Toraja / Indonesia

The land area of Indonesia is approximately 5.5 times the size of Japan and the population exceeds 200 million, making it the fourth most populated country in the world, and it is also a multi-ethnic country with over 3,000 ethnic groups and languages. This time I wish to talk about my visit to a distant region where people assigned to Indonesia seldom go because of difficult travel conditions and other reasons.

The name of the place is Tana Toraja. In Indonesian tana means earth or soil, and Toraja (tribe) is the name of the people living in the mountainous regions Sulawesi (Celebes) Island in the center of Indonesia. The Tana Toraja Prefecture in which the Toraja people live is approximately eight hours by car from Ujung Pandang, the largest city on the island, and is one a plateau 1,000 kilometers from the ocean in a place worthy of the phrase "out of the way place." The climate is cool year round and the morning mist that rises has me, who lives in Jakarta, asking, "Is this really part of Indonesia?" The terraced fields, bamboo forests, and fireflies that flit around at night remind me of the countryside when I was a child.

The Toraja tribe is a seafaring tribe that anciently crossed over by ship from the southern part of the Indochina peninsula, were driven by the tribes that already lived there, and after a long time finally came to establish themselves in Tana Toraja. As a testament to this you can see hamlets in many places with boat shaped houses called Tonkonan. They say the purpose of the boat-shaped houses to remind them that their ancestors were a seafaring people.

When you hear the word "Toraja" maybe what comes to mind is the "rare and exotic coffee" or the "wind funerals." Tradition has it that Toraja coffee is a rare and delicious substance that comes from inside the droppings of birds (it's a complete lie) and it probably became famous because a major coffee company has a directly operated plantation here. Well enough of that. What I want to introduce today is the wind funerals.

The funerals in Toraja are so extravagant in terms of time and money spent that they say it costs more to die here than to live here. If there is not sufficient money at the time, the mummified deceased is kept in the home for up to several years until the money can be arranged. Water buffalos are offered up during the funeral and the more the better. Even today the funeral not only shows the respect for the dead but also affects a family's social standing and, therefore, plays an important role in maintaining the family's reputation.

After the funeral the body is laid to rest in cave tombs close to the hamlet. The funeral I observed was held in a hamlet behind a village called Kota Lemo. The bodies are placed in horizontal holes cut into a cliff about 50 meters high (to prevent the burial articles from being looted). Places shaped like balconies from midway up to the bottom of the cliff are packed full of dolls 1 to 1.5 meters in height that are wrapped in white cloth like a turban. They look humorous at a glance, but these are proxies for the dead and are called Tau-tau. These dolls are smiling happily as if they came down from heaven to watch over grandchildren and families.

My visit to Toraja had a completely different feeling than did Java, Sumatra, or Bali and reminded me again of the great diversity and depth of Indonesia. I want to visit and observe a variety of the regions and deepen my understanding of this country.

Wind funeral tomb in the Toraja region Toraja coffee plant in Key Coffee's coffee plantation