TRANS-SUMATRA HIGHWAY

The Great Traveling Road Show

The recently-completed Trans-Sumatra Highway runs the length of one of the world's largest islands-a distance of over 2,500 km. The journey from Bakauheni in the south to Banda Aceh in the north is truly one of Indonesia's great travel experiences, both for the stunning scenery you pass through and for the people you meet along the way.
            However, the trip can equally become a nightmare of frustrations and uncomfortable conditions. Much depends on careful preparation, on having enough time, and on your response to the inevitable delays and minor irritations which all travelers experience in Indonesia. Patience and tolerance are invaluable qualities when traveling here, and will help ensure that your journey through some of the wildest and the least populated regions of the country will be an experience long remembered.
            Only as a test of endurance should you take the highway straight through all the way from Jakarta to Banda Aceh. It is possible to do this-the journey takes about 60 hours and costs $70. The old days of untold delays caused by collapsed bridges and washedout roads are over. Today, the highway is paved, though your journey could come to a screeching halt if a landslide occurs, especially during the rainy season. But you will not be delayed for long. Maintenance crews show up promptly, as the highway is too important to the national economy for it to be closed more than a few hours.

Setting off: Lampung

Setting off from the shout, the first leg of the Trans-Sumatra Highway runs 99 km from the Java-Sumatra ferry landing at Bakauheni, on the island's southeastern tip, up to Bandar Lampung-the capital of Lampung Province. Leaving the ferry landing, the road climbs up around Mt. Rajabasa, giving fine views of island-strewn Lampung Bay. Strands of clove trees line the hillsides, distinctive clumps of conical light green foliage.
            A little over 60 km from Bakauheni, the road drops down to the coast, giving a tantalizing glimpse of Lampung Bay, its bright blue surface broken by several steep-sided islands and fishing platforms hovering over the water like giant water-spiders. Houses on stilts line the water's edge, separated from the road by a thin strip of mangrove swamp. A rail head heralds your entry into the provincial capital, and in a short while you find yourself among huge warehouses and docks.
            The next stage of your Trans-Sumatra journey northward takes you 385 km in 9 hours to Muaraenim, through foothil plains skirting the eastern edge of the Bukit Barisan mountain range. The road cuts through rubber and oil palm plantations and fields of corn. There are lots of river crossings-all rivers flow eastward from the Bukit Barisan to the sea.
             Stunning emerald-green sawah by the roadside are dotted with huts where watchmen stay to keep wild animals at bay. Your bus might have to make several stops to let long "coal trains" by. The red-tiled raised wooden houses, some sitting on ironwood logs two meters off the ground, are traditional Lampung or South Sumatra rumah limas, formerly fastened with ropes, not nails.

South Sumatra and Jambi

The highway continues northwest out of Muaraenim, crossing the Lematang River several time before reaching Lahat. Just after Muaraenim, you get a panoramic view of the Lematang River againts a backdrop of a primary forest. In the early morning and late afternoon, heards of water buffalo and cattle compete for road space with buses and trucks. Look for an unusually shaped mountain, Bukit Serelo-a bare, finger-like projection on top of a steep-sided hill, standing apart from the foothills of the Bukit Barisan.

              Lahat is the place to get off to explore the Pasemah Highlands. However, if you get off the bus here, getting a good seat for the next stage of your journey is a matter of luck. The highway nort of Lahat offers plenty of swaying curves and, if the weather is clear, glimpeses of the Bukit Barisan range to the west. This is landslide country during the rainy season, but bulldozers quickli clear the road. Coffee is grown on the steep hills and a rubber plantation stretches for several kilometers by the roadside. The next town is Tebing Tinggi ("high embankment"), which sits above the Musi River-one of the largest and most important rivers in Sumatra.

              The highway the straightens out, and you speed along to Lubuklinggau, on the junction of the main road west Bengkulu. The tin-roofed houses whiz by your bus window with monotonous regularity for the next 248 km until you cross a bridge over the Merangin River, just outside Bangko. You are now in Jambi Province, and a sideroad to the west from Bangko leads you into the dense jungle and tea plantations of the Kerinci-Seblat National Park around Lake Kerinci.

              The next stage , 92 km from Bangko to Muarabungo, seems to take no time at all. Muarabungo is the jumping-off point for Jambi, a long 212 km to the east.

              Outside Muarabungo, the bridge over the Tebo River at Telukpanjang offers a view of a riverside mosque. Fifty km further on, the wide Batang Hari River provides irrigation for extensive sawah and you are now in West Sumatra. Along the roadside, you begin to see your first Minangkabau style roofs.

West Sumatra

After Kiliranjo the scenery at last improves as the highway winds up into the Bukit Barisan mountains. Here are stunning limestone formations (called "karst towers") and sawah which go right up to the edge of the jungle. The tall, white trunks of the primary forest match the pale white outcroppings of limestone. In places, the vegetation grows right from a vertical cliff! The first of the karst towers, small but impressive, rears up on your right at Sungai Langsat. There are five larger ones ahead-awesome oval, dome and stupashaped freaks of nature. During the rainy seasons there are frequent landslides, and your vehicle might have to stop for a couple of hours while bulldozers clear the way.

              Having passed through the mountains, you enter a more hospitable landscape of rice fields, small Minang houses and hillsides covered in ferns, before entering a gorge leading into the busy commercial town of Solok.

              The next stretch, 53 km from Solok to Padangpanjang, follows the banks of the Sumani River north to Lake Singkarak, a huge and immensely scenic crater lake. The highway hugs the eastern lakeshore all the way to a bridge over Umbilin River, which drains Lake Singkarak.

              At the northern end the lake, the highway rises to offer some good views before cutting north and east through fertile rice fields to Padangpanjang. To your right is Mt. Merapi, an active volcano which sometime emits puffs of smoke, and Mt. Singgalang. Both are about the same height-just a bit under 2,900 m.

              Break your journey at Bukittinggi; this is the place to spend a few days recuperating. It's about halfway up or or down the island, and there are lots of good hotels, restaurants and pleasant sidetrips to be made in the area (see WEST SUMATRA).

              After Bukittinggi, the next leg of the Trans-Sumatra Highway is a grueling 500-km run up to Prapat-the gateway to Lake Toba and Samosir Island, in north Sumatra. It's a long trip, about 15 hours, and if you can afford the time, it is better to break the journey in Padangsidempuan or Sibolga, so as to cross over the Bukit Barisan mountains again in daylight.

              The road is paved all the way, but it's narrow and there are lost of curves. Even with a good driver, the crossing can be hair-raising, as you twist and wind up the mountains pass, barely missing oncoming lorries and coaches. Fortunately, there's not much traffic on the road and the coach can't go much faster than 40 km per hour.

              Try to be awake at the town of Bonjol, home of the famous Muslim leader of the Padri wars, Iman Bonjol. There's a large, sabre-wielding statue of him in town on a horse-look to the right. Just out of Bonjol, there's a monument marking the equator.

              From Bonjol the road climbs up to Lubuksikaping, then descends into a long rive valley with rice fields to the right. There are no more steep descents but plenty of jungle-clad gorges as you wind your way down to Muarasipongi and Kotanopan, where your eyes are soothed by rice fields dotted with neat little huts and bridges by the river. You are now in North Sumatra.

Nort Sumatra

From Muarasipongi, the road follows the Batang Gadis River past Kotanopan. The Purba Baru village area here is the center of a huge pesantren or Islamic koranic school, the largest in Indonesia, with students from all over the country. Hundreds of tiny huts house boys, aged six to twelve, who spend their primary school years here.

              Traditional Minangkabau houses are very few now since you are in Batakland. The people of this region are Mandailing Bataks, forcefully converted to Islam more than one and a half centuries ago.

              Panyabungan is a crowded market town which bustles with activity on Monday, market day. Gaudy becaks,vegetable-laden housewives, and motorized becak mesin all add noise and color to the market scene. As you leave Panyabungan, you see tranquil white mosques set in the middle of rice fields. A stretch of brick factories follows, then the large town of Padangsidempuan greets you by nightfall. This is a good place for an overnight stay, or a change of bus for the one and a half hour drive to Sibolga.

              Aside from a few hair-raising bends, the next stage, to Prapat and Lake Toba, is a pleasant 5-hour ride. The first part, to Tarutung, takes about 3 hours, past roadside markets and denude hills with isolated stands of pine. After an hour or so, a pass below Mt. Sibualbuali (with a large hotel) marks the division between the Muslim and Christian Bataklands, and churches begin to replace mosques along the roadside.

              It's a short half-hour hop on a straight road from Tarutung to the busy market town of Siborongborong. A little way further on you start winding down to Lake Toba past spectacular rice fields and impressive graves crowned with figures of wide-eyed men on white stallions, elders in adat costume, and traditional Toba Batak houses-including one almost big enough to live in. The massive sepulchre on the right, a short way off the road past Balige, is that of the Batak ruler Raja Tano. From here the road winds around lakeside hills to emerge at Prapat.

              From Prapat to Medan, the journey takes 4-5 hours. As the road climbs up from Prapat, there are magnificent views of Lake Toba. Then the road winds down through the mountains on a long, gentle slope to the sea via Pematangsiantar and Tebingtinggi. Lush rice fields and estates of rubber and oil palm line the road, while churches are gradually replaced again by mosques.

The final leg: Aceh

The long, 600-km ride from Medan to Banda Aceh takes 14 hours. There's plenty of good scenery, but the only logical place to break up the journey is at Bireuen, about two-thirds of the way up, for a side trip up to Lake Tawar. At Sabat, 17 km out Medan, the road crosses a wide river and the traffic starts to thin. The road now passes large oil palm plantations and ageing rubber estates. Keep an eye out for a superb mosque on the left just before Tanjungpura. The scenery alternates between broad rice fields (some stretching two km from the road), coconut groves, single and triple domed mosques, large rivers, bridges over estuaries overgrown with mangroves and nipah palms. Canoes, small boats and houses parched on stilts crowd around the estuary bridges. Further ahead are the grass-covered foothills of the hazy Bukit Barisan range.

              The town of Lhokseumawe, which is set a couple of kilometers off the highway, boasts huge banks, government buildings, shopping centers, satelite dishes and five-star hotels and restaurants alongside small, prosperous "downstream" area of small open shops. Back on the highway heading out of town, you can see several large LNG storage tanks, and flares from oil wells.

              Traveling further into the province of Aceh, you will see more the girls wearing the kerudung or jilbab, the Muslim head scarf which leaves only the face exposed. These girls attend Islamic schools. Mosques here are often roofed with ironwood shingles.

              throughout much of Aceh, the Trans-Sumatra Highway follows the tracks of a long-abandoned Dutch railway. Though much of the tracks remain, most of the bridges have fallen into the river.

              On the last leg the highway, the road leaves the rice fields and coastal towns to cut across the northernmost section of the Bukit Barisan mountains. There are lots of curves as you ride over hills covered with grass, scrub; and later you pass through tall, deserted pine forests. Then, mercifully, the bus stops swaying as the road straightens out to follow the river and fertile rice valley which leads to Banda Aceh at the northernmost tip of Sumatra.

FOOD

The Art of Sumatran Cooking

As the 17th century traveler Sir John Chardin noted, religion-as well as history and geography-has always played an important role in determining a people's diet. And so it is in  Sumatra. Pork is the major dietary barrier separating the island's Muslim majority from the Christian minority. Christian Bataks around Lake Toba and elsewhere in North Sumatra eat pork (sometimes also dog). and in their village settlements they often keep pigs. For Muslims, however, the pig is ritually unclean, and may only be eaten if one is faced with starvation.

             Muslims nevertheless enjoy many other meats-including the flesh of buffaloes, goats, ducks, lambs, chickens and fish-as well as eggs, fruits and vegetables. Since the 1970s, however, many Sumatran Muslims have developed an additional concern for whether or not the meat they are served is halal-slaughtered according to Islamic law by cutting the animal's throat while uttering the name of Allah.

              History and geography are also important, of course. After centuries of trading contacts, Sumatran cooking now reflects influences from all around the archipelago (Java, Manado, Bali) as well as from abroad (India, Middle East, China, Holland).In the North Sumatran capital of Medan, for example, you will find several dishes that show a distinct Indian and Arab influence alongside the usual Indonesia dishes. This can be seen in the use of dried seeds and aromatic spices such as coriander, cumin, fennel, cardamom and cinnamon in the preparation of goat dishes. Gulai kumah and gulai bagar are two goat curries which are rich in flavor, but unlike native Sumatran dishes not particularly spicy.
              Near the coasts, seafood features prominently on most restaurant menus. One of the most popular dishes in Palembang, South Sumatra, is empek-empek-a fish dumpling (sometimes also stuffed with egg) served hot with a bowl of spicy sauce made of chili, garlic, dried prawns, palm sugar, soya sauce and vinegar. In addition, Palembang is known throughout Indonesia for the quality of its kerupuk (deep-fried tapioca crackers flavored with seafood and spices), since the kerupuk made here have a higher proportion of fish or prawn than those produced elsewhere in the archipelago.

Some like it hot!

Sumatra has many regional cooking styles, however the best-known is undoubtedly masakan padang-the fiery-hot cuisine of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, named after the provincial capital of Padang. Padang-style restaurants are found throughout Indonesia, and a number of Padang dishes have achieved nationoal and even international popularity. Today, the famous meat dish known as rendang is served in restaurants as far afield as Tokyo, New York and London, and can be found in almost every Dutch town.

               Rendang is usually made with beef, cut up into cubes and cooked in coconut cream with a spices mixture of garlic, shallots, chillies, turmeric, galangal, green ginger (all finely ground), lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, turmeric leaves and salt. Special care and attention are required during cooking so the mixture does not curdle or the pieces of meat disintegrate. One the coconut cream reaches boiling point, the heat is reduced and the cooking continues until the mixture thickens. When finished, the rendang sauce turns to a rich, dark brown residue, but the pieces of meat should still be intact and slightly crisp on the outside.
               The prolonged cooking and the spices, especially the chilles, preserve the meat, and it is common for rendang to be taken along on long journeys, such the pilgrimage to Mecca, Rendang is then both reminder of home and a handy dish that saves time-as no cooking is needed apart from boiling the rice to eat with it! Solicitous Sumatran mothers cook, pack and send it to their children studying or working in the outer islands. If you eat rendang-and you should be sure not to miss it-be warned not to put a whole piece in your mouth at once. It is far too rich and spicy to be eaten whole. Break off a small part, then fold it into a spoonful of rice if you want to enjoy it. One should treat all spicy meat dishes with similar respect.
               Padang restaurants, wherever you find them, have a unique way of serving their dishes which never fails to intrigue visitors from abroad. There is no need to order-soon after you sit down, the waiter arrives at your table with an array of small dishes precariously poised along both arms, and deposits them all on the table. You eat whatever you fancy from among these many dishes-sampling  the curiied eggs, fish, vegetables, chicken and meat, knowing you will only be charged for the number of pieces of egg, fish, chicken or meat that you eat. The sauce is free, and there are stories of skinflints who take a spoonful of sauce from each dish to flavor their rice to have a cheap meal!
               Experienced Padang restaurant-goers know exactly which dishes go well together, and make their choice accordingly. Those who are less experienced my find they end up with a plate full of clashing flavors. If in doubt, ask the proprietor for a nasi raes. This is a plate of white rice with several bits of meat and vegetable on top, sprinkled with gravy and serundeng (grated coconut, roasted with peanuts) and topped off with a kerupuk. It generally ends up being cheaper than getting the whole smorgasboard.
               As is the custom throughout Indonesia, you eat with your right hand by compressing a bit of rice, meat and curry together with the tips of your fingers and pushing it into your mouth. Forks and spoons are also often provided now, but it is very bad form to stick the spoon you use for eating into the dishes of curry. Use a separate spoon for this!
               The normal evening meal for a middle class family consists of four or five dishes and rice. These may include one or two meat dishes-say gulai ayam (curried chicken soup) and dendeng (sun-dried spicy beef)-as well as a vegetable dish, such as cucumber salad, and a selection of condiments such as sambal (chilli paste), pickles (acar) and  kerupuk. The rice supplies the bulk of the meal, and its blandness is ideal for absorbing and combining the flavors of the various dishes.
                Of course not all Padang cooking is hot. Try opor ayam (chicken simmered in corander and coconut cream), ayam goreng (crisp fried chicken), or-a dish that all foreigners like-pergedel (meat and potato croquettes). Other dishes are prepared with only small amounts of chilli, such as gado gado (vegetable salad with peanut sauce), and sate. The latter is found all over Indonesia and consits of pieces of meat marinated in spices and placed on bamboo skewers, then grilled over a bed of charcoal and served with sweet-spicy ground peanut sauce.
                A special type of sate prepared in Padang needs a chapter all by itself. It consits of pieces of heart, tongue and tripe boiled in finely ground spices-coriander, cumin, galangal, turmeric, ginger, garlic, chili and shallots-plus kaffirlemon leaf, lemon grass and salt. The meat is then cut into small pieces and threaded onto skewers. The broth of the meat is thickened with rice flour to make a pale yellow sauce. Sprinkled with fried onions, sate padang is a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach!
                Vegetarians will delight in the variety of tempe dishes found in West Sumatra. Tempe is a kind of soybean cake prepared from boiled beans which are allowed to ferment, a process that takes three days. The finished product is firm and compact-the beans tightly bound together and covered evenly with  a light coating of white mold, with an aroma reminiscent of fresh mushrooms. Tempe is a very cheap source of high-quality protein and is crunchy and tasty when fried. It may also be curried or stir-fried with vegetables, potatoes and chilies.

Drinks and snacks

Beer goes very well with most Sumatran dishes-the high-quality Bir Bintang and Anker produced in Indonesia is brewed according to traditional Dutch methods. The religious prohibition against imbibing alcoholic beverages does not command universal observance in Sumatra, and foreigners drinking beer generally do not cause offense. Locals, however, usually prefer to drink weak plain tea or iced water with their meals.

                 There is, incidentally, one locally produced food which is mildly alcoholic. Sumatrans are very fond of between-meal snacks, and one of the favorites is tapai, sometimes spelled tape. Sumatran tapai is prepared from boiled or steamed black glutinous rice. Once the rice is cooled, it is sprinkled with a special yeast called ragi tape ; two tablets are needed each kilo of rice. The rice then is placed in a basin with a lid, and wrapped in cloth and left in a warn place for three or four days to ferment.

                 When it is ready, the mixture is slightly effervescent and has a port-like fragrance. It is usually served with lemang-white glutinous rice cooked in a bamboo container lined with young banana leaves in thick, salted coconut cream. (Surprisingly, tapaialso goes very well with vanilla ice cream!). It is available everyday in central Sumatra, but is especially popular during the fasting month, and around Idul Fitri (the fastive celebration of the end of the fasting month).

                 Another popular snack specific to the region is dadih (buffalo yoghurt). It is sold in a small bamboo container and served with emping-glutinous rice flakes rinsed with boiling water to soften them-topped with freshly grated coconut and brown palm sugar. It is very filling meal. Dadih is sold in almost every kedai or lepau (foodstall) all over the island.

On the road

When you travel by bus in Sumatra, foodseellers swarm around at every stop and bus terminal, calling out their wares. In their baskets are hard-boiled, salted duck eggs, tasty maize fritters, crispy fried banana slices (rakik), pieces of chopped sugarcane, and a variety of sweetmeats in banana leaves.
                 Practically every bus stop in Sumatra has one or two local specialities, and the same goes for train stations. Local women who are traveling on the buses will often buy a selection of these as gifts (oleh-oleh). When they visit relatives, it is unthinkable to arrive at a house empty-handed-one must have something to "open the door," as the say. There are always children around, and small gifts for them are always warmly welcomed.

The all-purpose banana leaf

Banana leaves, which can be found in abundance everywhere throughout the archipelago, are indispensable in all kinds of situations. They are tough, but when heated, are pliable and easily folded. They are mostly used to wrap food for steaming or cooking over charcoal, and as a wrapper for take-away food bought at a kedai or lepau. Small items and vegetables bought at the local market, such as tapai, bean sprouts or chillies, are usually wrapped up in banana leaves.

                 At a local lepau or kedai (foodstall), banana leaves may also serve as disposable plates or plate covers. They meet many needs for which we in the West use cling-wrap or aluminium foil. May they never give way to plastic which cannot be disposed of easily. Banana leaves are bio-degradable and a renewable resource!

LANGUAGE & LITERATURE

Court Malay to Bahasa Indonesia

Sumatra’s great size and cultural diversity is reflected in its wealth of languages, which range from the elegant and elaborate court Malay still spoken in the former palace centers of Palembang and Riau, to the rapidly vanishing dialects spoken by a few coastal, boad-dwelling  orang laut  (sea nomads). Most of Sumatra's languages are closely related, and belong to the huge family of Austronesian languages which stretches in great island arc from Madagascar on the African coast to Easter Island in the easters Pacific.
                northern Sumatra is dominated by the 1.5 milion speakers of Acehnese, who surround a much smaller pocket of Gayo speakers. To the south, around Lake Toba, lie the Batak heartlands, with their many Batak dialects, some to different as almost to constitute separate languanges. The most widely-spoken dialect is Toba Batak, followed by karo, Angkola, Mandailing, Dairi, Simalungun and Alas. Four million Minangkabau speakers the second largest linguistic group in the island are found in  the fertile highlands of West Sumatera, while moving farther south, the provinces Riau, Jambi and South Sumatera are home to numerous dialects of Malay. Rejang is spoken in parts of Bengkulu, and Lampung is spoken on the southern tip of the island. Several distinct languages are found in the four island groups along the west coast of Sumatra-Simuelue, Nias, Mentawai and Enggano.

                Attached like a single-hued lining to this linguistic coat of many colors is the Malay language-for centuries the lingua franca of the archipelago, and forerunner of the national language, Bahasa Indonesia. Spoken as a mother tongue by about 11 million Sumatrans, Malay is indigenous to the east of the island but has spread throughout the archipelago as the language of trade and islam, superseding local languages as a literary and courtly medium in the kingdoms of Aceh, West Sumatra And Riau.

                When Sultan Iskandar Muda of Aceh coresponded with King James I of England in 1615, he wrote in Malay, not Acehnese. At the other end of the social scale, Malay has long served as the language of the market place in Sumatra's cosmopolitan port cities. the first Malay phrasebook for foreign merchants, printed in Amsterdam in 1603, contains sample conversations for purchasing provisions, weighing pepper and extracting funds from a recalcitran debtor, as well as colorful phrases for driving a hard bargain.

Traditional literature

Traditional Sumatran scripts can be divided into two types-those that trace their origin to a south India script, and those that derive from a Persian-Arabic script. The earliest example of the latter is an Old Malay stone inscription from 7th century Srivijaya (Palembang). The ravages of the tropical climate have left no traces of texts on more perishable materials from this period, but the Batak and Lampung scripts also belong to this indic group, and are still in occasional use. The arrival of Islam led to the development of a modified from of the Arabic script known as Jawi-used to write Malay, Acehnese and Minangkabau until the early decades of this century.

                 Manuscripts from Sumatra come in all shapes and sizes, and use bamboo, tree-bark, palm leaf and bone as well as paper. Sumatra's most important literature is written in the Malay language. Prose works include histories and romances; tales of the Prophet and Muslim heroes, like Alexander the Great (known in Malay as Iskandar Zulkarnain, the "two horned"); and theological, legal, moral treatises. The Hikayat Raja-raja Pasi, which relates the coming of Islam to the north coast of Sumatra in the 13th century, is the oldest known Malay history.

                The two main genres of Malay poetry are the narrative syair and the pantun. The fourline stanzas of the syair with their a-a-a-a endrhyme are believed to be the creation of  Hamzah Fansuri, a mystic poet who lived in Barus in the 16th century. The pantun is a quatrain with an a-b-a-b rhyme in which  the first  couplet  contains a veiled allusion, the meaning of which is usually elaborated in the final couplet. Written literatures also  exist in Acehnese-in prose (haba) and poetry (hikayat)-and in Minangkabau, where the most important epic is the Kaba Cindur Mata.

                In Sumatra, as in many parts of Indonesia, the dividing line between written and oral literature is blurred, for in semi-literate societies texts were usually composed and written down to an audience. Professional Sijobang singers in West Sumatra are still in demand at weddings, circumcision ceremonies and other feasts, where recitations of the adventures of Prince Anggun Nan Tungga last all night. (Sijobang performances are now also marketed on cassettes.) Sumatran peoples have a rich stock of folklore, including proverbs, mantras and animal fables-the mousedeer being the hero.

                One of the most intriguing written traditions of Sumatra are pustaha, the bark books of the Batak. These concertina-shaped books are concerned solely with magic, divination and medicine, and were used as aide-memoires by apprentice sorcerers during their period of study with a Batak priest or dato. Amongst their contents might be oracles for reading the entrails of a chiken, or for divining the portents of the time of day of a child's birth ("a boy-child born at a certain moment will die in war or of smallpox; if it is a girl, she may die of suicide," etc.) as well as recipes for love philtres and poisons.

Modern literature

By the beginning of the 20th century, increasing Western influence manifested itself in a growing popular literature in Malay. Medan became a center for the publishing of "penny dreadfuls;" the melodramatic romances, adventure detective booklets owing much to the stories of Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle.

          In the 1920s, when Balai Pustaka-the Dutch colonial government publishing house in Batavia-began to issue novels in Malay, the earliest works were by Minangkabau writers. Many novels centered on the cultural clash between the modernizing influence of Western education and the strictures and arranged marriages of traditional Minang society. Both in the period before Independence and afterwards, Sumatran writers have been in the forefront of modern Indonesian literature.
               Armijn Pane's Belenggu (Shackles), published in 1940, has been hailed as the first Indonesian psychological novel, and poets like Chairil Anwar and Rivai Apin were influenced by T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden.  Yet the homeland of Sumatran writes often shines through their work-from the forests of Mochtar Lubis' childhood, which from the backdrop to his novel Harimau (tiger), to the images of Lake Toba which permeate the existentialist poetry of Sitor Situmorang.

ARCHITECTURE

The House with Horns and a Tail

The island of Sumatra contains some of Indonesia’s richest and most fascinating traditions of vernacular, or domestic, architecture. Even the most casual observer can hardly fail to be impressed by the imposing scale of these buildings, by their ingenious nail-free construction and by the vigor and delicacy of their carved and painted decorations.

            The diversity of traditional house styles found on the island is truly astounding. Around Lake Toba alone, for example, are to be found several distinctive styles belonging to the Toba, Karo and Simalungun Batak peoples-while the houseof the Mandailing Batak to the south are different again. The traditional homes of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra are equally renowned for their beautiful floral carving and elegant, soaring eaves.

            The Gayo people to the north of Lake Toba formerly dwelt in large multifamily houses holding up to 60 people. Each family had an apartment in the center of the house, with a men’s gallery at the front and a women’s gallery at the back. Acehnese houses, found along the island’s north coast, are airy and well-ventilated, with large shuttered windows and elaborate woodcarving.

            But perhaps the most breathtaking Sumatran architecture is found on the island of Nias. Houses stand in rows beside long, stone-paved streets, dominated-as in the famous village of Bawomataluo-by a massive chief’s house resting in vertical and diagonal pillars fashioned from the trunks of giant ironwood trees.

Ancient origins

The observer of this astonishing architectural heritage will ask why so many of these houses-particularly the Batak and the Minangkabau-appear stylistically related, not only to each other but to the houses of other Indonesian peoples, such as the Toraja of Sulawesi. The most notable shared features are the pile foundations, the extended or saddleshaped roof ridge, and decorative, horn shaped gable finials. What ancient historical link explains the origin and spread of this remarkable style?
            The earliest surviving images of pile-built structures with saddle roofs are engraved on bronze drums found in the area of Dongson in what is now northern Vietnam. The culture associated with these drums dates from ca. 500 BC-AD 100, and Dongson drums were traded throughout the archipelago as prestige items. Early theories about "waves" of Dongson migration into Indonesia have now been discounted, however, and it is unlikely that an architectural style could have been spread simply by pictures on drums. Much more probable is that the style was already old when the drums were cast, and that the images are simply its earliest surviving representations.
            House styles ancestral to those you see today in Sumatra were probably developed in ancient times by Austronesians-speaking migrants. The Austronesians-ancestors of most modern-day Indonesians-orginated from a homeland somewhere in southern China and began to migrate into these islands from Taiwan and the Philippines 6,000 years ago. Subsequently, they colonized the islands of the Pacific, and reached as far east Madagascar by AD  400, bringing with them their distinctive building style. Pile buildings with saddle roofs are found as far east as Micronesia, an area settled by Austronesians some time after 2000 BC, and saddle roofs, often of impressive porportions, are a feature of men's houses in New Guinea.
             The survival of this ancient style of architecture seems to rest on its aesthetic or symbolic appeal, rather than a commitment to a particular mode of construction. Minangkabau and Batak houses, for example, both have pointed eaves and extended by quite different building techniques.
             In the Toba Batak house, the living space is essentially created by the roof, which rests on top of very low walls. The rafters are angled outward to produce the projecting gable, and strengthened by means of diagonal  ties. In the Minangkabau house, on the other hand, the living space is formed by the walls, which are much taller in proportion to the roof than in Batak houses. The roof sits on topof this space, supported by a truss and crossbeam structure and built up into tall points by means of many small rafters and battens.

Symbolic Acehnese houses

Acehnese homeoners are women. If they can afford it, the parents provide each of their daughters with a house when she marries-otherwise they simply present their own house to a married daughter and move into the kitchen. During the day the house is the woman's domain. Men spend most of their time in public places, or migrate (merantau) to earn a living through trade, returning home only at long intervals.

             Though subdued in their outward form, Acehnese houses are rich in cosmological and symbolic significance. The front verandah is the most public and formal part. Here men sit. The rear is private, containing the kitchen and the women's entrance. Male and female are simbolically united in the central room, which has the highest floor level, and countains the two main house posts-called "prince" and "princess"-against which the bride and the groom are seated on their wedding day. This is also where the newly-married couple sleeps. At the top of the house, beneath the gable, is a platform for storing family valuables and heirlooms. Outside at floor level runs a skriting-board, often elaborately decorated. The wall separating the verandah from the inner part of the house may also be decorated with intricate woodcarving.

Monumental Nias villages

South Nias has produced some of Indonesia's most astonishing architecture. In the 19th century, the area was ruled by a warlike aristocracy which enriched itself by raiding outlying districts for slaves. The nobles staged elaborate feasts by which they raised their status on the social ladder. The greatest of such feasts entitled a chief to construct a great house (omo sebua).

              A stunning example dating from 1863 survives today in Bawomataluo village in South Nias. It is 22.7 m tall, and is ornamented inside with  carved ebony wall panels depicting ancestral thrones, male and female ornaments, animals and birds, and even a Dutch steamship mounted with cannons.

              South Nias villages are remarkably large, with up to 6,000 inhabitants, as slave-raiding and headhunting made smaller communities too vulnerable. Most villages have a single main street paved with stone, sometimes crossed by a shorter street at the top forming a giant "T" Some settlements are approached by huge flights of stone stairs. The bowed fronts of the houses-reminiscent of Dutch galleons-from a continuous line on both sides. Stone monuments, commemorating past feasts and important funerals, stand before the houses of the nobility.
               A distinctive feature of the houses are the massive ironwood foundation pillars both vertical and diagonal. The diagonal pillars give added stability to the tall house structure in this earthquake-prone region. The flexibility of the house in tremors is enhanced by the fact that the piles rest on top of their foundation stones, a feature also found else where in the archipelago.
               The founding ancestors of South Nias communities originally came from central Nias. Here cam be seen houses of an older and plainer style, without the projecting curved front, as well as different kinds of worked stone monuments. You will need the help of a guide to visit this remote area, and you should check on the weather-rivers become impassable in the rainy season.
               Houses of North Nias are unusual in having an oval plan. They are less monumental  in scale, but share certain features such as the use of diagonal piles, and the cutting of flaps in the roof, which can be propped open to serve as windows. Graves, now Christian in style, continue to be located next to the houses in the traditional manner.

Batak houses

The countryside around lake Toba is dotted with traditional Toba, Karo and Simalungun Batak villages as well as elaborate concerete tombs in the form of houses. The tombs are built with great ceremony and expense to house the remains of the deceased ancestors of particular family. This traditional concern for the dead remains of great importance to the Toba, and has been integrated with Christian parctice. Older sarcophagi of carved stone may also be seen on Samosir Island in Lake Toba.

               Toba house stand on foundations of piles braced with cross-beams, forming a space beneath the house where buffaloes were once stalled. The walls are covered with graceful flowing and spiral decorations-unbroken lines are thought to provide protection to the occupants. Friezes with figures may also be seen, and three-dimensional carved protective 'monsters" are found  at the cornes and top of the facade.

               On the northeastern shore of the lake stands  Pematang Purba, site of the place of the former rajas of the Simalungun Batak, now a museum. The impressively long house has a realisticilly modelled buffalo-head on the front gable-end, and a tail made of the tough black fiber of the sugar-palm at the rear. Inside is the raja's private apartment, each formerly the domain of one of his wives. Nearby is a council house with an elaborately carved central pillar, against which the ruler used to sit while giving judgement.
                The Karo people living on the north of the lake developed an interesting variation on the extended ridge line, with multiple decorative gables topped by realistically-modelled buffalo heads which protected the occupants from harm. Some fine examples survive in villages around Berastagi, such as lingga. Traditionally, houses were occupied by four or eight related families, each with own hearth. A distinctive structure is the geriten or "head-house," to store the skulss of revered ancestors.

The Minangkabau house

The Minangkabau people are well-known for their matrilineal kinship system. This means that houses and rice fields are passed down from mother to daughter. A typical Minangkabau compound will consist of an older, original house surrounded by others that have been added by married sisters and daughters of the parent family.

                 The elegant, sweeping eaves of traditional houses are a common sight amidst the lush green Minangkabau landscape. These pointed eaves, locals say, remind them of the legendary. "vitorious buffalo" (menang kerbau) from  which their name is said to derive. On larger buildings the roof is tiered to form a series of four or six points, often with an additional peak over a porch set at right angles to the main structure. In the past, huge rumah gadang or "great houses" accommodated up to 100 people related to a single female ancestor. Inside was an open gallery with separate sleeping apartments off it. A surviving example-64 m long!-can be visited at the hilltop village of Sulitair, near Lake Singkarak.

                  Minangkabau rice barns and council houses (balairung or balai adat) are also built with pointed eaves, The ancestral village of Pariangan in the Tanahdatar valley, contains some very old examples, as does nearby Pagarruyung-site of the former palace of the Minangkabau rajas. The original palace unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1976, but it has now been rebuilt (on a somewhat enlarged scale) as a museum.

PEOPLES OF SUMATRA

A Melange of Ethnic Groups and Religions

More than 40 million people live in Sumatra-one-fifth of Indonesia’s huge population-making this the second most populous island in the archipelago, after Java. Four large ethnic groups-the Malay, the Minangkabau, the Acehnese and the Batak-form the vast majority of the island’s indigenous population, but over a dozen smaller ethnic groups are also represented, each speaking a difference language and processing a distinct history and culture.

            In recent centuries, there has been a significant influx of outsiders to Sumatra as well. The Japanese, who came by the thousand as plantation workers at the beginning of this century, continue to arrive through Indonesia’s ambitious transmigration program. The Chinese, who first came as debt-bonded plantation coolie and tin miners in the 29^th century, now dominate the wholesale and merchandising sectors of all major Sumatran towns. And a smattering of peoples from others island of Indonesia and abroad now live work in the booming oil industry.

           

Islamic strongholds

Sumatra is among the most thoroughly Islamic regions the archipelago. History states that Islam first came to Southeast Asia at a town on Sumatra’s northeast coast, variously referred to as Samudra or Pasai. From here, the religion spread around both coasts of Sumatra and across to neighboring islands and the Malay Peninsula-largely through an Islamic trading network established by Malay merchants oat Malacca in the 15^th century. For many centuries the term “Malay” was indeed synonymous throughout Indonesia with “Muslim”.

            The Malays have a long and illustrious history dating back to the days when the Buddhist Malay kingdom of Sriwijaya dominated the straits from a base at what is now Palembang, in South Sumatra, from the late 7^th until the 11^th centuries. For many centuries thereafter, the figure of the Malay raja embodied the highest cultural ideals of gentility, grace, eloquence, learning and Muslim piety throughout the Malay World. While fishermen and farmers could never match the raja’s refinement, they modeled their best behavior on the ideals he represented.

            Today the Malays are Sumatra’s largest ethnic group, numbering more than 13 million people and inhabiting most of the southern and eatern coasts and lowlands of the main island, as well as the smaller island offshore. Another 8 million people in neighboring Malaysia also consider themselves to be Malay-though many are descendasts of Minangkabau, Cham and Javanese migrants. Even in Sumatra itself, many people of Batak descent call themselves “Malay,” so that in fact a tremendous linguistic and cultural variety is encompassed by this ethnonym.

            The second largest ethnic group in Sumatra, and the one most closely related to the Malays in terms of language and culture, are the Minangkabau of the western central hinglands. They now number about 5  million, and are known as staunch Muslims, while at the same time retaining vestiges of an unusual matrilineal kinship system that predates their conversion to Islam. This means that the traditional Minangkabau longhouses, fertile rositions ricelands, and positons of  leadership within the clan are all transmitted to the next generation through women. While men hold public positions of leadership, they inherit these through their mothers-and when they retire they are replaced by their sister’s sons.

            A third major Islamic group inhabits Sumatra’s strategic northern coast. The Acehnese, who number about 3 million today, also speak a language related to Malay, and are best known for their fierce resistence against the Dutch during a 30-year jihad (holy war) from 1873 to 1903.long before this, in the 17^th century, Aceh was in fact the most powerful Islamic kingdom in the region. Today, Islam still rules the hearts of the Acehnese, and on Fridays the faithful fill Banda Aceh’s stately Grand Mosque while the town’s shops are shuttered tight. Just as among the Minangkabau, and despite Islam’s favoring of males, Acehnese village life revolves around women. Upon marriage, a man usually moves to his wife’s village, where her family provides them a house.

            In the highlands of central Aceh live the Gay, all of woman are Muslim. Their language, like that of the Acehnese, is remarkable for its many borrowings from Mon Khmer, a language group of mainland Southeast Asia. Unlike the Acehnese, however, the Gayo are patrilineal, and in the majority of cases, a bride moves to her hudband’s village. Gayo who live around the edges of Lake Tawar harvest carp and a minnow-like fist called depik  from the lake; coffee and tea are other major products from this region.

            The Gayo fight with words. Poetic duels, didong, were once performed at weddings between pairs of speakers representing the families of bride and groom. Later, didong helped defuse hostilities between villages, and more recently men have turned this verbal art into a completion between clubs or teams composed of lead singers supported by an encircling chorus.

Christian convert

While the coastal and urban areas of the island are predominantly Muslim, large areas of Sumatra are now mainly Christian, and in fact more Christian live on this island than any other in Indonesia. German Lutheran missionaries working with the Toba Batak enjoyed early and widespread success. Today, the Toba Batak church is the largest Christian body in Indonesia.

            In contrast, the Dutch Reformed missionaries who worked in the nearby Karo Batak region met decades of resistance. As a result, the Christian Karo have become a majority only since the 1950s, when an indigenous church emerged. The Simalungun Batak, once part of the Toba church, have separated into their own ethnic denomination.

            The hymns and the liturgy in all these ethnic Batak churches are in the vernacular languages, but just as throughout Indonesia, these ethnic churches face competition from Catholic and Pentecostal denominations which operate through the medium of Indonesian, and whose congregations are ethnically mixed.

            About 10 percent of the Angkola Batak who live to the south of the Toba are also Christian, but the majority, like the Mandailing Batak to the south in South Tapanuli, are Muslim. Other pockets of Christianity include the islands of Nias and Mentawai off the west coast, and some of the original inhabitans of the island of Enggano.

A patchwork of peoples

While most of Sumatra’s people live as farmers, small groups such as the Kubu of Jambi Province and the Sakai of the Riau Islands live mainly by fishing and hunting along swampy southern rivers. Another group, the Orang Laut literally “sea people” but often called sea gypsies or oven sea pirates__live in boats among the hundreds of small island in the Riau Archipelago.

            Lake Kerinci, surrounded by wet rice terraces in the highlands of western Jambi Province, is home to the Kerinci people. Lacustrine fishing and tea cultivation supplement a rice economy. Like the Minagkabau, the Kerinci are matrilineal and construct longhouses for matrilineally extended families, but their longhouses are unique in the archipelago for having no communal passage or gallery linking the family apartments. While a man attaches himself to his wife’s family, he retains membership in his natal family and lives partly at his own longhouse, where he helps to manage his lineage property and the affairs of his sister’s children.

            Bengkulu Province is home to the Rejang, who call themselves “We the people of Jang.” Their mythical ancestor, Jang, was reputed to be of the royal family of Java’s Majapahit kingdom. He is said to have settled in Sumatra in the 14^th century, and had four sons who became the ancestors of the four patrillineal clans that today constitute Rejang society, a people numbering around 200,000. The Rejang region spans a diserve terrain, from the coast up gentle foothills to highland peaks convered in tropical rainforest.

            Rejang was one of the last regions in Sumatra to accept Islam, so the pre-Islamic focus on ancestor spirits remains strong. Each of Rejang’s claims dominion over its own territory. The oldest village in each of these territories contains a sacred shrine associated with its founding ancestor. Villages and lineages also have their ancestral shrines, so pilgrimage to the principal clan shrine occur only for extremely important purposes.

            To the west of Palembang, near the town of Lahat, the Pasemah Highlands contain meghalitic remains dated to AD 100. This statuary, the most extensive of its kind in the archipelago,consist of many animal  and human figures as well as dplmens, menhirs and stone cist cist graves. Although the Pasemah people converted to Islam in the early 20^th century, they continue to visit these these shrines, and others on Mt. Dempo, to redeem ancestral vows. Although similar to the Rejang in their social organization and even their founding mythology, the Pasemah were bitter enemies of the Rejang, and the lowland Malays as well, in the precolonial.

            The Lampung region at Sumatra’s southern tip contains several ethnic groups with different cultural histories, including many Javanese who have migrated here in large numbers, both spontaneously and through the government’s transmigration programs. One of the most numerous indigenous peoples of this region, the Abung, say the originated in the mountains to the west where, in the 15^th century, they maintained a megalithic culture similar to that of Nias. Headhunting and human sacrifice brought them into conflict with neighboring peoples, especially lowland Malays, who finally drove them into their current setting around 1450.

            Abung society is composed of numerous patrilineal clans maintains a separate house, occupied most of the time by only a few elderly people. Villages contains as many as 3,000 people and 120 clan house, but working adults and children spend most of their time in small seasonal settlements outside the village, maintaining their swidden gardens. They return to the village for initiation ceremonies or other special events. Initiations usher men into a series of ranks that indicate their wealth, formerly, headhunting was a precondition for the highest rank, and initiates to this rank were enthroned on a dolmen of stone.

            Although the Dutch attempted to stop their headhunting and human sacrifices, the Abung continued these practices surreptitiously into the 19^th century. Like all their neighbors in the region, the Abung are now Muslims. In their modern version of initiation rites, called papadon, dancing substitutes for headhunting, and a buffalo is sacrificed instead of a human.

Into the modern world 

In the last 20 years, Sumatra’s natural resources__particularly oil and natural gas__have helped fuel Indonesia’s rapid economic growth. This growth has resulted in a new emphasis on education and on highway construction, which together with newspapers, films and television are increasingly drawing the peoples of Sumatra into a national community and into the word economy. Signs of this emphasis__from the newly-completed Trans-Sumatra Highway running the length of the island, to the puffing gas and oil refineries of Lhokseumawe and Palembang-are everywhere to be seen.

MODERN HISTORY

Nationalisme, Revolution & Independence 

The Dutch conquest in the development of a common education and administrative system throughout Sumatra. Together with Islam, this laid the foundation for the emergence of common national sentiment. This first made itself felt through the mass Muslim organization Sarekat Islam, which tapped the suppressed resentment at alien domination. Jambi witnessed a small rebellion in 1916. Aceh was disturbed by riots in 1918-1919, and the Minangkabau developed a radical Islamic movement in the same years. In 1926, the Indonesian Communist Party launched a quixotic revolution; paradoxically, it was some of the relatively commercialized Muslim of Minangkabau who fought hardest for it.

            In 1917 the first generation of Sumatrans to have enjoyed Dutch education formed the Young Sumatrans League. Support came from Minangkabau clerks, teachers and traders all over Sumatra. Toba Batak students established their own organization in the 1920s, and by 1926 these groups had been incorporated into the National League of Indonesian Students. Sumatran figures such as Mohammad Hatta (later Vice-President) and Soetan Sjahrir (Indonesian’s first prime minister) contributed greatly to developing Indonesian’s national consciousness.

            Sumatra’s role in developing a national literature was even more important. Malay had always been the principal written language for most Sumatra’s, and its adoption as Bahasa Indonesia, the language of nationalism, involved no linguistic conflict as it did for Javanese and Sundanese. Hence the first writers to adopt Malay to modern literary uses were virtually all Sumatran. In the early twenties, the political activists Mohammad Yamin, Sanisui Pane, and Mohammad Hatta were the first to write Malay poetry in a modern spirit, while the Langkat prince Amir Hamzah and the revolutionary Chairil Anwar wrote the finest Indonesian poetry of the 1930s and 1940s. The development of the modern Indonesian novel in the 1920s and 1930s was almost entirely a Minangkabau affair.

            It is not surprising, considering this strong contribution to Indonesian nationalism, that Sumatra rejected all attempts to separate it from Java in the turbulent 1940s.TheJapanese invasion in March 1942 caused greater upheaval than in Java. In Aceh the Japanese were assisted by an armed rebellion against the retreating Dutch, whose leaders wanted to end the dominance of the uleebalang (district chiefs). The Japanese initially suppressed all these movements, and forbade any nationalist activity. However, the Japanese gave the nationalists access to the state-population for war purposes. When the war ended, two rival elites-nationalist and traditionalist-eyed each other with mistrust.

            The Japanese belatedly fostered the idea of an independent Sumatra in 1945, establishing a powerless consultative council and a secretariat in Bukittinggi. In 1947, the returning Dutch set up federal states in the areasthey controlled in East Sumatra. The following year they encouraged a Sumatran umbrella organization for these and other states, but the idea gained little interest. Sumatrans had already decided in the 1920s that they could only bring together their diverse ethnic groups at a national level.

            Independence was declared in Jakarta three days after Hiroshima, but the revolution in Sumatra did not begin until October, when allied troops arrived to accept the Japanese surrender. Young activists, some with Japanese military training, fought against the British who occupied parts of Medan, Padang, and Palembang, and finally against the Dutch forces which replaced the British at the end of 1946.

            Most of the violence was internal. In Aceh the uleebalang were overthrown by a Muslim led coalition in December 1945, at the conclusion of a bloody civil war. Three months later, the east coast Malay sultans and Simalungun rajas were overthrown in what was dubbed a “social revolution.” These spontaneous movements led to a breakdown in central authority especially in East Sumatra, where semi military groups ot young men, became a law unto themselves funding themselves by selling the produce of the plantations they controlled to Singapore merchants. When the Dutch occupied the plantation area around Medan, and the oil installations of Palembang in mid-1947, these armed groups fought among themselves in Tapanuli.

            The vast island was far from integrated politically or economically when the revolution ended with transfer of full sovereighty to Indonesian in 1950. Each former residency had its own battle-hardened military force reluctant to return to civilian life, and each felt it had earned the right to play a part in the Republic on its own terms. Moreover, the rewards of the smuggling trade to Singapore, which had seemed patriotic during both the Japanese occupation and the revolution, were not easy to give up to an impoverished central government in Jakarta which had little to offer in return.

            The first post-independence crisis occurred in Aceh, when Muslims objected to being incorporated with Christian Bataks into the province of North Sumatra, and to the failure of the government to declare Indonesian a Muslim state. In 1953, Aceh revolted against Jakarta, and declare Aceh part of Dar al-Islam (the Islamic world). Troops sent from Java quickly re-occupied the Acehnese towns, but the hinterland remained largely in rebel hands until peace was eventually negotiated in 1959. Aceh was then granted autonomous status. Meanwhile Toba Batak and Minangkabau military leaders joined national politicians dissatisfied with the centralism, corruption and pro-communist policies of the central government, to form the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia (PRRI)  in February 1958. The central government reacted by bombing Padang and Bukittinggi and sending a large force from Java. The fighting was over within six months, but it left West Sumatra feeling like an occupied province in which locals were no longer trusted with high military or civilian office. If Sumatrans had been over-represented in national leadership before these events, they were under-represented thereafter.

            Under President Suharto’s New Order government which llook power in 1966, regional discontents have eased. Firstly, the government’s anti communist and free-market policies are those which  the PRRI had advocated. Secondly, the central government has provided roads, electricity, schools, hospitals and other infrastructural facilities, which have helped transform the economy. Large multi-ethnic provinces were broken up until all except North Sumatra (pre-war East Sumatra plus Tapanuli) were back to the boundaries of the old Dutch residencies, and the army’s presence became less obvious. If one still hears grumbles about the pusat (center), these are now no different from those heard in every Indonesian province.