Who are the Torajans?
cool made it to Toraja good morning guys today we're in Sulawesi uh still in we're kind of in central Sulawesi but technically we're in South Sulawesi but like kind of up north in the northern part of South Sulawesi if that makes sense I wouldn't say difficult to get here but I also wouldn't say it was easy to get here you fly to Makassar in the South part of Sulawesi and then after and then after getting to Makassar you have to catch another flight on a small uh prop plane to get up here to Toraja so not not difficult to get here but not as easy as say getting to Bali or something like that cool Church up there those Torajan buildings with the roofs this awesome statue another Church and that looks like maybe the the Regency headquarters building maybe like the county county office to put it in American terms it was like one of the metal weapons wow a gayang so check that out our guide just told us that's Laki Padada the royal who wanted to become immortal he's got like a gayang which is like a keris but in the local language gayang they used to he says they used to poison the blade uh so when they fought with them uh not only with the blade cut but it would also poison them but yeah Laki Padada check that out huge just like in Rio a huge statue of uh Christ on the top of that Cliff up there very cool huh but yeah up here uh we came up here to see the Torajan people they of course didn't call themselves Torajans this name came to them from like the Bugis people that live down in Makassar and they would refer to the people that lived up in the highlands up in the mountains as the people from up in the mountains and in the Buginese language that's Torajan so we're up here with the people of the highlands in Toraja the primary means of identity to a Torajan is family and those families live in these houses called tongkonan like these tongkonan these are rice barns that's a lovely couple taking their wedding pictures but this is a tongkonan and this is where uh families would live these smaller houses are not actually houses at all just like in Padang or Bukittinggi with the Minangkabau people these are rice barns so storage look how beautiful that is these are called pasura all these engravings this is all engraved I wonder if I can get up a little closer for you but they they have like meanings dating back to the agricultural times like you can see that one there kind of means Buffalo and then vegetables and rice and stuff like that and then of course you got the the roosters up there by the sun and the moon and then of course you've got all these uh buffalo horns many many buffalo horns for each buffalo uh that was sacrificed for a funeral all over you can see them everywhere over there tons of them on that thing tons of them yeah the buffalo plays a significant role in Torajan life what a beautiful photo so beautiful here I have a friend that has always wanted to come here he used to live in the Philippines and I think he read about or heard about uh Toraja and he's always talked about it so I'm a little bit scared of him seeing this video and him not and me coming here me coming here without bringing him so I'm a little I'm a little worried yeah good luck see ya bye thank you very cool hi rice barns and houses wow beautiful roof lines hi hello hi hi hi check out that bridge little creek oh Peter's going first yeah they're one of the lady who take care of the garden yeah they have their chili pepper yeah they have they they grow here down for vegetables ubi also? ya and then the leaves I will use for vegetables yeah you can eat those yes those and there's uh ubi underground too but underground yeah sweet potatoes sweet potato that's what I'm trying to say sweet potato yeah look at that chilies look at that yeah little Chili Peppers hi yeah is a oh beautiful yes she's the owner of the garden yeah yeah yeah. this is your garden? ya. beautiful oh what are those papaya papayas very cool yeah what's your name? Martina? Her name is Martina. My name is Erik very cool thank you Martina yeah tongkon means together. tongkonan is family house. tongkona
I joined tongkona if you go to ceremonies tongkona it means join together. yeah okay. so tongkona belong by the clan belong generation to generation yeah why does it feel like i'm always walking uphill hey puppy doggy who's a good boy [Laughter] wow look at that if you compare the economy people like live in our way they are very very simple life they are only like consumed they eat rice vegetables chili but they are happy Peter you were saying your dad used to make these yeah he's he's retired now because he's a little bit older around almost eighty years old 80 years old but he used to build these houses and he even built a now famous one you said that's in Japan Japan in Fukuoka yeah he built it shipped it to Japan and it's now a museum yeah wow very cool uh manasumorekka. manasumorekka. ya that is one of the things we cannot say apa kabar but manasumorekka that is how are you or whatever manasumorekka that is Torajan dialect that is first question if you are meet the people in the country. so so what does manasumorekka mean? If you translate in Torajan it mean are you cook already. have you already cooked. ya. manasumorekka. manasumo. manasumo that mean already cooked that is so cool yeah. I love that yeah. but don't translate how are you because you know in in normal way in in Indonesia you say if you are just meeting how are you, apa kabar yeah yeah that is formal but I mean in Toraja I mean if you talk with the dialect they say always manasumorekka that is yeah they always say yes have you already cooked yeah already cookies yeah and the answer is I've already cooked? yeah yeah manasumo. takumandemo. ya takumande, let's eat
ah takumande. I love it manasumorekka indo. ya manasumo takumandemo. ya one of the things a lot of tourists come here for is to see the funeral ritual of the Torajan people I find it fascinating too from an anthropological standpoint so for the the Torajan people one of the most expensive probably the number one most expensive event in a person's life is the funeral you know they have to uh as Yohan was explaining they have to build uh structures for extended family to stay in when they show up they have to uh you know get all these buffalo chickens pigs uh not to mention just food and drink and stuff like that uh for the funeral it could take months maybe even a year to save up that much money to host this oh yeah thank you thank you fun hi. how are you. fine can see this is one of the offering of the family the good buffalo he will be sacrificed yeah he will be sacrificed on the slaughtering day of the funeral okay so when a Torajan dies the goal of the deceased is to get to Puya so they begin this journey to Puya and the thing that helps them get to Puya is a buffalo I'm going to caution you the viewers here one part of the whole funeral ritual for the Torajan people includes bull fighting I'm not going to include anything very graphic in this video but if this sort of thing is going to disturb you you should stop watching at this point the other one's bigger this one seems angrier hi hello mister. hi how are you. i'm fine. good hi hi mister. hi
tuak is like a arak in Bali so it's a it's like a beer a mild a mild alcoholic beverage a nice lady gave me a little candy beautiful lady stop by to say hello I didn't have my camera on of course gave me a little ginger candy delicious what happened. he run away one of them don't want to fight. the big one right? ya so they open the gate and they go away. so who wins or nobody? nobody. no no fight. no fight he's uh luar biasa is Buffalo yeah he's very handsome wow oh he's got some lovely blue eyes he's got some lovely blue eyes um yeah so when uh when a Torajan dies uh and considering all the expense that has to go into um preparing for the funeral you know sometimes it can take months maybe even up to a year to accumulate the necessary funds in order to hold the funeral so until that time uh the body remains in the house in the tongkonan inside here they'll dress it uh and keep it until they can hold the actual funeral which for this family is going to happen uh in a few days on the 4th of July see how much yeah he's got beautiful eyes 200 million rupiah 200 million rupiah. approximately 14 000 US Dollars wow so this dead body is it okay to a camera okay it's this body with the coffin very beautiful coffin so on four the dead body will bring down to the rice barns and be there during three nights okay so after three nights they will make the procession of the dead body surroundings. it's called ma'pasonglo then after the put uh go around they'll put the dead body the coffin up here in kolakian during the days of the funeral as we arrive in the funeral and we suddenly we saw the wooden effigy the TaoTao so no doubt anymore it will be a high-class funeral ceremony yeah a noble she's a noble exactly so you can see this is the wooden coffin yeah it's carved they are very beautiful yes it is beautiful hand carved I imagine exactly so Torajan people consider that him or have still sick so that's why we call it to'makula means sick person oh so she's she's not considered deceased yet she's considered sick still exactly so when the funeral started so we can see that him or her is dead totally okay and the soul start making the journey to Puya yeah okay ah so during the inside the house before they move to here so here when the place of the to'makula yeah okay so when they moved to here they already dead totally because they start the funeral a few days to'makula is the dead person before the funeral, considered a sick persona. they're only sick until yeah since they are not die yet there yet they are they are like they are the father of the lady yeah yeah it's better he's just sick right almost one half one uh one year four months so we'll be there next year 11 I mean August or no August July and then they have a plan for start for funeral and that's when they're considered dead yeah when they when they are beginning yeah and they're slaughtering in the beginning when they already the beginning and the slaughtering one buffalo that's when they're really dead okay because you know they the buffalo is... one buffalo is slaughtered that means the riding they're
going to they're going to Puya to open the door the rocks out from the graveyard here the last one. TaoTao representing of the dead person the picture of the dead person the photos of the dead person yeah oh even the photo is considered a taotao. no no only the the statues yeah this is all the rock that they dug out yeah right there yes and then you see the how how this is they take time yeah to dig this one ma'an um madame Joanna I mean sometimes a year and the coffins would go on be loaded onto these yeah lying here and then uh people use a bamboo for carrying here would they go no not in there yeah people they rolled their bamboo yeah and they made the rope yeah and then the people carrying around 20 or 30 people carrying okay so this will be heavy yeah same thing huh but that's more like a a tomb yeah yeah it's more like a tomb oh yeah and then on this side as well I'm also going to caution you here we're going to see another part of Torajan culture where we're visiting a Torajan graveyard and there will be human bones visible so if those kinds of things disturb you you should stop watching no touch. no touch. this is the side by the cave by the cave of lombok and then uh now
we are looking in the human beings bones that's we call it erong erong is wooden boxes where the dead body expression to put inside so there are three forms there are three type of the erong so this is what men for the buffalo women for the pig and uh unmarried and unmarried for the boat transport for the boat and some of them are in carving you see the all this carving yeah and some of them uncarved yeah so the difference that you know you see because of the social class oh I see so the people from the first class they are carving and the common and middle are not carved okay yeah that's there so I think I've mentioned in uh past videos that uh we used to live in Madagascar we that we used to live in Africa and the place in Africa we used to live uh is Madagascar in the capital city of Antananarivo or Tana and in Tana there's two uh two tribes the primary tribes that live in Tana mostly the Merina but there's also a tribe called the Betsileo that lived there or nearby as well but anyway I bring this up because the Merina uh they have a ritual called the Famadihana I think it's spelled Famadihana but I've only ever heard it pronounced "famandin" anyway there's a lot of similarities between the Merina funeral ritual and the Torajan funeral ritual not exactly the same just some similarities is all but you know it doesn't take much Googling to see that the people the the Merina and the Betsileo have their origins in Asia specifically Southeast Asia and I'd be really curious because I I have Googled this are there any is there any data connecting uh the Torajan people and the Merina people but it would be interesting to me especially if there's any like anthropology PhD candidate out there that wants to write a thesis I'd love to read your thesis if it if it's about comparative data between the Torajan people of Sulawesi Indonesia and the Merina people of uh Antananarivo Madagascar wow
2023-08-20 00:41
