Spiritual home: Traditional healers chant a ritualistic incantation to bless the renovation of a communal longhouse.

In Puro, a shady hamlet in the middle of a Siberut jungle, Nikodemus Sabulukkungan and Agustinus Durai were busy extracting the starchy insides of a sago tree their families would cook for an upcoming religious ceremony.

The two men, both 50, skillfully used a traditional scratcher, a wooden bar fitted with nails on one end. “I’ve been doing this since I was a kid,” said Agustinus as he took a break.

Their activity was part of intricate preparations for a four-day ritual for the renovation of Subulukkungan tribe’s uma, a tribal wooden longhouse central to their culture. The tribe’s tradition requires religious rituals to mark milestones in their life, like marriage, birth, death, house repair and even meetings between elders.

An uma is a traditional vernacular house built on piles with a veranda at both ends, and it has no window. Its roof is made of sago leaves, and a typical longhouse can be as large as 300 square meters and may house up to 300 people. It functions as the tribe’s cultural, social and political center.

Tucked in lush forests about a 20-minute drive from the South Siberut quay that connects the island with the outside world, the communal house needed renovations, and a ritual for divine blessing would be held before the major work began.

The majority of the Siberut population embraces Catholicism, one of the six state-recognized religions, but they still practice their ancient animistic faith.

In Siberut, uma is regarded as a sacred place, a center of life even when people elsewhere on the island have embraced the “modern” lifestyle where youngsters whiz past on their motorbikes and banter on their mobile phones.

“This is a very sacred place we would cherish and defend,” tribal chief Daniel Sabulukkungan, 70, told The Jakarta Post.

Daniel, who speaks broken Indonesian, said the prerestoration ritual was needed to nullify negativity that may come with the new components people had sourced from nature. They believe every part of the structure has its own soul.

“When part of the house needs mending, a ritual is obligatory to ensure our health and keep bad luck away,” said Daniel, who wears a traditional Mentawai loincloth and lives in the uma.

More importantly, the longhouse also highlights Siberut natives’ dependence on their forests, which cover nearly 85 percent of the island. The house frames are made of mangrove and the flooring is made of sugar palm wood.

“We’re inseparable from our forests,” said Vincentius Sabulukkungan, a fellow Puro resident.

In the preparations for the ritual, there is a clear division of labor between men and women. The men collect sago from the forest, and the women cook them as two dishes: sagu kapurut, loosely translated as sago wrapped in bamboo leaves, and sagu kaogbuk, or sago in bamboo tubes.

While most people elsewhere in Indonesia have rice as their staple food, sago is the daily sustenance for most indigenous people in Siberut, the biggest among the Mentawai islands where many people still live as hunters and gatherers.

“Rice doesn’t taste very good. Fish is best eaten with sago,” said Vincentius.

While the men installed the sago leaf roofing, the women prepared the lunch in the uma kitchen for everyone who would participate in the ceremony, including sikerei (shamans) from other villages invited to the event.

But Daniel, as the protector of the tribe, was fasting that Sunday. He would break the fast only after the renovations were completed in the afternoon, but he would have to resume fasting until the next day.

“I can neither eat nor drink. I have to fast in order to ensure the ritual runs smoothly and all members of tribe are safe and sound,” said Daniel, who converted to Catholicism in the 1960s. Like other indigenous people, he still practices animism.

Sikerei share the responsibility of keeping evil spirits away from the house. At night, they performed an exorcism in the ceremony attended by hundreds of denizens who thronged to the uma.

One of the forest healers, Pangarita Sabaggalet, said he could sense the presence of a malevolent spirit in some wooden parts of the house, especially those sourced from the forests.

“It is the most noxious of all evil spirits. If we don’t get it out of this place, it will do harm to all of us,” said Pangarita. The evil spirit was named Sipittok.

Before performing the exorcism, the tattooed sikerei in loincloths gathered at the pedestal at the longhouse’s backyard where offerings were placed. There, they danced and chanted mantras.

Pangarita said Sippitok was extremely strong, so he and other sikerei formed a strong circle so as not to be defeated. But apparently, the evil spirit was so strong that it was capable of throwing some of the forest healers several meters, and they came crashing down near the kitchen. Pangarita appeared to be possessed by the spirit and did not recover until he was helped by Aman Keineng Kunen Saruruk, the most experienced sikerei that night.

After all of the possessed sorcerers recovered, the group of healers could finally defeat Sipittok by way of chanting mantras.

“I couldn’t control my body. I was totally frozen,” said Stefanus Teusanang Sakalio, one of the defeated sikerei, after the ceremony.

On the next day, Monday, hundreds of locals gathered again at the uma to have a dinner of pork, chicken and sago. Pigs and chickens had been slaughtered from morning to afternoon, while Daniel and the band of forest healers stayed there to pray for the dinner.

On Tuesday morning, Daniel, Stefanus and several Sabulukkungan tribe members went hunting in the forest as the final stage of the uma renovation ritual. They did not catch any animals, but it did not make the part of the ritual lose its meaning, said Stefanus, who slang a bow and bunch of arrows over his shoulders.

The ritual ended on Wednesday with Daniel and his family temporarily leaving their village for the forest. After that, Daniel returned to the uma, placing offerings at the pedestal, and marking the end of the joyous, solemnly observed ritual.

Popular

Supreme Court ruling renews calls for Gibran to step down

Ukraine claims another Indonesian recruited to Russian military killed

Nine dead in small plane crash near Trump's Florida home