Tag Archives: makassar

Buginese princess: the making of it

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A sufficient amount income for the warias who work in salons, comes actually not from daily hairstyling, but from wedding preparations. Every other week, if not more often, this is the waria who makes the bride and groom pretty and decorates the wedding room. Already at our very first meeting Jaka was thinking that we should do a make-up session, to make a Buginese bride out of me.

When I looked at the photographs of some other brides I had seem before, I thought this is a way to big job we can experiment with. But Jaka told me to relax and give her an hour. And so we did it.

Pardon my narcissism if it looks this way, but I wanted to share the whole process with you. The making of it. The making of a Buginese princess. It took around one hour to cover all my face with powder, attach some fake eye-lashes, paint my forehead, my eyes, my lips, make my hair amazing and dress me up. Jaka could explain every detail of my outfit, some for Allah, some for adat (the local culture).

I felt I was turned into a princess, a Buginese princess, that has to do all the dirty work in the kitchen and elsewhere, but still, she always has to be a beautiful princess and smile. And later when already married, get pregnant, and smile. Just as most of the women in the world, just as we are so often expected.

All photos by Minna Hint

Makassar: pleasantly mad

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Jaka is a chill-out waria in her 40s. She has a quite popular salon in downtown Makassar, where she keeps  herself busy from morning til night. Once I caught him straightening girls’ hair until 2am.

Makassar, Sulawesi

But she always wakes up early in the morning, brings fish from the market, serves the first customers, cooks the fish, she is social with all her friends who constantly come over to hang out in her salon. And it’s always raining in Makassar, so it’s a good spot to wait until another shower is done and they can make a move.

As it was Saturday night, and this is the night when all people in Indonesia take it all with fun, some young even say they go hancur – they go crazy. So Jaka took out her high heels and we went for a rendez-vous in downtown. The city was full of young people, there were crowds of guys with all their crazy motorbikes. Built up and wild, retro machines, and the busy bikers with their blinking motorbikes. There was also a lot of crowd hanging around the waria hot-spot. Jaka knows the girls, but she’s already grown out from nightlife of the youth. She doesn’t bother anymore to go out that often. She has a salon to keep and a boyfriend with whom she feels happy with.

We stayed at her salon for couple of days, and truly enjoyed the company of Jaka.

Jaka and Minna

Makassar: who gets the business, and who don’t

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I had met Jaka already previous time in Makassar. She had a pretty popular salon in downtown, pleasantly busy each day. Eka suggested we can stay at her salon and get to know her better. Eka was her junior.

On the way to Makassar, we met a party of warias around the area. We stopped and had a chat, I took a photo.

But Eka had to hurry, because she had an important meeting in one of the big hotels of the city. Makassar is the capital of Sulawesi, and its huge. There are big roads and colorful neighborhoods, something for everybody, including the rich fucks, as the anarchists would see it. Eka was sitting attentively behind the desk together with couple of other ladies from the village, who are running good in business and have some extras to invest. The hotel had some 20 floors, we all were served expensive fruit cocktails and chocolate cake – rarity in Sulawesi. There was young and smiling man explaining on a fake iPad how the money they give starts to grow. Like a tree. It’s growing. They could all see it in the graphics. The arrow moves up, more money is coming back. Especially when you give in bigger sum.

But how?

They never asked.

Eka has played with investing before – she has got already two cars. “From internet,” as she puts it. Maybe she’s been the lucky first one, or maybe this is the reality of Indonesia? Economic crash has not touched this base here, Indonesia is booming, but it still has a long way to rise. 

Actually I was invited to come over to Makassar to screen “Wariazone”. Professor Halilintar Latief, the largest researcher on bissu on earth, and that’s true, invited people from various background and different religions to see the documentary and have an open discussion on the matter of the waria in Indonesia. Makassar is a well-known hub for warias, although lately they are crying more of the lack of basic economic needs. There is so many people, so many warias and competition is high. Even when you open a salon. It feels unsafe to work on the street. And again I can’t help of seeing the social reality that is behind this situation, that is creating it. This is because of the narrow zone for the waria that is left out there. This is exactly the socially constructed playground the warias are trapped in and which thus also shapes their identity. Zone, zone, wariazone.

Into Indonesian subcultures: the blinking bikers

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During this 40 sweating hours spent on the ferry we met some bikers. The true ones. With all their folklore and codes of communication. It’s a strange world. And sometimes it can take you on a ride.

So we were in that boat. I was trying to keep some fieldwork diaries, but every now and then there was someone peeping inside of the round window of our very basic chamber. Or there was someone stepping inside of the room, thinking that as the staff on board this belongs to their rights. Of course I can step inside of the rooms of my far-away guests, we all want to know them, make friends and make them feel comfortable here.“ The good part of it was that some of them indeed brought us some watermelon. And I was floating in the watermelon sugar again, the pink nice watermelon, even the rats that were sneaking under our bed for the smell of it (and it was a 1-person bed, we were sharing it with Minna our legs and heads together, covering the whole with plastic bottles. – once there was a rat that was running behing the neck of Minna while we were watching some wierd films) turned into creatures with faces and attitude. All this sugar. But I also know that Ibu Maryani, the director of the Koranic school for the transgender in Yogyakarta, once said, that here in Indonesia they insert red ink with needles into the watermelon. (and I couldnt help thinking of breast silicon injection)

And then there were the motorbike guys. They were quit pleasent talking to us, we were having good time for around an hour. And once they heard we were about to head towards Toraja, they offered us a ride. Just because they are the motorbike guys and they do it all the time – they just ride across the country, visiting friends everywhere. And everywhere they go there’s the community of bikers waiting for them, ready to have some fun, some drinks, some riding around and crashing at some friend’s parents. And surely the mother was happy to have guests, and I enjoyed playing with kids. She was greeting us with some rice and delicious fish. Food, apparently is amazing in Sulawesi. And as they said it, they did it. We were riding all through South-Sulawesi, pass the endless rice-fields, through enormous rain, through some coffee on the roadside warung, over the mountains in the dark. We had a stop-over in one of the small towns on the road, where the old friends got drunk in a hotel that one of the biker owns. Next morning we had bunch of other bikers joining us until the next town. From there we had other bikers to join us to the next town. When we had trouble with the motor, the guys made some phone calls and in about ten minutes there were some local bikers to give them a hand. Sometimes we then drove off to some Honda mechanics centre, of course we were all treated by some tea and cakes. Apart from having great food, they also love to eat a lot here.
And so were we floating over the roads, with a row of blinking motorbikes, all covered by club stickers and pads. They had there own sign language, how they would communicate on the roads. And cars seemed to be taking a cautious respectful distance from them.
Later on I even heard from my friend Minna, who had to spend a night with those folks in Makassar, being stuck there in order to extend the visa, that they had a very weird ritual. If you want to join the bikers under the logo of „one heart“ or the Indonesian version, „satu hati“, you have to drink one litre of water straight. Yes, one liter, no less. And water (better leave the drinks out, this is still predominantly Moslem society). Most of the new-comers had to through out before they finished the third quater.
But the test was necessary. It was to test your strenghts. More and more girls are joining the bikers.
Indonesia is colorful of its vibrant sub-cultures, one more weird than the other. But people in general are nice. And I must admit, it is a wonderful feeling to travel on the motorbike across the earth, in sun and rain.

My friend, a biker.