Balinese transmigrants make good in Tolai
Balinese transmigrants make good in Tolai
By Iriandi Ibrahim
TOLAI, Central Sulawesi (JP): When I Nyoman Suweto came to Tolai in 1969, there was no road in the area. Tolai was a jungle inhabited by a few native people.
Things have changed. Tolai has grown into a prosperous farming area with a wealthy transmigration settlement unit and is now the pride of the Donggala regency and Central Sulawesi.
Suweto, 55, came with the 14 original families, returned to his hometown in Bali a year later, and then came back with 100 new settlers. Later, people came to Tolai without government sponsorship to try their luck at a better life.
Today, Tolai is one of the most successful transmigration areas in Central Sulawesi. It is located in the Parigi district in Donggala, near the Trans Sulawesi highway between Parigi and Poso, 114 kilometers east of the provincial capital of Palu.
Tolai's popular name is "Food Barn", reflecting its important role in supplying food to the Donggala region. Since 1984, it has been self-sufficient in food.
The 9,048-hectare village has 4,500 hectares rice fields with 30 farmer groups of 15 to 30 farmers each working the fields. Along with successful harvests, more farmers are using tractors, instead of buffalo, to plow their fields.
Records show that the first settlers in Parigi came from Palu. They were trucked to the district in 1910 by the Dutch colonial government.
The Indonesian government started the resettlement program in the 1960s, sending people from densely populated Bali to Tolai.
At first, the transmigrants, who were clad in worn-out clothes, were confused. The land awaiting them was certainly not open terrain ready to be tilled. It was dense virgin forest. However, the highly-spirited people were determined to improve their lives. Barefooted and with just the clothes they had on, they courageously faced the challenge of converting the jungle into arable land.
Their hard work paid off.
Tolai has a current population of 6,000 in 1,700 families. Each owns an average of two hectares of rice fields with a yield of six to seven tons of dry unhulled rice, an equivalent of four to five tons of rice a season. Harvesting takes place twice a year.
The quality of the local agriculture is determined by the role of the subak (traditional water control system), according to Suweto, a village head.
"Without unity in organizing the subak, how can we repair damaged irrigation works?" he asked.
The government-built irrigation system was of poor quality because it was not in accordance with the plan specifications, Suweto said in a thick Balinese accent.
The Parigi district, which initially only had four transmigration settlement units, now has 15 transmigration communities in its 37 villages.
The district's 90,000 people occupy 1,646 square kilometers of land and till 16,972 hectares of paddy. This area, with Tolai as the main supplier, contributes 84,000 tons of rice annually to the province. Due to the continuous surplus, part of the rice production is shipped to North and Southeast Sulawesi.
Parigi and Tolai are like two kinsmen taking concerted action. Parigi, the principal town of the district, is only 30 km from Tolai. Along the connecting road lie stretches of green, beautiful rice fields.
Hard work has changed Tolai from a dormant village into a new town with banks, a telephone office, a post office, a market, hotels, four village unit cooperatives, scores of rice hull mills, places of worship and six logistics storehouses with a maximum capacity of 8,000 tons of rice. There are also schools and training institutions.
Tolai looks like any Balinese village with pura (temple) in front of each house. Balinese characteristics are also apparent in the local art groups and in the religious ceremonies such as the Galungan, Kuningan and Ngaben.
That is why it is popularly nicknamed "a second Bali in Central Sulawesi". The obvious difference is the absence of the Kuta and Sanur beaches. Tolai does have a famous waterfall, though.