the glistening machetes and the long knives with their buffalo bone handles.
Living close to the dead and the subsequent slaughters the people of Tanah Toraja possess a macabre sense of humor and daily appreciation of being alive. In the caves of Londa the guides introduce you to skulls that were once living relatives, and tell the stories of their tragedies, the couple that were forbidden to marry and in defiance entered a suicide pact are placed together skull by skull for eternity.
Recent burials still have shards of silky cloth attached to the coffins that lie open and in full view, but most fascinating are the rounded boulders with ‘windows’ carved into them containing the relics. An aficionado of Studio Gibli, the fantastical creators of Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle will see inspirations of images that defy even the most logical of minds, for here without a doubt dwell the spirits in their paradise. A more heavenly arena is hard to imagine as each photograph reveals without filter the rich greens of terraced rice slopes, the majestic purples of rising hillsides, the defiant brilliance of a clear blue sky and the benign powder blue of onion flowers, it’s Heidi’s Swiss Alps on acid. It’s the home of the living dead. Burials only take place at certain times of the year, and when enough money has been saved and then spent, or as the Government regards it squandered, on the buffalo. Reaching upwards of one thousand dollars each, the demand is so great that they are brought in from as far as East Timor to feed the market despite the taxes imposed. But until then the dead are your friends, you cook for them and care for them as if they were alive and they live with you in special houses in the compound, waiting for the day they will mount their phalanx of buffalo and charge off into their own Valhalla.
This is a rich and rewarding journey, the flight into Makassar is just over an hour and the new road to Pare Pare brings you to Tanah Toraja within four hours. There is also superb trekking and white water rafting for those whose fascination with the dead is not as great at others, but for most, it is a visit to heaven during the season of the witch.
Visit Robi’s blog at Gede Robi http://www.gederobi.com/blog/tana-toraja to learn more.