Mamasa To Toraja Part 2: Christian Politics in a Muslim World

Our trekking guide from Mamasa to Tana Toraja was a Mamasan man named Domingus, which he told us is derived from the word Sunday, "Domingo" in Indonesian. The Mamasa region is known for being staunchly Christian, but because Indonesia is a very Muslim country and this is what both Emre and I were used to, we were more drawn to the fact that "Domingus" sounded Latin, not necessarily religious. Our guide however proved to be much more of the latter.

Domingus was as clean cut a guy as you could ever hope to lead you on a trek. He had a big, round, smiling clean-shaven face, perfectly trimmed short hair with a few strands of distinguished grey and he wore brown dress slacks, a long sleeve button shirt and a guide's vest with an official looking emblem on it. Over the next three days he would wear this exact outfit every day and never get so much as a smudge of mud or a wrinkle in it. He never smelled bad or had a hair out of place. Emre and I would come out the Toraja end of the trip covered in stains, feet encrusted with dirt and hair flying in every direction. I have no idea how Domingus stayed so well put together.

On our first night we saw him put up some political posters around the village we were staying in. He explained that he was a major supporter of the Indonesian Christian party and while he was on our trek he was going to spread the word about his favorite candidate to all the small villages who didn't get much news. That emblem on his jacket - ends up it was for his political party, not a guiding organization.

It's interesting to visit Christian areas in Indonesia because the locals immediately assume that white people have the same beliefs as them and therefore, they feel a certain kinship with them. Domingus and all the families we met made this assumption with me. As minorities in their own country (where they often feel discredited and mute) this kinship can be stronger than you might expect. Our group however was a little off kilter because Emre is Turkish and was brought up Muslim. I wasn't brought up anything but because I'm American no one ever bothered to ask me about my spiritual leanings and just assumed I was as Jesus loving as the Mamasans. This suited me fine. Domingus however was immediately a little suspicious of Emre and quietly brought me aside a few times to ask me about how strong a believer she was and if this was going to cause us any problems. Everything ended up happy and peaceful but it was interesting to feel what in Indonesia would be considered a sort of reverse racism. Here I was sticking up for my "Muslim" (Emre is slightly more Muslim than I would call myself Christian) friend in a country where most women wear veils. Emre later confided in me that as a Muslim she often gets preferential treatment in Muslim countries, even getting offered special discounts etc. This was the first time it ever really hit me how different we all get treated in foreign countries because of our perceived religion.

It soon became clear that even though Domingus was a perfectly good guide and knew the area well, his main goal was to spread the word about politics. Luckily, the Mamasans seemed happy to get any news or visitors at all and welcomed the news by promptly posting Domingus's posters all over the place. In fact, they seemed to genuinely respect our guide for bringing them this information. There were a few earnest conversations about the exceptional nature of the Christian candidate but for the most part the villagers were more interested in hosting two exotic white people in their homes than talking politics.

The children had no interest in politics and followed us everywhere. From our first homestay two kids followed us a good half our before the returned home. At the second homestay kids came from all around and hung around trying to keep our full attention from the time we arrived (about 5pm) to nightfall. It was pretty exhausting trying to entertain all those kids after trekking all day uphill through a jungle but they were so sweet and had such good senses of humor that it was well-worth it. Plus we got some great photos and this video:

That night we stayed up till the un-Godly hour of about 10pm in our one room shack drinking sour-sweet palm wine with Domingus, the owner of the house and our horseman (who is worthy of a whole other blog post I'll probably never write). Then to bed on our thick quilts that were supposed to be mattresses but fortunately some warmer blankets this night. We slept well.

Then the next morning it was off again but this time downhill through rice fields, tiny one-room churches on ridges and villages of small wooden shacks on stilts.

Mamasa to Tana Toraja Part 1: The Long and Winding Road

I move around fast when I'm researching for Lonely Planet but every now and then there's something I want to do so badly, I'll slow down and make time for it. The trek between Mamasa and Tana Toraja on the culturally-overloaded island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, was one of those things. There are two ways to get to Tana Toraja from Mamasa: a 13-hour barf-inducing bus ride over pot-holed mountain roads, or a three-day hike through a region of boat-shaped roofs, terraced rice fields, isolated villages and jungle mountains. Walking it seemed like the obvious choice.

Traditional Mamasa houses

Unfortunately for my travel buddy Emre, the long, long trip began straight from the airport. Her flight from Turkey arrived in Makassar, Sulawesi's capital, in the early morning and I hadn't been able to reach her via email to tell her the plan, so at 5am I met her at the gate, explained what we were doing (in hopes she was OK with this which fortunately she was) and took her directly to a bus station. The minibus from Makassar to Mamasa was a rickety, non-air-con tin can of a rumbler that was soon jammed packed with clove cigarette smoking locals, big boxes stuffed with food supplies and two giant television sets. It took over 14 hours to get to Mamasa, and half that time was spent bumping over the last 60km on a rutted dirt road that wound like a coil up into the mountains.

It was dark when we arrived so it wasn't until morning that we awoke to the green-hills and cool temperatures of Mamasa Village where we had a day to explore by motorbike. The traditional roofed houses here are similar to the famous, dramatically arched ones of Tana Toraja but are less curved and shorter so they don't pack such a punch. The biggest difference however between these oft-compared regions is that Mamasa has hardly any tourists. So while popular Torajan villages are swarming with photo-snapping visitors and insistent hawkers, in Mamasa families invite you in for tea and everyone wants to chat. We saw no other foreigners and were welcomed everywhere like royalty. It was magic.

The lunch crew - near Mamasa Village

We spent the night before our trek began in a traditional house where we soon discovered the reality of what we were in for. There are no mattresses in Mamasa, just thick quilts on the floor and a synthetic blanket to cover you. It was so freezing that first night that Emre and I ended up under the "mattress" to keep warm. The floor with or without this light padding felt equally hard. Dinner had been noodle soup with hunks of home-butchered, gamey-tasting pork floating in it, that tasted as if it had been sitting in storage (no refrigeration) a bit too long. Emre puked hers up in the middle of the night. Dogs howled and a mosquito kept buzzing in my ear even though it felt far too cold for them to survive here. Neither Emre or I got more than a few hours of sleep.

Our house the first night

But rest or no rest, we were up by six, breakfasted on sugary tea and omelets, said good bye to our smiling hosts promising we had slept marvelously, and were off to theoretically walk up hill until the end of the day. We had no idea what we were going to encounter and that was just fine.

The Worst Pick-Up Artist in the World

"You travel alone?"

While traveling in Southeast Asia I get this question daily. Some people are curious about why a woman would travel solo, others are concerned about my safety, while an annoying few, like this five-foot two-inch, long-haired fellow in Sulawesi, try (not very subtly) to feel out my potential as a quicky romance or a free-travel-with-benefits sugar mama.

This guy had just checked me into my bungalow on a fairly remote island, and I was obviously by myself, so there was no way to lie. Yup, I was alone and although he was a potential nuisance, I was going to be stuck with him on a small beach for a few days so instead of chucking him off my deck I chatted with him a few minutes about where I'd been and where I was going (these are the questions every Indonesian asks to make polite conversation). Then he left and I un-packed a bit and had a shower.

I settled on my terrace with a book and had read about five words when my new friend was back. This time he was carrying a photo album.

Without asking he grabbed a chair, pulled it over a little too close to mine and looked me in the eye. "I like older women," he told me in a heavy-lidded voice.

I guessed he was about 25 and somehow, during those all those years of life, he hadn't figured out that this was the worst pick up line ever.

"Here is Daniella my Italian girlfriend," he said, opening the photo album, his knee touching mine. The first picture showed a picture of him and a pretty blond woman on a motorbike. "She is older than you I think. Forty-five?"

You might wonder why I hadn't shooed this boy away after his first sentence. First, I think I was muddled about how old he actually thought I was (I was 37) but mostly, he was so bad at wooing women that I just had to see where it was all going. It was a social experiment.

"Ah, yes, I'm younger than that. She's very pretty."

"We meet here, she stay same room you. She like me. Take me to Bali and Lombok. Here we are at Bali guesthouse." He flipped through the pages glancing up at me from time to time with expectant eyes, perhaps to see if any of his moments with Daniella would inspire me to leap out of my chair and make passionate love to him right there on the terrace.

That didn't happen. He closed the album and once again looked into my eyes, his swirling with bedroom thoughts.

"You like me?"

"I'm married, no thanks." Social experiment over.

"Everybody married. Husband not here."

"No, I'm really married and totally not interested."

I was obviously not the first person to tell him this and in the end he was an OK guy, just a young horny one trying to get a free ride. He got up, giving me one last sultry look.

"Ok, I here you change mind and please don't tell my boss."

Over the next few days we hung out and drank beer together with all the other people staying at the guesthouse and I watched him fumble through a few other single women that turned up. Each time I saw him with his photo album I'd tease him and he'd laugh. I half wished Daniella would return, the only woman capable of falling for the worst pick up artist in the world.

Tomohon Sulawesi: Home to the World's Most Macabre Market?

How strong is your stomach? I used to think mine was made of steel but Tomohon's market in Sulawesi Indonesia broke me. It was a horror movie brought to life.

The Minahasans of North Sulawesi are known for cooking up critters from rats to bats and the local joke is that they'll eat anything on four legs apart from the table and chairs. Tomohon's market is a Minahasan center where folks come to from all over the region to buy food and other goods. It wasn't yet in the Lonely Planet and several people had told me I had to see it. I love markets and weird food so I was very excited to go.

The market is conveniently located right next to the mikrolet (mini bus) terminal. Josh and I got off our sweaty little tin can of a bus and wandered through the clothing and toiletry vendors and on to the food starting with piles of fragrant spices, baskets full of chilies and all sorts of bumpy, un-identifiable vegetables. But we browsed these areas quickly, having heard that the highlight was the butcher section.

We smelled the meat before we saw it - a mix of metallic sharpness and old sour stench. We could hear dogs barking, growling and fighting with each other and the humid air quickly became thicker with flies. The pig vendors were the first to greet us, beckoning us to check out their pork legs and heads. Pig heads are of course pretty creepy with their claymation-looking, pale floppy ears and dead eyes, but we'd seen plenty of butchered pigs before living in Tahiti, so they weren't shockingly gross to us. The vendors were friendly, in a hardened merchant sort of way, and we chatted with them asking about what other kind of meat was on sale.

"Too bad you're not here on Saturday," they told us. "That's when the snake butchers come in from the villages. But just over there are the bats and the rats."

Sure enough, across from the pig vendors were tables full of hairless black rats and bats impaled on sticks - their toothy jaws wide open with an expression of dead terror. The butchers behind the tables were preparing more specimens by burning all their hair off with a blowtorch. This gave the animals a smooth charred skin and the whole zone smelled like burning hair. The butchers explained to us that the rats and bats were raw and the hair was removed to make them easier to cook up at home.

"Just slice them up and fry them with onions and chilies," they chided. "And watch out for the little bones."

Meanwhile I noticed that the constant dog barking was coming from small cages near the pig butchers. These wire cages were literally stuffed with some of the mangiest dogs I'd ever seen. They were so tightly packed that the dogs were constantly fighting with each other for every centimeter of space and all of them were as wounded as they were skinny. A few of them looked at us with pleading, sweet canine eyes. It was one of the least humane things I've ever seen; I thought I might cry.

All the heavy smells were starting to make me woozy and I had serious fantasies of freeing the dogs. But to what end? So they could die on the streets? Just then a customer pointed to one of the dogs in the cages so a butcher dragged him out; the dog was yelping and scared but had a slight look of hope in his eyes. With a big wooden bat the butcher whacked the dog two or three times on the back of his head, killing him while all his old cell mates watched silently just inches away.

I looked at Josh.

" I think I'm going to pass out," he said. He'd been taking photos and getting a little too up close and personal with all the dead stinky things.

"Me too," I replied.

Silently we left the butchers. As we walked back through the market the smells changed from dead flesh to rotten onions and human sweat - we breathed it in like perfume. By the time we reached the market's fruit section back near the mini-buses we may as well as been in Shangri-la. I've eaten a lot of strange things in my life but after Tomohon I don't think I could ever eat dog.

Photo of the Week: Bunaken Island Sulawesi, Indonesia

Bunaken Island off of Sulawesi, Indonesia is known for its world class diving, so I was expecting the diverse, thriving and colorful undersea world we found - what I didn't expect was the plethora of walking trails through friendly traditional villages and a gentle culture where Muslims and Christians live harmoniously together.

Everywhere we walked people would come up and say hello and maybe share a snack. No one was aggressively friendly like you find in some places in Indonesia; on Bunaken everyone was just downright pleasant. One sweet woman about my age walked with me for 45 minutes across the island and gave me a fabulous Indonesian lesson.

This photo was taken by Josh at the Christian graveyard in Bunaken Village - just down the road is the local mosque. While it looks like the boy is praying, he's actually flying a kite.