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