In Search Of Bada Man

In 100 things to do before you die, no 101 should be plowing through slides, deciding which ones to scan. When I came to Bada Man, I searched the web to see who else had made the journey from Palu to Lake Poso. Two especially interesting entries were by Mark Moxon in ’97 (a decade after my trip) and Edward Pollard-Forest Conservationist, in 2001. There was another by two guys on motorbikes who had GPSs and cell phones but I couldn’t find it again. There have been changes of course, but the adventure is still waiting for the intrepid traveler.

How did I manage to find myself on a bark saddle on a small packhorse in a rain forest in Central Sulawesi? It all started with my obsession with a line drawing of an almost embryonic man in Bill Dalton’s “Indonesia Handbook.” Under the image was this caption: “This giant stone sculpture is found at Bada, Central Celebes.”

Surprisingly there were no directions and I couldn’t find anyone who had been to Central Sulawesi, much less Bada. The only certainty was that Celebes had become Sulawesi since Indonesia declared independence from the Dutch in 1945, and that wild mountains and fierce head hunters had effectively isolated the area for most of the 300 years of Dutch rule. The headhunters were subdued in 1910, leaving only mountains as a barrier.

A seemingly elusive 12-foot stone image was irresistible. I knew enough Bahasa Indonesia to talk my way in and out of villages but couldn’t find anyone else to share my fantasy. I would have to search for Bada Man alone.

I began my search in the stifling hot coastal town of Palu where I picked up the first-ever tourist map of Central Sulewesi. Waiting at the market/bus stop with sweat pouring onto the map and robbed of the energy necessary to make a few purchases I almost gave up what now seemed like a crazy idea. Then the bus rumbled to a stop and joined the crowd scrambling for seats while thinking that maybe I’d be turned back at the first village.

A five-hour bus ride with forty curious Indonesians happily occupying half that many seats ended in the village of Gimpu…the end of the road. We had gained a little altitude, the weather was a bit cooler and already the hint of adventure replaced my doubts as the bus let me off in front of the village chief’s thatched roof house.

(Photo opposite: Leaving Gimpu, sharing a saddle with salt and sugar.) The startled kepala desa (village chief) welcomed me with tea, shooed six children out of a large bed, and the guest room was ready. A cooperative kepala desa can perform miracles if he agrees to let you pass through his territory where he will be responsible for you until you reach the next kepala desa. The next morning, not knowing what else to do with the strange woman looking for stones, he hailed two men with pack horses bound for Moa. And that’s how I ended up on a wooden saddle balanced on either side with bags of sugar and salt, following the dotted portion of the map - the trail ending at Gintu, home of Bada man.

The morning ride was sheer enchantment. Faint footfalls of the two pack horses barely ruffled the silence of the forest as a magic land began to unfold. Stately trees with multiple strands of fern necklaces vaulted to the sky and splashed it green, while below, invisible gnomes tended lush explosions of tropical plants. A gentle rain, turning to mist as it filtered through the verdant canopy, added to the ethereal, dream-like atmosphere.

(Photo opposite: The horses hugged the mountain on narrow, muddy slivers that hardly qualified as trails.) The tranquil morning ride through the rain forest contrasted sharply with terrifying moments in the afternoon as the horses hugged the mountain on narrow, muddy slivers that hardly qualified as trails. Below us (when I dared myself to look down) was the Karanganan, the mighty, muddy river that had cut this chasm.

After picnicking on a rice packet lunch from the kepala desa, I was thoroughly enjoying my adventure when around a bend, I dodged a fallen tree, the saddle slipped, the horse bolted and I somersaulted over the back of the horse. My guides rushed to my rescue. Helping me up they said in unison, “Nonya, sakit?” (Mrs. are you sick?) The breath had been knocked out of me but as far as I could tell, nothing was broken. Feeling foolish, I gingerly remounted my steed but as each breath became more painful I realized that at the very least I had badly bruised ribs.

The rest of the ride was an endurance test. At sunset, all sense of reality vanished as a tropical mirage appeared before us. A narrow path wound past a steepled church through the center of the village of Moa. Poinsettias waved red banners over thatched houses set among fruit gardens of banana, papaya and coconut. I stared, wondering if I were hallucinating, at the church where written in English were the words “The Salvation Army”.

To reach the village, the path cut through a bramble patch. I tried to lift my legs but couldn’t. If I hadn’t been bone-weary, dehydrated and in pain I would have cried as the thorns tore at my legs. The kepala desa’s porch was filled with villagers who witnessed my final indignity. I clumsily dismounted and collapsed. My legs wouldn’t carry my to the porch so I crawled to the first step and began my, by now silly, even to me, litany of “looking for old stones”.

(Photo opposite: Poinsettias waved red banners over thatched houses in the village of Moa.) The astonished kepala desa granted me two days in this paradise, and after a supper of noodle soup, I fell asleep in someone’s vacated room where light from a kerosene lamp cast dancing shadows through woven bamboo walls.

Fortunately, I awoke before dawn and was the first to reach the communal bathroom, the river. Dawn crept softly over the mountains, transforming black-and-white-silhouettes into lush primary colors. Sun touched the flowers of coffee plants, perfuming the world. Then the rhythm of the village day began with the thump, thump of a wooden pestle hitting freshly roasted coffee beans in a hollow tree trunk, followed by the staccato beat of three girls alternately pounding rice in a wooden bin. Dogs yapped at the heels of men with spears on their way to the forest to hunt wild pig. Children shouted as they chopped wood and husked coconuts.

I was almost grateful for the accident that left my mind blank and my senses free to enjoy this Shangri-La village. At sunset, the workday ended with the clanging bell in the church steeple. Children stopped what they were doing and ran to the church to sing and to draw crosses and Bibles and hands that were praying.

The kepala desa observed me carefully and after two nights deemed me fit for travel–sans horse. The guide chosen by the kepala desa arrived, without a horse, but with a rectangle of cloth tied at two ends, forming a backpack for my bag and lunch - a banana-leaf packet of rice.

Entering the forest, we strolled to the steady drone of cicadas through an endless park with only one moment of stark terror - a black snake crawled across “our” narrow trail. I had been in the lead, but I now hung behind, as my new interest in this Garden of Eden became the heels of my guide.

As the sun began to slip between the accordion-folded hills, and I began to wonder how much further I could walk, a man and his son returning from distant rice fields invited us to stop at their home. We clambered over the log fence surrounding the hillside garden and wound our way through an avenue of towering green corn. Unprepared for the vista at the summit, I thought I had fallen off the mountain, died and gone to heaven. A most charming thatched house floated at the top of the world in a ring of mountains attached to the earth by a single strand of yellow marigolds. Who had created this fairy tale scene? Longing to know how the people live in such houses, I vowed I would spend the night at the Tware Bed and Breakfast.

The son called to his mother and I followed the men up the tree-stump step. I slumped on the bark platform that served as the floor as well as the sofa, bed and table, and saw that the room was almost bare. Blankets hung from the ridgepole. Jerry cans held water. A box of earth with three stones, twigs in the center, held a clay cooking pot.

(Photo opposite: A woman with a bark cloth that can be used as a blanket or a skirt.) After I had convinced the woman I couldn’t walk even another step, she carefully smoothed her sarong and sat like a high priestess in front of her hearth. The ritual began. Her arms began darting here and there, brushing coals aside, moving clay pots off and on the fire, chopping and stirring in a rhythmic pattern until, like a queen presenting her jewels, she served four tin plates with an artful arrangement of red rice, green vegetable and, for me, the honored guest, and egg.

A thick fog turned our square of door light to darkness as the wife unrolled a mat for me on the far side of the hearth, lit the string in a can of kerosene and began weaving a rice-winnowing tray. As she wove the thin strips of bamboo, she admired every thing I had: my dress, my thermos, my flashlight. The husband tried my reading glasses and shouted, “Everything is opened up”.

When the wife handed me a blanket, I was astonished to find that it was made of bark, my first clue that bark cloth was still made and used. Too tired to deal with my rioting thoughts, I fell asleep under the bark-cloth blanket.

The next morning after rice and coffee it was time to say goodbye. I had given them everything I had: a dress, a blouse, the thermos and glasses. They gave me an enchanting glimpse of a simple dignified life…and the bark-cloth blanket.

Down the mountain and into Bada Valley the scenery changed dramatically as I balanced precariously on slippery rice terraces and waded through irrigation canals, praying that I wouldn’t be host to the liver fluke known to cause schistosomiasis in this area. In a time and space warp, up and down, I staggered across a wobbly suspension bridge, walked across a flat, uninhabited plateau and entered at long last, the village of Gintu, home of Bada Man. It was late and Bada Man would have to wait.

The guide took me to the home of a secretary I had met in what now seemed light-years-away Palu. Early to bed after a supper of rice and fried chicken, my dreams of Bada Man were jolted at six in the morning as “Go Tell It On The Mountain” followed by “Jingle Bells” blared from a battery-operated cassette player.

(Photo opposite: It took two rafts to ferry us across the river for a visit to Bada Man.) The final expedition for the assault on Bada Man included the 13-year-old sister of the secretary and several of her giggly friends. They knew just how to act because the government tourism crew had recently photographed their older sisters in traditional dress in preparation for the first tourist brochure, which I was able to show them. Younger children joined our parade as we walked past thatched sheds where women wearing bark cloth skirts were softly felting bark with beaters, scored stones lashed to rotan handles, looking somewhat like lollipops. By the time we reached the Tawaelia River, it took two bamboo rafts to carry all of us across the river.

Scrambling up the riverbank, I caught my breath as the outline of Bada Man began to emerge. Surrounding hills turned the meadow into a theater-in-the-round. Bouffant clouds billowed overhead. At center stage stood Bada Man, whose real name is Palindo. He was magnificent. A torso with few details, his grandeur came from size and simplicity. Forehead and flared nose were one, above a faint slit mouth. Round stone eyes stared benignly at the peaceful valley.

What rituals had those eyes witnessed as a long-gone people took heads to appease their demanding gods? What was the meaning of the peculiar knob on his head? Who had made this enigmatic image?

As I stood in the middle of the meadow imagining all manner of pagan rituals, the girls interrupted my reveries. More interesting than the image was, “Did I have any medicine that would make their hair curly - like Michael Jackson’s”.

The map had shown a road, a red line from Gintu to Tentana on Lake Poso, as well as a cross for an airplane. The road was a half-truth, and might possibly be completed this year. The Cessnas had not flown for some months.

(Photo opposite: A young beauty poses by the statue that led me on a jungle trek. Called Palindo by locals, he will always be Bada Man to me.) The next morning, Albert, the guide, appeared with his horse. I traded my hat for a large grapefruit, found I was well enough to smartly mount my steed and departed through a multitude of children. In the next village it was school registration day. From an official’s megaphone boomed: “Goodbye to the mother on the horse. Have a safe journey and give to the world greetings from the people of Bomba”.

A gentle, two-hour climb put us on our first summit. While the horse grazed, Albert packed the saddlebags with grass for the horses, while assuring me, “I am a good man and I will get you safely to Tentana”. Gazing back at the valley I had no way of knowing I wouldn’t reach Tentana that day but two days hence after spending two nights in the forest.

I bade farewell to Bada Man, the reason for my journey. I had traveled 70 miles in distance and 2,000 years in time, back to the Neolithic hearth, bark clothing and perhaps even to the era of Bada Man.

But for all of that, the real men, women and children were the stars of the show.

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