Torn in Toraja

Jeremy Wagstaff writes: This episode is about Dinny, an Indonesian friend who has a particular vantage point from which to watch the Coronavirus saga. She has long dumped the polluted streets of Jakarta for the highland life of her husband's Toraja homeland. Dinny runs a small company that employs local weavers. When I caught up with her she was in reflective mood: it was changing her compatriots already in startling ways, but was all this the fulfilment of a prediction not from the animism of her adopted homeland, but something altogether more recent?

Subscribe and get updates as soon as a new podcast episode goes live in BuzzSprout. We are also on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, and Stitcher.

Email us at pandemic@cleftstick.com. Life in a Pandemic is produced by Jeremy Wagstaff and Sari Sudarsono for CleftStick.com. 

Transcript

Jeremy:   0:00
Hi, My name is Jeremy Wagstaff. You're listening to Living in a Pandemic. It's March 30th 2020. There are 715,660 confirmed cases of COVID-19. 1,285 of them in Indonesia. Around the world, 33,589 people have died.      

Dinny:   0:00
Hi, hi, hi. Just a sec...

Jeremy:   0:23
This is Dinny, an Indonesian friend who has long dumped the polluted streets of Jakarta for her husband's island of Sulawesi. Up in the hills, among his Toraja people. Dinny works for the U. N. and runs a small company that employs local weavers. When I caught up with her, she had just returned from the capital nearly 1,000 miles away. The connection wasn't great, understandably given her home in Tana, Toraja Highlands. But it's clear enough.

Dinny:   0:55
God, it's just so complicated and yesterday we likely we decided to go home because usually I don't spend more than one week in Jakarta anyway. And my in-laws, we asked them, "What should we do?" My husband is an indigenous Torajanese, right? So they say you better go home to Toraja because as in Toraja when you die or if you die, you know where you will be buried.

Jeremy:   1:28
They get to the point. They don't, hey don't sugarcoat it.

Dinny:   1:31
No. Yeah. It was, like, quite shocking, like in a way. But they just, you know, just go home. In Jakarta, if or when you died, they will put you in a mass grave, and nobody can sit you. Nobody can have ceremony for you. Just go home and at least you will know where you will be buried and we will know where you are .

Jeremy:   1:55
Is that just a cultural thing about death? Or is it that kind of fatalism about the coronavirus?

Dinny:   2:01
I think in a way it's a combination. But this is their way of looking at death I suppose. They don't look at death as the end or something scary, like, I think, you know, that in Toraja, the ceremony on for funeral is like it's basically a celebration of life. So I think it got to that point and they just say it without mincing words, because Torajan is even like before this corona thing, wherever they die the family will make sure they will take the body home, like, you have to go home. We have more tombs here now than ever because Torajanese has to go home and that's the way they look at it. So here we are. Now we are home.

Jeremy:   3:03
So when did you arrive?

Dinny:   3:05
Yesterday. The plane from Jakarta. Everybody was quiet and nobody there who coughed. They were so quiet. And then when we transferred to a smaller plane to Palopo and airport put us like separately, everybody sat on those cabin. They're like one or two seats in between and that everybody is so quiet. I just came back from Lombok and East Nusa Tenggara doing a training  for Oxfam, Oxfam programme. And then along the way, because that was like from the 15 to the 22nd of March and before and along the way we kept asking the community head whether we should go ahead, you know, because they look at people from Jakarta as the carrier of, possible carrier of COVID-19. So we asked, and four out of the five groups say, let's go ahead. Let's limit the participants to less than thirty according to what the governor or Bupati announced, and then we don't shake hands. And, as you know, and in East Indonesia, usually we rub our noses as a greeting, you know. So we don't rub our noses, we don't even shake hands. And then we have soap and water to wash our hands all the time and we continue, except for one who hesitated. But at the end, they say, let's go ahead with the training, you know. And... But they say that  they're more scared of dengue fever. That's what, that also struck me. You know, like Jakarta people, we start talking about COVID where people, hundreds of people, actually 1000 have died of dengue fever in Indonesia and nobody talk about it. And especially in East Nusa Tenggara. That is a problem. And I found out later that the tuberculosis is also bad. People are dying of tuberculosis, so it makes me think also like, "Bagaimana yah ..?" I mean... So, when I was in Nusa Tenggara, I was more scared of getting bitten by the mosquitoes than the COVID-19 because, yeah, so, I don't know  ..

Jeremy:   5:33
Do you think there's a kind of it becomes hysterical? Do you think that the panic is, or  the sense of anxiety is excessive?  I mean, we look at this one thing and obviously it's very infectious and it is killing people. But it as you say there are a lot of other diseases that are killing people all the time, but we're just...

Dinny:   5:55
Ignore it! Yeah, we ignore it. And because it happened. It doesn't only happen to the poor though, but it happens mostly to the poor, where that is like bad sanitation and all that. But like my friends and also my husband's family asked me, "Why do you keep traveling and teaching the people?" I said we tried to be careful, but it's all agreed upon. And if I want to be, to sound like patriotic, because poverty continues and with this COVID-19 it goes deeper. You know, like, what to choose, how to choose. So we have Susan, who is the coordinator for this programme, and she is a weaver, and also she has 15 years of community coordinating  experience, and at the end of the programme, she said, Ibu, I have to go home right away because they close, they stop the ferry to my island. And I said, What?? Because once you stop the ferry, there is no food ya, because they now depend on rice from Java and what not. And there is no solar, apa itu, like gasoline, diesel for the  electricity of the island. So everything stops, you know. So that's why you cannot keep saying lock down, lock down on Indonesia with 17,000 islands with different infrastructure and way of life. Because then she rushed before the ferry stopped because she cannot just swim from one island to another. You know. Like, this is not so simple. So, sigh, tidak tahu lah ..

Jeremy:   7:58
How do you feel in Tana Toraja? Presumably there aren't any cases being reported locally yet. Is that right?

Dinny:   8:06
Yeah. Apparently there were two suspects, but they were tested negative. Here it's very quiet, but I am happy here because yeah, I'm always happy here and the air is cleaner and we hardly have, like, we don't really have neighbours,  like we have neighbours, but it's like we have to walk 5 to 10 minutes to get to our next door neighbours. So I feel safer here. But we do talk to my mother in law, but she's glued to the TV.  She's in town. We are in the slope of the mountains, we are in the village. Really village. And, but people follow the order, huh. Everybody stays home. They closed the guest houses and the hotels and the cafes. So it's very, very quiet. Very quiet.

Jeremy:   8:55
How dependent is the area on tourism?

Dinny:   8:58
Very much so. Very much so. This is very bad for the guides, for the drivers, for the cafes, because things have also changed before.  It was dependent on foreign tourism. But now more and more Indonesian or domestic tourists come, and they shop more,  they stay longer, they eat more. So, yeah. So now Torajanese used to look down on domestic tourists, but now they love Indonesian tourists Because they spend more money basically. But now no more. They are talking about closing the borders from Makasar to Toraja online. But I don't know. I think the decision will be either tonight or tomorrow because the president is supposed to have a meeting today. Right?  With the cabinet and the, yeah.

Jeremy:   9:51
So this would be sort of sealing, though, stopping the roads between Makasar, the provincial capital and your area.  

Dinny:   10:00
Yeah.  

Jeremy:   10:02
Is that Tana Toraja main connection to the outside world. How much of an impact would that have on supplies, etc?

Dinny:   10:12
My husband was saying also that actually, Tana Toraja has been split into two Kabupaten now. One is Tana Toraja with Makale as the capital. And Makale is connected to Makasar from the south. And where we live is in Kabupaten Toraja  Utara, north of Rantepao, and our connection is to Palopo. So if you close Makale and Palopo roads, then basically we are cut off from the rest of the world. And my husband was saying, "yeah, just get ready. We may have to go through the mountains and the valleys if we need to go out."

Jeremy:   10:56
Right. How do you personally Dinny think things  will turn out? What do you think the next two weeks will look like for you and your husband?

Dinny:   11:07
I don't know, but I feel when I was in Jakarta, I started to get depressed. I mean, it's like cooped up in our apartment, and then it's just like bumping off, bumping on my husband  all the time because the place is so small.  And then my daughter's son, what do you called it. He started. He has a business to run and he wanted to stay open because he has to feed  15 people. But the wife wanted him to close down, so they started fighting. So I heard from some of my friends too that domestic fights increasing. I guess I'm not answering you directly, but it's just like what's happening. And then also I have to close Toraja Melo Shop and office. And to tell you the truth I have asked agreement from our staff that in March, because there's no sale because we have been closed for more than two weeks, I asked them if they agree for twenty percent cut and they all agree. And then I told them because we're supposed to have new programmes actually starting with grants and investment starting in March 1. But it didn't happen, right? So if things don't improve, I also asked our team's approval or agreement that if April nothing happens, I have to ask for a salary cut of 50% and then if nothing happens, maybe we have to close down because we don't know. You don't know how long this will last, so... We don't have a big team. We have 7 full time sort of. But everybody agrees and let's see what we can do while we are at home, you know, doing online sales  or something like that. So that's that. But Jeremy, I don't know, believe it or not, like as I get older and being in Toraja, the physical, or two dimension, three dimensional worlds, sort of sometimes slipped out and you can see or hear on the other side. I don't know. And then I read this book, and this is one of the books that apparently has gone viral. I bought this book in Australia when I was with my children in 2005 and apparently one of the prophecies like happen. Did you know about this? Like it was viral? It's Sylvia Browne. The book is called... let me get it just a sec...  It's Sylvia Browne prophecy. And I read it again and she... let me read it. It's short, you know. Again you can believe it or not. She says. I bought the book in 2005, and then it was actually published in 2004 and it says, by 2020 we'll see more people than ever wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves in public, inspired by an outbreak of a severe pneumonia-like illness that attacks both the lungs and the bronchial tube and it's ruthlessly resistant to treatment. This illness will be particularly baffling in that after causing a winter of absolute panic it will seem to vanish completely until 10 years later, making both its source and its cure that much more mysterious. Isn't it?

Jeremy:   14:57
Spooky.

Dinny:   14:57
Yeah, I know. It's spooky. I don't know. So I was like, Oh, it's in my library this book and I didn't really feel, I don't even remember I mean, like so... so I don't know, I hope what  she wrote was true. It will just disappear, I hope. But I think it has changed. I think it has changed many of us, including me. Unlike on at least like how we work like today you are my fourth Zoom meeting. I'm so tired.

Jeremy:   15:31
Sorry, I add to the burden.  

Dinny:   15:35
Yeah, another request for a Zoom meeting. I said no. I don't think I can take it anymore. From eight o'clock and I don't know, Jeremy. And in the middle of all this. Suddenly I was, how do you say it, I was elected to become Komisaris (Board of Commissioners) of PT Sarinah. Oh my God. And it's so much work and we keep on working and they keep asking for Zoom meeting after another. So...

Jeremy:   16:04
This is Sarinah, the department store.

Dinny:   16:06
Yeah, well, the minister of (Erick) Thohir asked me to become Komisaris independent (independent commissioner), and I said, what am I supposed to do? It's like a joke and he said, transform it, you know, because it's already like, transform it back to Sukarno's dream. But in the contemporary world. Like you're right, you know. Like, so it's interesting. So we have to continue living, I guess, and make sure that this happens.

Jeremy:   16:40
Yeah, yeah, it's. It must be strange to view it from your perch up in Tana Toraja, because on the one hand, you are very, you know you're being asked to become a commissioner of one of the, you know, the country's oldest and most inefficient but at the same time, you as you say, you know, you feel yourself disconnecting a little bit from the physical world, from your your place up in the hills and watching it as it burn. There are two sides to down there.

Dinny:   17:15
Yeah, that's right, Jeremy. Thank you for making it sharper  because it's like switching from the supernatural, spiritual, too, Like the capitalistic world. But then we're connected with Zoom. I mean, like, I've just finished before this. That's why I asked for one hour break with you. We just have our board of directors and board of commissioners meeting. And I'm like, Oh, my God. And everybody was staying at home except two. They have to take turns  and staying in the office. But now, now everybody is focusing on what to do. Like with this COVID 19,  Sarinah now is sewing and making masks and medical peoples like uniform and all that, you know. But we have to look for. Yeah, we have to look for the material. We have to look for, what to sell, what to do and what to donate, or do fundraising.

Jeremy:   18:14
Well, look, I don't want to I don't want to keep you, Dinny, but I'm hoping to if it's if it's not too many Zoom calls for you, can I kind of contact you in a week or so time and find how you are?

Dinny:   18:26
Sure, sure. It's good that you're doing this because it takes it to like another level of humanity. This is stories, right? Basically, stories.

Jeremy:   18:35
Yeah, that's right. I mean I kind of, I'm journalist by training and profession, but I feel like this story's gone beyond that. It's really, I thought, I just started talking to friends and hearing what their life was like and there was obviously a lot of common threats, but also some quite unique aspects. And I realised a lot of what is happening is in people's minds, and therefore talking about it might actually be helpful to understand what we're going through and to, you know, kind of offer support where we can, but also to share with a broader community. And therefore people might not feel so isolated they might understand, and take some some comfort from it.

Dinny:   19:17
Now that we are talking. It's like my friends start having online parties. Like we go on Zoom and, for example, I have this pork eating group in Jakarta. We are all the Kafir of Jakarta. And we go online and we show off the pork dishes that we are eating.

Jeremy:   19:38
Lovely. But Indonesians are by nature are very social, right? I mean, they like to eat together. They like to spend time to just hang out together. Yeah, its's hard to take that away from people, isn't it?

Dinny:   19:54
Yeah. The queue. You know how Indonesian don't queue and they like to push in the queue, right? People keep pushing against them. But now they keep their distance, which is like surprising for me. They do keep distance in the queue, whether to check in. Now they learned to keep distance. I know it must be hard. And I also remember that wherever we go out in public, in the airport, in church, whatever people keep coughing. Always cough and spit. But now I think they stop. It was like, Wow, you have to put fear into people and they got, like, very disciplined.

Jeremy:   20:36
That's Dinny balancing the corporate and the spiritual from Indonesia's island of Sulawesi.  

Jeremy:   20:42
Zoom has become controversial of late for its security lapses and data policies, but it has certainly helped a lot of people overcome the technical hurdles that still exist in talking to and seeing each other easily and cheaply. We'll circle back to Dinny later in the series to see how she's coping and whether her adopted home can be spared the creeping coronavirus.

Jeremy:   21:03
If you have questions for any of the people I've spoken to, or for me, or comments, you can reach me at Pandemic@Cleftstick.com.  

Jeremy:   21:11
You've been listening to life in a pandemic produced by myself. Jeremy Wagstaff and Sari Sudarsono. If you're not already doing so, please subscribe, so you can catch future episodes and find old ones on. If you like it enough, make your feelings known on iTunes or whatever service you're listening to. This on. If you'd like to comment, or participate. Please drop us a line at Pandemic@Cleftstick.com My name is Jeremy Wagstaff. Goodbye for now and stay well wherever you are.