Tana Toraja

With a bit delay we arrived at 1 o'clock in the morning in Makassar, Sulawesi. It wasn't worth to look for a hotel, because in the morning we wanted to go straight to our next destination, Tana Toraja, and so we spent the night at the airport, watching a football match.
The following day we took a bus to Rantepao, the main tourist town to explore the region of Tana Toraja. The people here are as friendly and helpful as in Sumatra and so we could enjoy 5 wonderful days in a very special place with a lot of tradion. Have a look to see what we did, it's a unique place to explore without a lot of tourists.

The mountains in this part of Sulawesi reach up to 2150 meters and the scenery is beautiful: nice panoramas, bamboo forests, tradional houses and a lot of rice terraces. On a half day trekking tour we went down the mountain back to Rantepao, but this was quite unspectacular compared with the other things.

Tradional houses (shaped like boats or buffalo horns) in Tana Toraja and in front of these houses they put the horns of the water buffalos which they have killed. The region is famous for their black and white water buffalos which are much more expensive than the normal black one's. And with the horns in front of the houses the family show everybody how rich they are.

Tana Toraja has some very special rituals, here you can see some of them:

- Burial caves (1-3): the coffins of the dead people are stored in a cave, once the coffin is broken, they just keep the skull and the rest they throw away. So, in the caves we could see many skulls and bones, it's a bit like in an Indiana Jones movie, but a real one! These caves are still used, but reach people are buried at the top of the mountain, people of the middle cast in an intermediate level and just poor people in the cave.

- Hanging graves (4+5): In a wall of a mountain they cut a hole in the rock to bury the dead person inside. This rocky cliffs and caves they used to hide the burial offerings to deter plundering. Often it's possible to see "tau tau" on balconies in this rocky cliff faces, life-siye, carved wooden effigies of the dead, which guard the coffins.

- baby graves (6+7): We could see 2 different places, one in a wall like the hanging graves and the other one was a baby tree, where they buried the dead babies.
- Megalithes (8): Dead people are buried near these megalithes and sometimes they erect a new one in honour of the dead.

These funeral places are incredible, but the most famous thing in Tana Toraja is the funeral ceremonies. Generally people here have 2 funerals, one immediately after the death, and a second, more elaborate, when enough cash has been raised. Between these 2 funerals a long time can pass, in one place we went to, it was 1 year and the other one 6 months. During this period, the dead person is kept at home and people say that he/she isn't dead, just sick.

The main, second funeral ceremony can last up to 7 days, depending on how rich the dead person was. During our stay in Tana Toraja we had the possiblity to see 2 different funerals, on one we stayed on the 1st and 2nd day of the ceremony, the reception days (for wealthier people 1 day isn't enough), and on the other one on the 2nd day when they had the buffalo sacrifice.

The reception days of the 1st funeral: A lot of people are welcomed by the family of the dead person and all guests bring a gift, for example pigs, buffalos, cigarettes, etc. Some guests brought up to 20 pigs! They were still alife and afterwards the guest and family of the dead person decide what they are going to do with the animals.

Another special thing we could enjoy: buffalo fights! On the reception day, at the end of the day, all the people went to a rice field, where they put a buffalo in front of another one and then everybody was waiting to see a fight. However, often these buffalos didn't want to do that, they just smelled each other and then started feeding or when one buffalo really wanted to fight, the other one escaped. That was quite dangerous, because there was no fence between the people and the buffalos, so if one escaped we didn't know where it was running to... Well, finally we had 2 or 3 fights and one of them was quite long, about 15 minutes.

For local people is something tradional and they bet money on these buffalos.

The other funeral ceremony we stayed was on the day of the buffalo sacrifice. In the morning they killed more than 20 water buffalos, and these animals are expensive, it was a rich family. People here life in a kast system like in India, whether they are in the rich, medium or poor kast. After killing the buffalos, they shared the meat of them and gave a part to each family. The whole funeral place was full of blood and it also smelled quite strong.