Tag Archives: food

Death around us

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“You have to eat, you can’t go without!” they told us again, and made us sit down again and eat. Whatever it was, we had to eat. “There is so much death around us, if you don’t eat, an accident might happen!”

Toraja, Sulawesi

To believe it or not, but of course I ate. I ate even the strangest food we were sharing, even such that you cannot bite but you just have to swallow the semi-transparent thing down. Having done that, they catch a chicken in the garden. “This is for dinner.” Earlier that day there was a phone call for our mom in the house were we were staying, that her once had passed away. Yeah, the death was certainly around. We had already been to so many funerals, and saw so many lives taken, one more bloody than the other. But there was also something magical in the air, in these mantras, and under this bright-starred night or humid and hot daytime. There was sweat and rain in the air, mud and blood everywhere. So the men are singing their mantras in the language of Toraja, unknown for me, but it definitely sings about eternal things, such as the circle of life and the worlds beyond. The life does not stop here with the moment we have named a death, but there’s so much more life out there. It’s in the trees, in the rocks, in the places untouched by human far away. Puang Matua, the creator is behind all that. There is much more than bare life and death and flesh and blood. There is much more than killing of thousands of animals, that definitely don’t deserve it.

People are often buried in the caves, inside the rock. And there are always guards outside, keeping everything in peace, being there for a reason. This is just beautiful who much the respect and love their ancestors, whose deal actually doesn’t matter much anymore, but they still do it, irrationally, in belief.

Little babies who die when they are still so little, under a year – they are buried inside of the big trees. This tree was so powerful, that it almost knocked me down emotionally. 

Flesh and blood, earth and divine: game of status in Toraja

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It is midsummer. People in many parts of the world, most likely where I am from, eat a lot of meat now. Here’s a story from another meat fest in Toraja, Sulawesi, Indonesia. We drove off on motorbikes up to the mountains to the world, which doesn’t know the price of the respect for their ancestors. This is proud Toraja, above the green hills in Central Sulawesi, where life and death get another meaning.  Rumors that right now there should be the largest ceremonies of the years had reached me already earlier. They said there’s gonna be 500 buffalos sacrifices, not just 5 or 50, but as many as 500 oxen, plus thousands of pigs. After arrival I couldn’t question these numbers. There was three big funerals going on in the area, one more ambitious than the other. Yes, all these hundreds of oxen, plus thousands of pigs are to be killed for the glory off dead, in order to ensure a smooth movement to the next world – to the world of spirits. Here when the body gets quiet by death, it doesn’t actually mean the death in our sense. People can keep the body in their house for about one year or so, treating it almost as if he was still alive.  But when the family doesn’t organize such funeral, the dead will be dangling somewhere around the village, and probably merge into one gang with all the ghosts that make up Indonesian everyday experience. The entire site of the funeral service is slightly hilly because of the piles of the pigs laying down in the mud, in pain of the heat. There’s a team of men around them, one stating loud in the microphone who has brought the pig here, another one is marking the pig with spray color. Again and again there are three-four men entering, a shouting pig on their shoulder, lips already foamy. Again and again some of them move a step away and there’s a knife thrusting into the throat of a pig, followed by intolerable squealing. Blood splashes around, the butcher pushes the vein with his toe. Then someone grabs a flamethrower and burns the pig into crispy pork. The bloody action is passed by a column of beautiful ladies with bleached faces and cherry red lips. I hear the trance-lifting mantras of Toraja. This here is some other world, which has evolved so bizarrely on this island with strange shape somewhere in the mountains. The buffalo-fetish of the community is also looking back to us from the houses of Toraja, shaped as if they were ships and topped with a head of a bull and many horns of sacrificed buffalos hanging over the doorway. The more horns hanging – the higher the social status of the household.

“And who was that woman?” I asked after hearing more about the market price of buffalos.

“The dead? Oh, she was a housewife. “

The next burial is particularly spectacular. There are tens of people with tens of buffalos in the huge square surrounded by thousands of spectators. At the same time, hundreds of men try to push the shell of the corpse to the top floor – in order to be closer to the natural world. Later I hear from kepala adat (cultural head of of the community, in other words, the most important man in region), that these white oxen cost about 350 million rupees each (about 35,000 euros!) There are some 24 of those, in addition to the normal buffalos, which cost around 20-40 million each. “We can estimate that the total financial budget for this ceremony can reach about 40-50 billion rupees. But nevertheless, this amount does not express how much the people of Toraja respect their ancestors, “said the man of importance. Namely, the white bull is especially considered a sacred animal, whose cost can be ten times more expensive than of usual bulls.

Why is that? Mostly the locals justified the high cost, because a white bull is just a rare occurrence. So the owners of the white buffalos stand proudly next to their animal, until it will be killed a couple of days later. I also confirmed, that there is no difference in the flavor of the meat. For this special occasion there are lots of media representatives around and every other visitor reaches out a hand with a smartphone to hit some shots of this bloody action or pose with a bule-buffalo, (or with me, as I’m also a bule – white person- here). Thousands of eyes recognize the sacrifice of the next bull – an arc of blood erupting from the throat cut wide open and the animal staggers between the worlds of the living and the dead for several minutes. Ugly. The dead used to work as a school teacher. She raised up 12 children.

In the next funeral there’s a family of our local friend, whose family automatically became our generous host. Thousands of people have gathered here, so the funeral place is surrounded by kilometers of deadlock. Before the comménce of the fierce bullfight, the men are singing mantras, holding their hands together in a circle. It even creates a certain sense of majesty. “At least once a year we gather together in such a funeral, there’s certainly someone who passes away every year,” says our friend’s cousin. “This time I brought one buffalo. But anyway, oh well, this is such a status game,” she laughed. “Everything here is publicly announced, who brought how many buffalos, all written down!”

After a few days in the funeral in Toraja, where according to the custom, I tried a bit of buffalo meat, I did not want to eat a single bite of meat for several months. The experience of Toraja can be a challenge for a fan of vegetarianism in principle. Though I must admit I was enjoying it in a sense I like blood and human perversion for example in the films of Jodorovsky or the revenge of inBOIL to iDeath in Brautigan’s “In Watermelon Sugar”.

“Wake up! I’ve already eaten twice today!” – Struggles of the everyday village life

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As much as I love Indonesia, as much as I love the local people, it never makes the everyday struggle easier – the struggle that draws on the difference between us and yet again makes our differences attract. A few examples from the village life in South Sulawesi. 

Fieldworks in action (photo by Minna Hint)

Already after few days in the village, I sometimes felt so tired of this star-aura that seemed to run around me, as I was a faraway guest in a place where seldom foreigners get lost. Sometimes I was missing my own space and solitude. I was after all coming from Estonia – claimed to be one of the most individualistic (and empty) country in the world. But here I was constantly surrounded by people that were seemingly more curious of me, than I could be of them.

Apart from being a good tool for public relations for Eka, which I never mind, in every step or another there was someone who asked: “Why don’t you marry a Bugis man?”

Yeah, why don’t I?! Is it really as easy for them as it sounds?

But I ask it other way around. Why? Why is it so important that I would marry a local guy – even their mothers and sisters where constantly proposing me!

Usually they said I would give birth to beautiful children. So here it is again – the cult of the white beauty…

- Number one: it’s my nose, the pointy nose. How many times they touched and squeezed it!

- Number two: it’s my skin that is claimed to be pure and beautiful. As with most parts of Indonesia, here also young girls seem to be obsessed with white. That’s why we see girls on motorbikes, wearing gloves and sweaters in 35C heat!

- Number three: it’s my body, even though I always feel huge like a hopeless elephant next to my local friends.

And I thought I could never explain why I wouldn’t marry an Indonesian (well I might as well, but it just doesn’t work this way). Until the sister of Eka got to know that I actually have only one brother, and that’s it. So she seemed to satisfy with the conclusion, that of course I couldn’t marry a Bugis, because as I’m the only daughter in the family, then my mother would be so unhappy not to see me nor the grandchildren. This news was spreading around the circles by the evening, and believe it or not, but it helped cooling things down.

 

Escape from over-eating – our love for pomelos (photo by Minna Hint)

Another daily struggle came with food. Firstly, the food in Sulawesi is absolutely gorgeous, so it made a good escape from Jawa for a change. But when all that delicious fish and cookies and cakes and coconut sauce and oily salads come with every visit and every step, as it does in Sulawesi, my feeling of being an awkward elephant didn’t get any better.

“Here we eat in order to live, and we live in order to eat,” tells Eka. “I’m already big, but I’m eating more and more, we have to eat, come, sit down and eat!”

For many mornings when Eka’s sister was waking me up, she was stating that she has eaten already twice today, aren’t we already hungry!

It took us some days until we made them believe, that bule likes fruit. And these pomelos here are terrific indeed.

Commodities you can’t enjoy in the West

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Somehow here’s an understanding as if West was the best place to live. I don’t know where this myths originates from, because my life has never been as spoilt as I have here in Indonesia, with a scholarship and just a bit more.

Somehow I ended up renting two homes. One just close to the university campus for travellers, friends or myself to crash in. The other one in the centre of the town, not more than a 5-minute walk away from the main street – a 2 bedroom private house with a rent of 320 euros a year. Yes, a year.

While in the campus room, I reach for my phone from bed each morning to send a text message to a fruit lady. Fifteen minutes later my freshly pressed mango, strawberry-tomato, avocado-chocolate or banana juice is waiting to be picked up.

The other house has no fruits around, instead a morning iced coffee rests on the living room table, delivered by the neighboring stall. Together with service – 17 cents.

When hungry, all you need to do, is to keep your ears open, as once in a while some music passes the house. Every Indonesian knows by heart what’s the rhythm of the barrow selling ice cream, soup or a bit more decent meal. When you hear, let’s say, Lambada, you better get up and stop the man with the barrow to enjoy a delicious dessert – no need to even leave the house.

Cooking at home in everyday life is as exclusive as a multi-course night at a restaurant in Estonia. Of course local street restaurants aren’t fancy places where one should walk in wearing high heels, on the contrary these are cozy little huts with no queues, homemade food and casual forms of etiquette. Menus are hanging on the streets, so just ride through the town and stop at a preferred rice with coconut sauce.

I also have my own laundry lady who washes my clothes, irons them, folds them neatly and brings them back to me. I study djembe under personal supervision and could afford a massage a few times a week. Things that were so far out of reach in my hometown.

To keep the post in balance I need to tell that here are things you can’t afford that often. A 2 euro bottle of beer and a 25 euro bottle of wine bring along a long moment of thought before I consider opening my wallet.

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If Indonesian eating culture worked in Estonia …

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… then life would be easier for both eaters and for those who have undercover cooking skills. Indonesian eating system with a few adaptions in Estonia would look like that:

In every block of flats there would be a few pensionaires, housewives, unemployed men, or simply a few of those who’d like to make some extra money, who’d then cook different dishes at home. The number of variations isn’t important, it’s important to attract your customers with one or two specialities which quality changes. None of the men or women needs to be universal and thus the hobby chef doesn’t worry about each meal time, instead his or her place would be open according to the character of the food, should it then be breakfast, lunch or dinner. For a customer it’s easy – menus are always the same, depending on your mood you simply have to choose a corresponding door.

Besides the convenience and easy access it’s the price of the home cooked food that’s an advantage. As the cook doesn’t pay the rent, doesn’t hire either waiters nor cleaners, and raw material is bought from the market and in huge quantities, the price of the food is exactly the same while compared to the prices at the market, plus a little extra for service. It’s enough for a pensionaire to have a comfortable life, but not too much for a customer who comes for the luxury for every other day.

It’s precisely known that Grandmother Linda from flat 39 offers buckwheat porridge with sour cream, groat porridge with jam and cream of wheat with butter. As the dishes are more like of the morning kind then you can visit Linda till noon. When it’s time to have lunch it’s Ats from the next corridor you need to visit because supposedly it’s him who makes the best Spaghetti Bolognese, baked potatoes with sausages and macaroni with minced meat in town. Vegetarians go to room 104 because Mother Epp is boiling different vegetables. Ats is also open at night, but after the evening news his rival Grandfather Heigo opens his doors and starts frying and cooking the fish he has caught or bought from the market during the day. If you call Grandmother Ella a few hours in advance you can order a cake or muffins.

The system would work simply. All hobby chefs cook three or four dishes in huge amounts and keep the pots constantly warm, so when a customer arrives he’d have a plate of warm meal ready. Your living room or any other suitable room should have a few chairs or carpets on the floor so that the customers could sit and fill their bellies with your delicious food. There’s nothing fancy nor extra reservedness, there’s only a plate with home made food to serve its purpose.

It would be convenient for everyone. Parents wouldn’t have to wake up early to cook warm meal, instead they’d send their child a floor upwards or two floors townwards to have an omelet. Maybe a few raws, on the topic of who’s turn it is to cook, could be avoided, because it wouldn’t have to be one of the two people living together but a neighbour. It would be especially convenient for students who miss homemade food but whose daily schedules are too tight to squeeze the kitchen hustle in.

Although good word would spread from mouth to mouth and soon the home chefs would be visited by people living a bit further, they should also put up a little sign. Thus the windows or front doors of Kalamaja would have signs like that “Fried potatoes with minced meat, pea soup, black pudding”. There would be no prices because everyone would know that a coffee wouldn’t cost more than half a euro and a potato dish would be about a euro. So, when leaving home you wouldn’t have to know where to eat, it’d be enough to go and look at the signs.

Besides the home chefs there would also be chefs on the go. A lady in a little car would drive around a block, she’d have ready made food (which is always the same) with her and play a certain kind of music. Lasagne lady would drive around with Pink Floyd melodies in the background, slowly from one hose to another until a window opens and someone shouts: “2 lasagnas!”. Before the one who shouted reaches downstairs, the lady has already put two lasagnas on a plate which you can return the next day. Since the time slots are more or less the same, you should keep in mind that if you want a beet salad you should keep your windows open around 4 or 5 in the evening, cheese rolls by early in the morning. It’d be also possible that you send an extra friendly chef on wheels a text message saying he’d put a package at your door and that you’d pay some day in the future.

If every breath you take wasn’t regulated in Europe then maybe poor wolves would have a full belly and the sheep would be happier as well.

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A puncture and the tastiest pastry in town

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The tastiest pastry of Purukcahu

So, our journey up into the deep heart of Kalimantan was going in a bit dark mood. The road to the depression of deforestation was full of pot holes with a diameter of half a meter and it was scattered with the unbearably squeaky voice of the truck driver. The forest had ended. Although our mood was brushed up a bit by a swim in a picturesque lake by the road, its romance disappeared into the grouse font of a chips package floating on the mirror-like water.
But here, in the tropics, the question was already realistic – are you sure there are no crocodiles in this lake? We couldn’t believe him until he plopped into the lake.
Purukcahu was supposed to be our last stop before heading towards the villages of Central Kalimantan, where we among other things expected to see the 40-day bone purification ceremony of the ancestors of the dayaks.
The city welcomed us with an evil grin of capitalism – comical industrial buildings and flat eateries corresponding the fat wallets of the countrymen, sand piles between them. We wanted to escape from there as soon as possible.
We’d somehow convinced the squeaky truck driver take us to the nearest village by the car of his boss. All kinds of miscommunications played with our nerves (the boss didn’t understand what we wanted; the boss begged money for the drive; the boss wanted to come with us; the truck driver decided that he didn’t want to eat; the truck driver wanted to sleep for an hour; the truck driver couldn’t sleep; maybe the truck driver wants some money; the truck driver didn’t know what his boss wanted; actually the boss didn’t care).  When we were finally rushing out from the city that smelt of money we saw the green mountains and were heading towards the sunset in the wished direction, we could finally breath calmly.
And when we were driving up the hill the light of the setting sun blinded the eyes of the driver, there was a big bang and the car crashed and went off the bumpy road. We’d hit a big rock. We had a puncture.

Then the evening praying songs from the mosques in the city sent the word of the god and a wonderful rainbow which then became our only reality. We won’t move from there today. Chapfallen we looked at the pitiful silhouette of the industrial centre of the jungle.
Having a lot of trouble the truck driver managed to change the tyre of his boss’ car. By now there was kind of a social responsibility he had for us. So he was trying to talk two white women into a hostel. But since this group doesn’t really glow with compromises that have to do with money, he didn’t succeed. We thanked him, left the car and went into the drizzly night. Sometimes it’s better when you’re alone with your troubles, at least this way you can sense the borders of responsibility and accomplishments.

The more traditional area of Purukachu wasn’t as bad as the first impression we’d got from the suburbal area. And what could be better than directing your weaknesses into gourmet. So Berit and I found ourselves in front of a pastry stand. We were almost convinced that they had the best pastry in town. 15 minutes later we understood that the saying of love raising from one’s stomach isn’t simply a saying – if ibu bakes cakes so good he also has to have a good heart. The heart put us up for the night into her room and offered us some more tasty pastry in the morning, some of those were bright green, some of these were like cities.