The West Java patch of land where time stands still

The West Java patch of land where time stands still

By John Aglionby

KADUKETER, West Java: There was no manmade fiber in sight as
Mastina climbed up a sugar palm to collect the watery sap he
would later boil up to make into sugar. His ladder was a single
bamboo pole with clefts cut into it for his bare hands and feet;
his buckets were bamboo tubes with straps made of bark strands.

Old holes in the tree were plugged with leaves to stop the sap
running out and going to waste, and the filter to prevent muck
getting into the buckets was a mesh of bark and thin strips of
wood.

Mastina (most of the Baduy use only one name) makes few
concessions to the outside world: his 15-inch metal machete, his
cotton shorts, jacket and the sarong wrapped around his head are
the only things he carries which are not derived directly from
nature.

Welcome to the world of the Baduy, a tribe of animist farmers
living less than 30 kilometers southwest but several light years
from Central Jakarta's gleaming skyscrapers and political
turmoil. The Dutch, Indonesia's former colonizers, named them
after a nearby mountain and river.

The Baduy's list of taboos -- or customary laws as they prefer
to call them -- is long enough to frighten off anyone used to
modern living. Electricity, plastic, leather, oil, china, books,
glass, writing implements, sport, four-legged animals (except for
the odd dog and cat), ducks, fertilizer, irrigation, formal
government, schools, hospitals, guns, wheels, watches, bricks and
cement are just some of the items that are banned.

The foundations, doors and pillars of their homes are made of
wood, the walls are a lattice of thin bamboo strips and the roof
is layers of dried palm leaves. At least once a year "police" go
round checking that people are not breaking the rules and
bringing in forbidden objects.

"Our religion says that the rules should be like this," said
Sai'idi, a tribal elder in Kaduketer, one of 68 villages in their
20 square mile area. "I learned them from my father, he learned
them from his father and so on going back thousands of years."

Their religion, the neomystical Sunda Wiwitan faith, states
that the Sunda people of West Java were the first people on earth
and if they do not live as god originally intended disaster will
strike. In the heart of the Baduy land there are sacred megaliths
and the trees are never felled.

The tribe is divided into two -- inner Baduy and outer Baduy.
The inner Baduy are more devout, adhering strictly to the rules
-- although even they have swapped bark loincloths for shirts and
shorts -- and all but off-limits to foreigners.

Outer

A little more latitude is shown in the outer villages; here a
few people wear sandals and watches while bras, plates, cups,
nails and carpentry tools are common. The occasional radio can
also be heard. Life consists of work, food, sleep, religious
worship and music played on tuned bamboo instruments and wooden
drums.

Work for most people is farming rice, palm sugar, vegetables
and fruit. Others oversee sugar-making or weave clothes and bark-
fiber bags. Produce is bartered with friends or sold in the
outside world in order to buy matches, cooking pots, cotton
clothes and coffee.

They have survived as long as they have thanks to a mixture of
authoritarianism, pragmatism and playing on superstitions.

"We have three leaders, called puun," said Sai'idi who is the
most senior of the 12 deputy puuns. "One oversees the territory,
another is in charge of religion and the third is for defense. No
one questions what they say."

When one puun dies, the next is chosen after discussion
between the two surviving leaders and their deputies. "God
directs us by revealing in visions who should be the next puun,"
Sai'idi added.

"It helps that the culture is completely oral," said Rudi
Badil, an anthropologist and journalist. "So when a puun says the
long should not be shortened and the straight should not be bent,
people do not question him."

Acknowledging they are Indonesian -- although they never fly
the flag -- taking on some Islamic customs, such as circumcision,
and allowing only Muslims into inner Baduy has helped, he
believes.

"The majority of the surrounding people are Muslim so the
Baduy have earned respect by respecting them and their ways," he
said. "Things would probably be different if the West Javanese
were predominantly Christian."

The Baduy were threatened with extinction in the early 1980s
during Soeharto's 32-year rule. Government officials wanted to
build schools, roads, offices and an electricity network in the
area but the people refused.

A group of Baduy walked to Jakarta to appeal to Soeharto. A
deeply superstitious man, he told them to plant poles along the
boundary of their land and everything inside would not be
touched.

"He said that if Indonesia was a tree then the Baduy were the
roots of the tree," Sai'idi said. "If the roots are destroyed
then the whole tree would collapse."

Since then the government has never tried to modernize the
Baduy, or even forced them to vote in elections. However that
does not mean that the tribe is immune from development.

A rising population and pressure on land pose the biggest
threat to the Baduy's existence. Even though more and more
younger Baduy are leaving the tribe, sufficient numbers are
remaining to perpetuate growth. Most admit that if their
traditional medicines do not work they sneak off to the nearest
health center.

"When the Baduy marked their territory in the 1980s there were
about 4,000 of them," Badil said. "Now the tribe is almost double
that. The chances are high that something will have to give."

He has no idea when this could happen, though, and is
optimistic that the culture will survive for several more decades
at least.

"Not only are most of the Baduy committed to their religion,
they are opportunists," he said. "They realize that people are
willing to pay a lot more for their goods than those of their
West Javanese neighbors so many are in no hurry to change. It
might not be the purest motivation for remaining as they are but
it does mean they will not die out that easily."

-- Guardian News Service