I’ve been feeling sorry for myself the last couple of days – headachy, tired with a touch of diarrhoea and a sore shoulder. I think the food they gave us on the trek had something bad in it. The other people who were with me that day were ill the morning that I left, which was why we didn’t leave together as planned.
Anyway I feel a bit better today. It’s cloudy and not hot. Yesterday evening I dragged myself out to see some Batak folk dances and met up with some friends who were staying in the same place as me back in Bukit Lawang. The dancers, young girls, did not look very enthusiastic and the dances were less than inspiring. They bounced up and down on the spot and wagged their hands at us most of the time. I was not impressed. Then the older men sang some very jolly folk songs. These Batak men have amazingly loud voices for such tiny people, especially considering how much they smoke.Batak
I should explain that the Batak are a group of tribes who all speak the same language – Batak and live in the interior of northern Sumatra. Right up until the nineteenth century there were no roads into the interior and the Batak tribes cultivated stories about their cannibalism, in order to keep people away. They traded in precious resins from rain forest trees, which they carried on their backs along footpaths to the coast. They developed a unique style of architecture and of fabric printing. Today the roads into the interior are pretty bad. A few intrepid tourists make the trip but on the whole the only major invasion into these people’s lives has been the government run palm oil agribusiness, which the Batak protested against, unsuccessfully.
Batak wedding
I was walking along the road this morning, towards breakfast, I thought, when I was hauled off the street and into a church, to attend a wedding. The Batak lady who grabbed me was short and fat and dressed like everyone else in a fancy sarong and a lacy top. She held my hand and drew me into the charch and sat down with me at the back. The church roof was like an aircraft hangar, with metal s truts criss crossing in a supporting network. Under this three completely different art deco chandeliers hung in single file down the centre of the church. A few light bulbs were working in two of them. The bride and groom stood absolutely still side by side at the front of the church, while the women attending the ceremony all sat in the centre of the church, wearing beautiful sarongs and long sleeved lace tops. All the women, including the bride, had enormous buns on the backs of their heads, woven into complicated patterns. Presumably these were false hair pieces, since few Batak women today still have the very long hair that would have been traditional.
After the service my friend led me by the hand to her sister's little restaurant and offered me some chicken and rice, which I refused. She and her family ate the chicken and rice, while I consumed a big bottle of water. Then they opened a durien on the floor and ate the slimy fruit with their hands, licking their fingers enthusiastically. They demolished the durien in about five minutes, then asked me to photograph the spikey skin, which I did. Then I was led back to the wedding reception, which took place under a wide awning in the space between some small houses. Mats had been spread for the women to sit and a band was playing traditional Batak music, much better than the musicians we had heard last night. The dancing, which seemed so lifeless last night, suddenly took on a whole other meaning, the hand gestures signifying welcoming salutations, as the dancers circled round, smiling at each other.
At a certain point the women sitting on the mats got up and put the tall sacks of rice they had brought with them on their heads. Gradually they formed a long snaking line, heading into the dancing crowd. Then they set off, dancing with the rice sacks on their heads, towards people holding large sacks, into which they poured their rice, one by one, until the sacks were full. All this took a very long time. It was two o'clock before they started serving the food, which was, predictably, meat curry and rice. My friend? guardian? left to deposit her rice and didn't come back for some time, so I made my escape. I was very hungry by now.
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