by Nigel Barley
One critic remarked that it was all very well to bring such people here and treat them kindly, but doing this would only make them unhappy when they went back home. That is an argument for never trying to be nice to anyone. Only one incident raised doubts about the effect on the Torajans.
Anthropology largely neglects the individual to deal in generalizations. Generalizations always tell a little lie in the service of a greater truth. Yet I was increasingly aware that I had brought over four Torajans but would be sending them back as four individuals. They were no longer simply carriers of a particular culture but real people. As is the Indonesian way, I bought them all a present before they left, something to remember me by. For most, it was obvious what to get. There were things they had seen and admired. But Karre was a problem. Was there not, I asked, something that he would like that he might not be able to get in Baruppu’? Yes, he said. Now that he had all this money, he would like a strong lock for his door because other people would want to steal it.
Airports are bad places for farewells. The carvers were to be met in Jakarta and looked after by some fellow Torajans, but with their luggage stacked about them, wearing shoes, they looked like refugees. As was to be expected, they all burst into tears and sobbed whole-heartedly. I remembered the time on that wind-swept plateau when Torajans had extended to me the sign of common humanity, the offer to cry with them. I did not refuse it now either.
‘Write me a letter,’ said Nenek. ‘Johannis can read it to me.’
Four of my handkerchiefs disappeared through the barrier with them. As they were about to disappear, there was a sudden shrilling of alarm bells and a stamping rush of security men. I had reminded them that they could not carry knives and swords in their hand luggage. I had not realized they had put them in their pockets and worn them round their waists.
Johannis looked embarrassed and laughed, the others looked worried. No one would let me through the barrier. There was nothing I could do. They were already on their way back to their own world. There was a deal of heavy-footed head-shaking, a scratching of chins by men in uniforms. Finally, the ‘weapons’ were retained and they were led off to the plane. Johannis turned and gave a final laugh. Nenek was too short to see over the barrier but I heard a voice call, ‘Don’t forget to harvest the coffee.’
Illustrations
Entrance to a Torajan village showing ricefields and traditional houses.
Torajan ricebarns at Nangala.
Nenek Tulian in priestly dress for a funeral.
Schoolchildren performing on traditional bamboo instruments
Men parading in warrior dress
A coffin containing the deceased, wrapped in cloth with gold decoration.
Reopening of the coffin for rewrapping of body and final insertion in tomb.
A sacrificial buffalo being washed in a stream
Distribution of buffalo meat to relatives and neighbours.
Tombs hollowed out of the rockface.
The market at Rantepao.
The start of a cock fight.
The interior of traditional house, Baruppu’.
A woman weaving a cloth, Mamasa.
Constructing the roof, Museum of Mankind, London.
Fitting together the body of the barn.
Nenek Tulian carving a panel.
The door of the ricebarn showing a stylised buffalo.
The façade of the ricebarn showing two cockerels.
Removal of the scaffolding.
The complete ricebarn, Museum of Mankind, London.
About the Author
Nigel Barley was born south of London in 1947. He originally trained as an anthropologist and worked in West Africa, spending time with the Dowayo people of North Cameroon. He survived to move to the Ethnography Department of the British Musem and it was in this connection that he first travelled to Southeast Asia. After forrays into Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and Burma, Barley settled on Indonesia as his principal research interest and has worked on both the history and contemporary culture of that area.
After escaping from the museum, he is now a writer and broadcaster and divides his time between London and Indonesia
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF STAMFORD RAFFLES
NIGEL BARLEY
Stamford Raffles is that rarest of things — a colonial figure who is forgotten at home but still remembered with affection abroad. Born into genteel poverty in 1781, he joined the East India Company at the age of fourteen and worked his way up to become Lieutenant Governor of Java when the British seized that island for some five years in 1811. There he fell in love with all things Javanese and vaunted it as a place of civilization as he discovered himself as a man of science as well as commerce. A humane and ever-curious figure, his administration was a period of energetic reform and boisterous research that culminated in his History of Java in 1817 and it remains the starting-point of all subsequent studies of Indonesian culture.
Personal tragedy and ill-health stalked his final years in the East. Yet, though dying at the early age of 44 and dogged by the hostility of lesser men, he would still find time to found the city-state of Singapore and guide it through its first dangerous years. Here, mythologised by the British and demonised by the Dutch, he is more than a remote founding father and remains a charter for its independence and its enduring values.
In this intriguing book, part history, part travelogue, Nigel Barley re-visits the places that were important in the life of Stamford Raffles and evaluates his heritage in an account that is both humorous and insightful.
ROGUE RAIDER
The Tale of Captain Lauterbach, the Singapore Mutiny and the audacious Battle of Penang
NIGEL BARLEY
It is the First World War and the Flashmanesque German naval reserve captain, Julius Lauterbach, is a prisoner of war in the old Tanglin barracks of Singapore. He is also a braggart, a womaniser and a heavy drinker and through his bored fantasies he unwittingly triggers a mutiny by Muslim troops of the British garrison — the 1915 Singapore Mutiny — and so throws the whole course of the war in doubt. The British lose control of the city, its European inhabitants flee to the ships in the harbour and it is only with the help of Japanese marines that the Empire is saved.
Rogue Raider is the adventure story of how one ship, the Emden, ties up the navies of four nations and audaciously starts the Battle of Penang in Malaysia, and how one man eludes Allied Forces in a desperate chase across Indonesia and the rest of Asia to America as he attempts to regain his native land.
It is fictionalised history but a true history that was deliberately suppressed by the British authorities of the time as too embarrassing and dangerous to be known. Revealed here, it brings vividly to life the Southeast Asia of the period, its sights, its sounds and its rich mix of peoples. And through it an unwilling participant in the war becomes an accidental hero.
ISLAND OF DEMONS
NIGEL BARLEY
Many men dream of running away to a tropical island and living surrounded by beauty and exotic exuberance. Walter Spies did more than dream. He actually did it.
In the 1920s and 30s, Walter Spies — ethnographer, choreographer, film maker, natural historian and painter — transformed the perception of Bali from that of a remote island to become the site for Western fantasies about Paradise and it underwent an influx of foreign visitors. The rich and famous flocked to Spies’ house in Ubud and his life and work forged a link between serious academics and the visionaries from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward, Miguel Covarrubias, Vicki Baum, Barbara Hutton and many others sought to experience the vision Spies offered while Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, the foremost anthropologists of their day, attempted to capture the secret of this tantalizing and enigmatic culture.
Island of Demons is a fascinating historical novel, mixing anthropology, the history of ideas and humour. It offers a unique insight into that complex and multi-hued world that was so soon to be swept away, exploring both its ideas and the large
r than life characters that inhabited it.
THE DEVIL’S GARDEN
Love and War in Singapore under the Japanese Flag
NIGEL BARLEY
Gardens are magical places – images of Nature and Culture, models of paradise, spaces where plants live in war and peace, co-operation and competition. It is 1942 and Singapore is Syonanto, part of the Japanese Empire, where violence and starvation stalk the streets but in the Singapore Botanic Gardens a bizarre tranquillity reigns between warring nations and even love awakes as old identities melt away in the heady atmosphere of the Orchid House.
From its unique perspective and with a mixture of humour and romance, The Devil’s Garden pictures a formative moment in the emergence of Singapore, where loyalties are less secure than those of the official histories and truth is anything but simple.
Love and war in Singapore under the Japanese flag.
Copyright
Published in 2013 by Monsoon Books
First published as Not a Hazardous Sport by Viking in 1988.
ISBN (ebook): 978-981-4423-47-2
Copyright©Nigel Barley, 1988
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Cover design by Cover Kitchen.
Inside page photographs©Nigel Barley.
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