Pantai Losari and the pete-petes

Well, here we are, 3 days out from packing our bags and heading back to Melbourne. After nearly 9 months the Sulawesi project is drawing to a close. So just time for one last post. Packing our bags will actually be some feat, because we've accumulated a lot of stuff in our time here, including a computer monitor and keyboard we brought over last time! See if we can get that into the hand luggage.

Apart from our trip to Kalimantan to see the orangutans and back to Australia to see our closer relations, we've been happily ensconced here in room 1119 at the Fave Hotel, subjected to nightly sunsets over the Makassar Strait through our massive picture windows. Hard life, but someone’s got to keep the hotel industry afloat. Photos don’t do it justice, but here’s one anyway.

Tough gig, I know.

In fact, we've been lucky (or profligate) enough to have two connected rooms, so as well as the bedroom with the panorama we also have a kitchen/living area with a sink and microwave, which we've used to keep up a steady supply of 2-minute noodles with veggies and tofu – a semblance of normal life. It also means we can have separate desks that are more than a metre apart: Sue to carry on her arcane statistical jiggery pokery with the data we collected during our first 4 months, and me to ... what is it exactly I've been doing?

Well, I have started jogging again, along with the rest of Makassar, at Karebosi sportsground. You have to go before 7 a.m. or it's too hot.

"Jogging" here means walking in sportswear. You'll be pleased to know I have been doing it properly.

I've also been doing some volunteer English teaching at a nearby private English language school, ELC Education, usually one 1.5 hour class a day. It’s about 500 metres from the hotel but I do like cycling, so ... I take a becak. 

Another tough gig ... for the other guy.

Somehow in the 6 weeks or so that I've taken classes there, I haven't taught the same class twice. I estimate I've seen around 300 different students. The final class was a group of about 20 Papuan students who have scholarships to go to university in the USA starting next year. They are here in Makassar to hone their English skills before they sit a final IELTs test that will determine if they can go. They are a wonderfully positive bunch of youngsters.

My finishing up at the school coincided with their arrival in Makassar, so a combined welcome/farewell party was held last Friday at which I was presented with a trophy and a huge tiramisu cake, and the Papuan students performed a couple of songs with great gusto.

Steve's abridged history of Australia, including diagram showing early seafaring contact between Buginese sailors and Top End Aborigines, plus boomerang-throwing technique.

The Papuan students

When I look back at my first blog post from February, I was joking about putting the mysterious town of Polewali 'on the map'. As it turns out, I don’t expect Polewali will experience a huge upswing in tourism due to my blog posts, which were more a 'warts and all' kind of expose. What I have turned my attention to is putting Makassar on the map; or more correctly, putting the map on Makassar.

Living in Melbourne you get the sense that whatever you want to know about the place – which restaurants are hot, what’s on at the rooftop cinema, how to get from Footscray to Doncaster by bus – it’s all just a Google search away. You can be confident the information's out there somewhere, probably in an interactive user-friendly format. It’s been interesting to be somewhere where that isn't the case. Makassar doesn't exist in cyberspace, except in random bits and pieces.

One of the first ways I bumped up against this was when I started using the tiny micro-buses called pete-pete that are Makassar’s only form of public transport. The vehicles themselves are Suzuki "Carry" vans fitted out with rudimentary bench seats for up to 10 passengers, plus the seat next to the driver. Many of them are seriously beaten up but any discomfort is usually offset by a sound system with sub-woofers playing dangdut.

The humble pete-pete (route E: Makassar Mall to Panakkukang)

The not-so-humble sound system

You see them darting around everywhere, and they have route numbers and destinations printed on their windscreens, but being a Western rationalist kind of person, I wanted a map so I could see all the routes. Not an unreasonable expectation you might think. But after asking at town hall, and being sent on a bit of a wild goose chase, it became evident that there weren't any maps. Who would need maps? The locals all know where they go.

That turned out to be the thrown-down gauntlet I needed. 

I spent the next couple of weeks travelling the pete-petes, tracking the routes on my phone, comparing them with some lists I had managed to find on a blog site, then combining it all into some new Google’s maps. I got to about 10 and figured I’d probably covered most of the main routes that other tourists would want to travel.

Here's one I prepared earlier. You click the little white box to see the routes.



Getting a bit carried away with the whole mapping thing, I created another one showing all the places we've eaten, shopped, visited, etc. The kind of information we've found out by being here and being shown around by locals and expats, and that other travellers might find useful too.

Great, so I now had a bunch of maps. But to be of any use to anyone, they needed to be findable, and to be findable they really needed to be part of a website, and to be part of a website, I would need to ... make a website. Which was how I ended up on Weebly, a kind of "Make Your Own Instant Website for Dummies". About 3 weeks later, it's just about done. (Heck, I needed a project to keep me busy.) It still has a few gaps to be filled, and I'm sure you'll spot typos on the first page, but here in all its glory is [drum roll, please] ...

Survivor's Guide: Makassar. 

(aka The Other Sulawesi Project)

So tell all your friends, click on it a lot and help me push it up the Google charts to fame and fortune.

OK, so that's done.

This week we're also saying goodbye to the small group of people we know here in Makassar. One of them is a young man called Azimi, who we met maybe 2 months ago on one of our nightly walks at Pantai Losari. Azimi is a young Hazara man from Afghanistan who has worked, indirectly, for the international forces there. Those two things make him a target for retribution by the Taliban, which is why he left Afghanistan and made his way here. He has been in Indonesia for a year now and is still waiting for his case to be assessed by the UN to determine whether he is a genuine refugee. He's quietly confident that will occur, and also that his chances of being accepted into Australia are fairly good. But he may have to be here for another 12 months or more, waiting.

I can't help but be struck by the difference between his treatment here and the treatment of asylum seekers who made their way to Australia. Here Azimi is living in a basic hotel along with a group of other Afghani men, supported by the International Office for Migration. He's not able to work but he is able to move around freely in the community. He's not vilified by the locals, in fact he has made some Indonesian friends and is learning the language, as well as running English lessons for his compatriots. He is not locked up like a criminal. And this is in a country that is still struggling to lift 28 million of its own people out of poverty. Meanwhile asylum seekers in Australia are suffering extreme hardship with no prospects of resettlement.

Over the past couple of months, Azimi and I have had lots of walks around Makassar and adventures trying to find our way by pete-pete. I really hope I can take a Melbourne tram ride with him sometime soon.

Me and Azimi, out on a pete-pete adventure. We didn't plan the matching shirts, honest.

And that's just about a wrap. It's been a crazy 9 months, a jump into the unknown. We've seen a lot of South Sulawesi and a lot of cocoa trees and just when that started to wear thin we stayed put in Makassar long enough for me to rediscover my inner editor and try to bring order to chaos. So, if your partner comes home one night and says they've taken on a project in some place you've never heard of ... I say go for it. If they don't, suggest a trip to Polewali anyway. Maybe you can put it on the map!

Am I sad to be leaving? Yes, I am. Despite the heat and the noise and the lack of footpaths and our slightly surreal hotel-based daily life, I must have put a few roots down into Makassan soil and I will feel the wrench as our plane takes off on Thursday evening. I'll miss the people we've shared our time here with, and the smiling "Selamat pagi"s as I step out of the lift each morning.

Bye Makassar, South Sulawesi. Sampai jumpa lagi!

Maros and Sengkang

Well, it looks as though I have committed the cardinal sin of bloggers, which is failing to blog for over a month, and for that I beg your forbearance. Or, more poetically, “Mohon maaf lahir dan batin” (“Please forgive me physically and spiritually”), which is the standard greeting on the special day of Idul Fitri that marks the end of Ramadan, and which took place a few days ago, on 28 July.

In my defence, we have been bloody busy, both with work and with some trips with visitors, and have also squeezed in another trip back to Oz for a 21st and a 60th birthday. On the way back on the plane, Sue did some back-of-the-envelope calculations of the number of times we have moved since arriving in Sulawesi in mid-February. Not counting trips home, we have moved 49 times, with an average stay of 2.5 days. No wonder we are looking forward to staying in one place for a few months!

In the last month, we have been lucky enough to make two similar trips with different groups of guests, through the central part of South Sulawesi and up to Tana Toraja, land of the Torajan ethnic group. Having driven through Tana Toraja several times as a short-cut between fieldwork sites, we were keen to go back there with a bit more time on our hands and explore the Torajan landscape and culture first-hand.

By way of a well-deserved advertisement, we organised both tours, including driver, local guides and accommodation, through a man known as ‘Dodo the Penman’, who has become a well-known character in the world of Sulawesi tourism, and he handled everything brilliantly—highly recommended if you should be looking for a tour guide/organiser in Sulawesi. Our driver for both trips, Bayu, speaks very good English and was able to explain a lot about the places we visited.  

Here are some of the highlights, combining the two trips.

Maros

Maros is the district (kebupaten) immediately to the north of Makassar, and is set amongst a dramatic scenery of karst (limestone) formations that rise almost vertically out of the flat coastal plains. It is home to Bantimurung, which includes the well-known waterfall playground and once kingdom of the butterflies (see my previous post), but also a large area of national park and some beautiful, secluded farming villages. On our most recent trip we took a short boat ride up a narrow river that wound through mangroves and palms, arriving after about 20 minutes in the small village (kampung) of Berua.

Setting out: our guide, Dodo (second left), and guests Wayne and Chris

Yours truly looking alarmingly blissed out as we journey upriver. Note fashionable UV-protective arm-wear!

A short walk across the rice fields took us to a local Buginese farmhouse where we were revived with tea, coffee and pisang goreng (fried banana). For us westerners, the view from the veranda looked idyllic, with about a dozen other houses scattered across the flat plain of rice fields, surrounded by steep limestone outcrops and the river. For the locals, the view of the rice paddies probably just looks like hard work!

View across the valley of Kampung Berua (photo by Wayne)

Reclining woman with pisang goreng

Back on the road, we passed through the national park on our way north. A track off to the right led to a clearing where, a few weeks before, we had stood and watched as a local forestry worker had called a group of black macaques out of the forest and proceeded to feed them with corn. The monkeys had barely paid us any attention as they fossicked in the dirt for kernels of corn, then sat around grooming each other and playing. They are wild, but obviously habituated to human contact, and while it was a very special experience for us, I did find myself wondering about the negative effects on the monkeys should this become a more popular tourist activity.

Sengkang

Our first overnight stop was the town of Sengkang, on the edge of Lake Tempe. The lake is a vast, shallow inland waterway that has traditionally been a major producer of fish. Villages built on stilts circle the edges of the lake, and floating villages move from place to place, following the best fishing.

These days, the lake is facing problems from sedimentation, with an estimated 50,000 tons of silt flowing into the lake each year. Experts blame this on upstream deforestation, however it could also be caused by a worrying trend that we have witnessed throughout South Sulawesi: ‘mining’ of river rocks. As you cross many of the wide rivers here it’s a common sight to see trucks parked on the river’s edge loading up with river rocks, which are used in all sorts of construction including, ironically, building channels to carry the run-off on steep mountain roads, to prevent erosion! The removal of the rocks from the riverbed could be causing just that same problem.

Read more.

In the morning, we headed out onto the lake in motorised long boats, first passing the permanent settlements on stilts, then heading out onto the lake proper, which is dotted with little fishing shacks and huge areas of water hyacinth. One method of fish farming involves making a fence of bamboo around a large clump of water hyacinth, where the fish then breed. Over time the circular fence is gradually tightened and eventually the water hyacinth is removed to leave a captive pool of fish. Elsewhere, the fishermen use huge nets suspended on arms like upside-down umbrellas, which they lower into the water, leave for a while, and then raise again. Most of the fisherman work for a boss/investor who has bought the fishing rights to a part of the lake.

Permanent lakeside village, Lake Tempe

Yes, of course the boat drivers take you through the middle!

We stopped for refreshments (more coffee and pisang goreng) on a floating house, built on a raft of bamboo poles and extremely stable. Chickens roamed around on the deck, seemingly unperturbed at being water-borne.

Floating house, Lake Tempe

Chickens unperturbed at being afloat. 

Inside the floating house (photo by Wayne)

Wayne with the day's catch

"Gengsi dong" translates roughly as "Prestigious, yeah?"

The area around Sengkang is also a centre for silk weaving, and on our first trip to the area we had stopped by a weaving workshop to see how it was done and, of course, buy some samples. See the video here. I cannot imagine doing this for 10 minutes, let alone all day, 5 days a week.

Traditional woven silk fabrics from Sengkang are being picked up by groovy young designers in Jakarta.

Losari Silk, Sengkang

From there, it was back in the car for the 5-hour trip to Tana Toraja … stay tuned.

© 2014 Steve Dobney

Take 2 (or is it 3?)

We are currently back in Makassar resting up at the Fave Hotel after another quick road trip taking in the usual destinations, where once again we stooped and stumbled our way through cocoa orchards, Sue diagnosing the leaves for disease (which she can now do in a matter of seconds) and me tapping the stats into our trusty iPad, which has made the whole process much more doable. (The thought of doing it all with pen and paper and transcribing it at the end of the day onto the laptop makes me shudder.)

Along the way we have covered many kilometres on the Trans-Sulawesii Highway and its offshoots, and made it as far north as the bottom end of Lake Poso in Central Sulawesi.

This time around we did not have the luxury of a 'company car', so did the first leg of the trip, from Makassar to the Mars research station in Tarengge, by overnight bus, choosing the optimistically named Kharisma bus lines. I was all set with my technology to help get me through the night, but found that the rental movie that had taken me days to download onto the iPad due to dodgy internet connections had already expired. The backup was the trusty old iPod mini with a load of songs on board — streaming's not something you can really count on here in Sulawesi.

All in all the 12 hour bus ride wasn't too bad, once we actually got going, but the bus was apt to stop at random points to pick up people, even within a few kilometres of the depot. Try doing that in Australia.

Seats on the Kharisma bus are business class!

Most towns of any size here in South Sulawesi have at least one statue of note. As you enter the town of Masamba, an hour before Tarengge, you are met with what looks like a tribute to the NRL but is actually acknowledgement of the region's main cash crop: cocoa ... the Big Pod as it would be called in Oz.

Tarengge's own statue has more of a general welcoming message for folks who are arriving ...

... but less so for those leaving town.

A huge advantage of the Tarengge site for us are the facilities and generous people of the Mars Cocoa Development Centre. This impressive research station has plantings of 45,000 cocoa trees all for research rather than commercial purposes. Here they monitor which are the best varieties in terms of yield and disease resistance, as well as a host of other factors such as plant management regimens and even planting distances.

They also have an air-conditioned office and a canteen where we have been fed and watered numerous times 'on the house'. They even delivered some morning tea and umbrellas to us in the field one morning as we copped a unusual shower of rain. Legends.

As well as studying some of the trees in the Mars plantation, we have also been monitoring another small planting about 2 km down the road in a little village called Cendana Hijau. We've now spent 4 or 5 afternoons in this plantation, and the nicest part is the walk back to Mars as the late afternoon cools off. The locals are mostly outside sitting around, the young ones circling on bikes, and the sight of a couple of bule (Westerners) walking (actually on foot!) seems to make their day.

Our travels have included most available modes of transport, except the horse and cart, which is still in use by the Mandar folks around Polewali. Sometimes the easiest and cheapest option is the pete-pete (petay-petay), tiny minibuses that travel mostly fixed routes but stop on demand, taking as many as they can cram in, the standard fee usually being around 0.30 cents.

There are many unnerving moments travelling on Sulawesi's chaotic roads, not the least of which are when streams of scooters and cars sail gaily through a red light. I asked Anwar, our driver, about this once, and in essence his reply was that: "conditions apply, read the small print", i.e. the little signs below the traffic lights. In this case, "Left turn must obey the light" ...

In this case, "Straight ahead can continue".

The red arrow would be a big breakthrough here, I'm thinking. Just one more reason why I'm happy to leave the driving to others.

Back in Makassar we are staying at the modern, comfortable and value-for-money Fave Hotel, well located in the Kawasan Kuliner (culinary district). It's only downside is that "fave" is not a natural homophone in Indonesian, so many taxi drivers will not understand it pronounced this way. Instead, you need to experiment with variations like "Farfay", "Parpay", "Parfay" etc. until you achieve recognition.

Over the road is one of the most popular eating spots for locals, Lae Lae.  The decor is no-frills but their house specialities of barbecued fish and other seafood are excellent.

We are also just 5 minutes walk from Pantai Losari (Losari Beach), Makassar's town square and civic heart. The kilometre-long waterfront promenade is populated at most times of the day and night. Sunset photographs against the giant place names are especially popular.

Yesterday a group called Forum Mahasiswa Pinggiran (Forum for Marginalised Students) held a Clean Up Losari Beach rally, venturing out in rubber duckies to scoop up some of the countless plastic bags, bottles and other rubbish that are the main downside of the waterfront. Rubbish is a problem all over Makassar, but it was great see a local group of students trying to do something about it.

Today, Sunday, was market day at Losari Beach and, from 7 a.m., time for the biggest community aerobics session you've ever seen. And yes, Sue and I did shake our booty for 10 minutes or so, until it all just got too sweaty. And that's without the jilbab. Enjoy!

Did you know?

The northern coast of Australia was once part of the Gowan empire. They don't teach you that at school.

Map in the Balla' Lompoa Museum (former residence of  Sultan Hasanuddin), just outside Makassar, showing the reach of the Gowa Empire in the 17th Century.

Rough translation: MAP: The Gowa Kingdom and regions that recognised his authority up to the year 1660-1659. The Sultan of Gowa  was recognised as the protector of Muslims in Maluku.

© 2014 Steve Dobney

On the road again

The last 3 weeks have seen the intrepid Sulawesi team embark on another whirlwind tour of the cocoa sites to complete round 1 of the data collection for the cocoa project. This visit has been sandwiched between two important family events requiring trips back to Melbourne: Miles turning 21 and Rosie moving out of home for her first proper job, in Sydney.

Here’s a map of where our travels have taken us since touching down again in Makassar at the end of March.

Wotu, in the northeast, is the closest place Google Maps will recognise to the village of Tarengge, where the Mars research plantation is located. On the northwest coast “Jalan Ahmad Yani” is actually the proper location of Majene, which Google places about 100 km further north. This problem stems from the fact that cities and towns often have the same names as the districts (kecamatan) they lie within. For Victorians, it's like having a town called Gippsland located in Gippsland. It’s something that has caused us a fair bit of confusion when we've asked our drivers "How far to X?", and they reply "Oh, we're already in X".

Returning to familiar places, reconnecting with familiar people, feeling my Indonesian coming more easily — all these things have helped to make this trip more relaxed, despite the business-like pace we have set. Sulawesi is feeling a lot more doable!

Thanks to the cocoa project, we had the services of their driver Anwar for the first part of the trip, so took the opportunity to do a little bit of sightseeing along the way. From Makassar we headed north via Bantimurung National Park, which is famous for a formidable waterfall, limestone caves and butterflies. British naturalist Alfred Wallace spent time in the area, apparently referring to it as “Kingdom of the butterflies”. Unfortunately, most of the beautifully coloured butterflies that you now see in the park are dead under glass, for sale to tourists. Apparently there is a breeding program to try to reintroduce some of the lost species.

On a brighter note, the river is a great place to cool down on a hot day. The day we visited there were lots of teenagers hanging out — young boys testing their bravado under the cascade, girls tubing in the quieter lower reaches — and families with young kids having picnics.

Downstream

Sue and young dudes testing their bravado at Bantimurung.

Here, as elsewhere, we are instant celebrities and pose for numerous photos. "Satu lagi!" ("One more!") is the usual request, as personnel and line-ups change. It's hard to believe that these young people could get any Facebook "likes" for posting photos with a couple of grey-haired Aussies, but who knows ...

We stopped overnight in Palopo, where we opted for the $17 a night Hotel Risma over the $45 a night Platinum. An interesting feature of the Risma is that the rooms have no windows to the outside; they all open off a central lounge, so the view is of other guests smoking. Also, like a couple of other ‘budget’ places we have stayed, the beds come with a fitted sheet and a blanket. Having been caught out before, we now carry our own top sheet which is usually all that’s needed.

In Tarengge we caught up with some of the Mars people we met on our February trip. Sue and I spend three days gathering data on the Mars trial plantation and a nearby farm, rain clouds helping to keep it cooler one day but the other days still ridiculously hot and humid by 11 am. Often we seem to be the only ones out in the sun (mad dogs and Australians …). 

There was a slightly sickening moment when we discovered that some of the special botanists’ tagging tape we had used to tag affected branches on the cocoa trees had been eaten by insects and was almost falling off, so we had to improvise backup tags to try to ensure there will still be something there when we come back in June!

Pod examination at Mars, Tarengge

Leaving Tarengge we detoured off the main road to try to find the coastline. A few kilometres down the road we come to a small fishing village where a group of women are untangling seaweed from the nets used to harvest it, to be used to make agar agar they told us. We are at the top of the Bay of Bone, somewhere as far off my mental world map as I can imagine. The sand is black and the water is the temperature of a bath.

Standing on the top of the bay ... of Bone

Our next destination was Pinrang and Anwar told us the quickest route was via Rantepao in Tana Toraja, so once again we got a tantalising taste of Sulawesi’s most famous region in passing. This time we stopped for more than coffee, though. Anwar took us to the village of Ke’te Kesu’, which has become a tourist park, so I’m unsure whether people still live there or not. Regardless, there are a series of large impressive family tombs ... and more.

The village of Ke’te Kesu’

As we climbed the steps set into the face of the limestone cliff we passed cave tombs and disintegrating coffins spilling out crazy jumbles of bleached bones and skulls. Above our heads were other coffins held by beams set into the cliff face, in various states of dilapidation. Occasionally, skulls and bones must literally fall out of the sky.

Crumbling coffins, boxes of bones

For people who put such a high cultural emphasis on farewelling the dead in elaborate and expensive funeral ceremonies, Torajans seem to have a strange indifference for their remains beyond the grave. Obviously, there’s a lot more to be learnt about this, and I’m looking forward to spending some time doing that and trekking in these mountains later in the year.

In Pinrang we once again stayed at the crazily Bollywood-style Permata Hotel. Anwar left us there to head back to Makassar, but by now we were starting to get the hang of arranging transport in Sulawesi: basically, stand around by the side of the road and you'll be offered a ride. In this case, the hotel owner made a phone call that provided us with two guys who became our ojeks (motorbike taxis) for the next few days. They in turn knew another guy with a car who provided the transport for the next leg — back to Polewali.

The over-the-top Permata Hotel in Pinrang. BYO sheet and sunglasses.

Having written before about the joys and sorrows of Polewali (see Postcards from Polewali #1 and 2), I won’t go into too much detail this time, except to say:

• Yes, we stayed at the Ratih Hotel again. The idea of staying out in the village of Beluak is still attractive, but we were working to a tight schedule and the lure of air-con, a pool and wi-fi was too strong. [Does that sound weak and pathetic?]
• Village life did seem as charming as ever. We spent a very pleasant couple of days traipsing around Pak Syukur’s cocoa farm — essentially his backyard — drinking coffee with him and his wife, and being dinked to and from town by his sons Aswal and Iqbal.

With one more cocoa location to visit, about 30 km further up the highway at Sumarrang, we decided to shift our base from Polewali (not surprised?) and push on to Majene, which would be new territory for us, with only a 25 km trip back to Sumarang. We had heard good things about Majene, including the tantalising fact that there is a beach with white sand. It turned out to be a great decision (stay tuned for "Postcard from Majene").

Words of the week

Indonesians love a good acronym. Here are a few local ones:

Tator: Tana Toraja

Sulsel: Sulawesi Selatan (South Sulawesi)

Sulbar: Sulawesi Barat (West Sulawesi)
Sulselbar: I'm sure you can guess that one
Calpres: Calon presiden (presidential candidate)

Links

Bantimurung National Park

http://notesofnomads.com/bantimurung-national-park-indonesia/

Ke’te Kesu’, Tana Toraja

http://www.indonesia.travel/en/destination/749/the-ancient-village-of-ke-te-kesu-in-the-heart-of-the-toraja-highlands

Sue's blog
http://3-degrees-south.blogspot.com

© 2014 Steve Dobney