How the spirit of weaving returned to its body

Agus really wanted to go to a national university and she thought that would please her parents. They had often gone on about how amazing it would be if one of their children were to obtain a degree from a national university and they were willing to make huge sacrifices, such as selling their only water buffalo, to make that happen. But in the meantime, they no longer had a water buffalo. The hard times they were in were hard indeed. Agus took the entrance exams and managed to win a full tuition scholarship. She was over the moon and knew her parents would be as well. She had really done her best, gone to a neighbouring city for the first time on her own, and focused intensely on the exam. She knew it was her one and only chance and she succeeded! Back in the village she told her mother about her achievement and her mother burst into tears. Agus assumed that the tears reflected how deeply moved her mother was by Agus’s achievement, but she was wrong. Her mother lashed out in anger. “Why would you do this when we are not able to pay for your needs in the city?” she asked Agus. “I am so ashamed.” 

 I pondered what Agus told me. Her mother must have been suffering very deep regret at not being able to facilitate her daughter's education.
 
Agus managed to overcome the situation by finding a sponsor who saw her through to the end of her degree. Recently she has been in a celebratory mood because she has graduated. She now holds a Bachelor of Arts from a national university and has letters beside her name. She has every reason to feel very, very proud. It was her indomitable courage that saw her through. She received her degree with self-confidence, pride and resolve. But I had a niggling concern. How would her mother be feeling given that someone else had supported her daughter? “Does your mother feel a little ambivalent toward the sponsor?” I asked. 

There is no doubt that Ompu Elza also felt proud. Agus dressed her in the graduation toga and took a photograph of her standing solemnly in front of the University, holding Agus’s graduation diploma. But was there also a tinge of sadness, regret, perhaps even a touch of resentment that she had not been the one to enable her daughter’s achievement? I knew Agus well enough that I could ask that question; I wanted to confide my concern about her Mom. I knew what my feelings would have been in her place.

 

“I will tell you what my mother said,” Agus answered in a decided way. “She said, ‘The spirit of weaving has come back.’”  I had not expected this answer. What did weaving have to do with Agus’s accomplishment? Agus explained. “Mother’s life was weaving. She started when she was very young and she did it every day. Her spirit and the spirit of weaving were one and the same. But then the spirit of weaving left her.” Agus knew precisely when. It was about twenty years ago, when economic circumstances forced her Mom to stop weaving, leaving her heartbroken. Try as she might, she was no longer able to meet her family’s needs by selling the products of her loom. That was how the spirit of weaving left her and how she withdrew from it. 

 

“A lost spirit will return when a body misses it and new sprouts will grow,” Agus explained to me.
 
I had to digest this. It appeared that Agus’s mother attributed Agus’s success (and thus her own good fortune) to the spirit of weaving. “Is it because she has started to weave again that she credits the spirit of weaving for your achievement?” I asked Agus. But Agus didn't know how to deal with my question. I think that the way I had framed it just didn’t make any sense across our cultural difference. She answered with a parable. 
 
“We plant a root crop (ubi) and the roots sprout new shoots. We can’t tell what the harvest will be because the roots are covered with earth. They can be covered up for a long time. Inang [the sponsor] came and tidied up the earth around the plants, cared for them.  And then there appeared to be new shoots. They represent hope.”

 

Ompu Elza at her loom. She returned
to it in 2015 - before the spirit returned.

“But what made the spirit of weaving return?” I persisted.  “We don’t know whether the spirit of weaving attracted the sponsor, or whether the sponsor attracted the spirit,” Agus answered simply. The very question seemed irrelevant. “The point is, it returned, and it hadn’t been there for some twenty years. When the sponsor came to clean up around the plants, apparently there were still some shoots; they were still alive. Hope was still growing in the ground.” 

 

This story has kept me in its grip. It reveals so much. In the first place, about gratitude. Agus does what she does, to the best of her ability; so does her whole family, including her mother. I, as 'the sponsor', did what I did. We are only human and we proceed as we proceed. For Agus's mother, it is the spirit that prevails and bestows us with success, if it is to be ours. For us there is but one option: to feel gratitude when it bestows. That's when we experience good fortune. ‘Rejeki’ comes from a higher hand. The spirit prevails. Gratitude is built into such a stance. It is central to life,; it is not just a feeling.
 
Agus’s story told me, too, that Agus’s mother has felt very engaged indeed in her daughter's
university career and in that pinnacle: her graduation.  Agus’s success had awakened her Mother's weaving spirit. It had been buried there, under the surface all that time, capable of sprouting new shoots. This told me how deep Ompu Elza’s pain had been when she was forced to put down her loom, and just how profound the antidote of her daughter’s graduation had been. It restored pride, well-being, a sense of being fortunate. 

Agus with her father not long before
he passed away

All of this confirmed that the spirit of weaving is sweet and good.  It is a source of blessings, ability, pride, self-respect. It truly is a core of Ompu Elza’s being; how deeply lived, the act of weaving can be: positivity and hope, like the shoots of new life, the essence of life.

 
And I learned about how my Simalungun family lives reciprocally with spirit. I learned about their two-way engagement with the spirit world. Like tending plants. We tend them and they tend us in return. Like the line in a Batak prayer about nurturing rice so that it can nurture us (Eme na hupagodang; Eme na pagodang ahu). When Ompu Elza wove, she was nurturing her weaving spirit. And when she was forced to stop weaving, she lost the spirit that was nurturing her existence. 

Postscript

Sometimes reality seems to take a strange twist. Then it becomes a challenge to locate the truth. This time, however, I think it is pretty clear where it lies. And that egg? Is it on my face? I choose to be lenient; this is just the way learning in a different culture proceeds: lots of twists, lots of egg, triangulation and hopefully learning. Let me explain:

 

Yesterday I shared with Agus’s elder sister, Lasma, how proud her mother had been at Agus’s graduation and I mentioned that Ompu Elza had used the expression ‘roh tenun’. I wanted to get Lasma’s take on her mother’s ‘weaving spirit’. I also wanted to know what the Simalungun word would be for that spirit that had returned to the body. 

 

Lasma told me that ‘roh tonun’ is said when someone completes a difficult task that has taken a lot of time, something like ‘congratulations’ but then with more weight. I didn’t get it. Why the word ‘tonun’ (Simalungun for weaving) and why ‘roh’ (spirit)? 

It turns out that some confusion hinged on the word ‘roh’, meaning spirit in Indonesian but meaning ‘come’ in Simalungun. I didn’t know that, and had thought that the Toba word for come, ‘ro’ was used in Simalungun. Lasma explained that the expression ‘roh tonun’ means ‘weaving comes’. I confirmed that with my Simalungun dictionary – and will have to get back to Agus to see how she responds to this discovery. She had spoken to me of ‘roh tenun’, in Indonesian, ‘the spirit of weaving’. Could be that she was  mixed up between the Indonesian and the Simalungun? 

 

But I still didn’t understand why ‘roh tonun’ would be used to express congratulations for a really considerable accomplishment. Lasma had an insight into that as well. “This is an expression that is used by weavers,” she said. When a weaver finishes a textile, the other weavers in the group will say, “Roh tonun” to compliment her. She had learned this from her grandmother, Ompu Elza’s mother. The accomplishment is considerable because it is a long and complicated process to weave a cloth. The process of weaving is apparently used as a kind of measurement for a considerable accomplishment, hence it was used by Ompu Elza. 

 

Once again, however, this interpretation confirms the positive light in which weaving is held.  Whew. But I am still horrified by the extent to which Agus and I had been spinning a tale rather than accurately interpreting a Simalungun expression.

Postscript 2

I shared with Agus what Lasma had told me, and Agus said that it did not alter her story. She had been talking about 'jiwa tenun', the spirit of weaving, and she had obtained her information from her mother. She knew her story to be true. 

I guess I have to go back and share this news with Lasma. Or ask Agus to talk about it with Lasma.... Reality is not always clear. There can be different perspectives, different experiences, different interpretations. Interpretations can be dynamic and malleable. Culture is never cut and dried or singular or clear, and the process of digging to understand an interpretation can shed much light.

Ailsa's Magic

My friend Ailsa Kay is at the Weaving Centre now. She is generating hope and happiness!

The day after she arrived, the women in Lasma's family all gathered to help her learn to weave. They posted pictures on Facebook, a sign of their intense excitement: they wanted to tell the world! For the occasion they all donned the  'bulang' headcloth, something that they have only ever done once before (when tourists visited). They clustered around Ailsa solicitously showing her how to stiffen the warp yarns with starch in preparation for weaving and they let her do it. Because they don't share a common language, the Simalungun girls are thrilled to be practising their English (with the help of Google) and Ailsa is no doubt learning a few words of Simalungun and Indonesian.

On the face of things, it may seem a simple matter to receive a visitor. For us at the Weaving Centre it is a Very Big Deal. For years, now, we have been working on our building, and specifically the Guest Room, to bring it up to the minimum standard that a Western visitor can expect. Our challenges have been significant, most of which fit under the heading 'Poverty'. Povery influences hope, will, knowledge, aspirations and belief in the future.  'Why would anybody visit the village?' the locals ask. It is ugly, and slummy, strewn with plastic garbage. So why would they devote time and money to a pipe dream of having visitors come? The charm the village once had was lost when people migrated from the ancient location beside the stream with the traditional architecture and built shacks along the road where they had better access to electricity and transportation. The village has lost its soul and is in disarray. The inhabitants are in basic survival mode. Bare, minimal survival occupies all of their time and thoughts. In some sections, clusters of families share a single toilet. Running water in a kitchen is a luxury dream. Hygienic standards cannot be upheld. The number of suicides is high though I don't know the rates. All of the farmers struggle against a system that benefits the middleman and the market but not them. How can they possibly believe that their weaving arts are of any importance or that visitors would want to visit their village to learn about those arts?  They themselves have learned from bitter experience that the market won't support their work. Besides, how could they possibly accommodate such a visitor? For them it is all a very far-from-their-bed scenario.

That is where my role comes in. I encourage, facilitate, discuss visions, allow myself to be laughed at and sometimes scorned; my motives invite incredulousness and inspire distrust -- and I plug on, trying to to keep their weaving arts front and centre in my thoughts, and hold onto the conviction that one day...one day.... the skills in the village will be universally treasured. If only we can keep those skills alive in the meantime!

Enter Ailsa! Is she the first Western, white woman to ever sit down and learn to weave in Simalungun? I have never heard of another doing that. I think that she is making history! She is generating pride, hope and new visions of the future in the weaving family. They have allowed me to persuade and lead them all this way in preparation for her visit, on condition that I bear all the risks. Will Ailsa's visit re-kindle belief in their beautiful weaving tradition? Will they take on the dream/goal of having it survive? Will they assume some initiative and dedicate themselves to that dream? To what extent can and will that dream support them? The future is filled with so many unknowns...will global warming smash all of our dreams? ... I have no recourse but to struggle on, undaunted, with hope, no recourse but to believe in a supportive future. Otherwise I would give up.

Guru Op Elza oversees

Ailsa is my dear friend, my guest, and dare I say it? a little bit of a guinea pig as well. She has listened to my stories about the Weaving Centre for years. She is well-travelled, balanced, and an anthropologist. She was ready for the adventure. Our fingers were crossed.

In preparation for her (and those following her!?) Lasma's husband, Pak Sandi, (at my behest and cost, of course)  installed running water in the kitchen, built a strong bed frame for the mattress, had the bathroom tiled, and has begun to grow organic vegetables on our grounds. We have a loom for guests, and sufficient yarn, and now that the gardening season is tapering off, Ompu Elza is willing to put on her other hat of 'weaving guru'. 

Lasma is playing House Mother, Agustina is interpreter, story-teller and warm companion; all are helping out in their own way. (The two sisters shot the video accompanying this blog.) My friend, Ailsa, is playing along in a warm and communicative way, suggesting strategies to make the guest room more homey and conveying what her 'fresh eyes' see in what we have done and its potential.  She is happy to contribute in her way to making the weaving centre into a 'real' craft Homestay. Already they adore her and she is being taken up in the RBTS family. 

Lasma stocked up for Ailsa's visit 

It is working like magic. This evening Lasma called me and showed me the fire they had built to roast the organic corn just plucked from our land. They were enjoying the warmth of the flames, laughing and singing. The scene touched me. It was nurturing -- and I hope sustaining for all of them. They are all searching for their direction in life.  Sitting around the fire they were sharing and finding comfort and insights by being together. Differences of language were being bridged and the interference of outmoded concepts that have broken up the common humanity of North and South were rendered irrelevant and absurd. It crossed my mind that perhaps precisely this is what the Weaving Centre may  really be about: bonding, mutual understanding, linking North and South, making the unlikely possible, finding a shared direction. The envisioned future may never come, but we have had this moment, precipitated by the precious weaving tradition of Nagori Tongah. It will last forever. It makes me feel richly satisfied and filled with joy.

Goodbye Ompu Sandra, Selamat Jalan

The Pulang Kampung team met Ompu Sandra in 2013 when we moored at Hasinggaan to show our film Rangsa ni Tonun and thus restore to the Batak people in that isolated little bay a sacred and beautiful piece of Batak literature about weaving. Ompu Sandra lived in the village next to the harbour.

This is the shore where our boat put in. Ompu Sandra lived in the house
to the left with the blue trim around the bottom.

Without knowing anything about her or the village, we knocked on her door to ask where there were weavers and to make an initial contact. We needed to find a place to show our film.

Ompu Sandra woven underneath her house
where she was shaded from the sun.

It was bull’s eye immediately. Ompu Sandra turned out to be a weaver and we were able to watch her carefully thread her weft through her warp. Then she left her loom and made her house available for an impromptu film showing. It was a small gathering but it was important for all of us because of Ompu Sandra’s reaction. She wept as she watched the film.

Ompu Sandra was very moved by the film.

She knew all the weaving techniques show in the film.

She identified with the weavers in the film. 

I needed to know why she wept and I asked what it was that had touched her so deeply. She expressed admiration for her ancestors; was touched to see all of these processes in the film, processes that she had not seen for decades. “But why are you crying”, I asked, “if you are filled with admiration?” The cat gradually came out of the bag: because the work was so very arduous. She was empathizing with the weavers of the past. She was imagining how difficult and time-consuming all the processes of weaving had been, from spinning to dyeing to setting up the loom to finishing a textile. “Is it the hard work that makes you cry?” I asked in all innocence. But then the cat emerged fully. No, because there is no recompense for the effort expended!

Ompu Sandra was living the end of the Batak
weaving arts and experiencing the pain of it.

Ompu Sandra launched into her tale of woe. She had brought up her children on the proceeds of weaving. She worked very hard. Morning and night. Under her house on stilts that sheltered her from the burning sun. But now the money that she was receiving for the sale of a finished textile was so paltry that her long hours were for almost no recompense at all. How could women be expected to look after their families? What was to become of them? She asked us to show our film to everybody who would pay attention to it, especially government, consumers, anybody who might be able to ameliorate the problem. She advised us to penetrate deeper into Hasinggaan and to play the film again and again.

I gave Ompu Sandra a copy of Rangsa ni Tonun. We gave
all of our hosts a copy so that they could refer to it after we were gone
 and share it.  

The screening of Rangsa ni Tonun with Ompu Sandra is not something I can forget. Nor do I want to forget it. I later looked for a market specifically for her but circumstances made it hard to get in touch with her. I hoped that, when finally successful, I would not be too late and she would have stopped weaving altogether.

But I am too late. Ompu Sandra has stopped weaving forever. Lasma knows someone who hails from Hasinggaan and thus she learned of Ompu Sandra’s death. She shared the news with me on the telephone. We don’t know the circumstances of Ompu Sandra’s death. Given my brief association with the elderly weaver, I have a dull, heavy sense that she died of grief from the hardship of weaving fruitlessly. If it didn’t kill her, this grief accompanied her to the grave. It is hard to know how to stop mourning this fact, especially knowing that Ompu Sandra is not alone in reaching the end of the market and the end of her tether at the same time as Batak weaving, as the world has known it, also comes to an end.

We did as Ompu Sandra bid us to do: we showed Rangsa ni Tonun again and again, to consumers, to government, to everybody who would pay attention to it. All agree that it is a crime if the Batak weaving arts disappear. Nobody knows exactly what to do to ameliorate the situation. Ompu Sandra’s plea lives on, even if she does not. May she rest in peace.

(All photographs, except the first, are by MJA Nashir)

Lasma's First Textile

 In August (2014), I was in North Sumatra for less than a week, but I had a few precious hours with my beautiful daughter, Lasma Sitanggang. Poor dear gets terribly car sick, but she came all the way from her Simalungun village to meet me in Pematang Siantar.

Lasma had become more grown-up. She is bright
and determined.

She was bursting with news. I have never seen her so charged with ideas. The topper was that she had finished weaving her first textile. She carefully unfolded it to show me, trying to be nonchalant while she was electric with excitement. I couldn’t believe my eyes. She had kept her work as a surprise for me.

We scrutinized it together. She had done a remarkably good job. The selvedge edges were straight and even – a sign of an experienced and good weaver! She showed me where she had repaired yarns that had broken. She knew from our travels together that only sloppy weavers just cut the broken yarns; good weavers repair them in special ways (the Batak have ancient prescriptions and proscriptions concerning broken yarns and the spirit world). Her mother, once an excellent weaver, had coached her. And not just her mother! Older women apparently yelled out their advice as they passed by her window. All of them are experienced in the art of weaving. Her work had inspired them, she said. They want to weave again if there is a market! The weaving of her textile had taught her that if she put her mind to it, she would be able to re-kindle weaving in her village. Her first textile was so much more than a first textile; it represented new insights and it gave her inspiration and energy.

Also new learning. The stripes in Lasma’s textile were not all of equal size although they all had the same number of warp yarns. This meant that she had not distributed the warp yarns evenly across the breast beam -- something she would keep in mind for the next textile. She was itching to get at it again – and also to learn about supplementary weft. Enough women in the village want to teach her. This, while at the outset finding a teacher was her greatest challenge!

Lasma hadn’t had time yet to finish the fringes of her first textile. The fringes are going to take some effort and time. She explained precisely how she wants to do it, including the techniques involved. I won’t give away her secret; I shall wait until the textile is finished to make pictures of it. It will be an innovative and unique textile. And it will be a kind of craft baptism.

Lasma has received her first textile order! How exciting! I plan to help her locate some indigo-dyed yarn. It would be wonderful if all of her products could be environmentally friendly.

Congratulations dear Lasma! Your first textile is a launching pad. I hope that you have found an outlet for your creative powers and that you will find satisfaction always in your ancient, beautiful art. May it be a stepping-stone to a future of your own making.

Lasma wearing a Hill Tribe hair ornament that I brought to her from
Thailand. Here she is with her church friends with whom she teaches
Sunday School.