Ompu Jonathan: Update

We left Ompu Jonathan, br. Sitanggang a couple of blogs ago on the top of Samosir Island where we had looked, unsuccessfully, for someone who could make the earthenware pots to hold our natural dyes (in the future).

In 2015 MJA Nashir and I had quickly organized a spinning workshop. We had learned that Ibu Tetti had planted cotton and that the fluffy bolls were available for use. We knew that there was a lone spinner close by and we decided to bring the cotton and the spinner together. But who would attend the workshop? To our surprise, Ibu Tetti knew two weavers from the top of Samosir Island who wanted to learn how to spin. Ompu Jonathan was one of them. 

I was curious. "Why do you want to learn how to spin?" I had asked her. Spinning cotton is not easy and eats up takes an enormous amount of time. "I want to be able to make a sibolang textile like my ancestors used to do," came Ompu Jonathan's response.

Her answer gave me pause. I read into it nostalgia for days gone by, a respect for the traditions of the past. I looked at this lithe, betel-chewing woman. What a goal to have! How unusual in this day when weaving is on the way out! I didn't quite know what to make of her dream. An unrealizable pipe dream? I didn't know whether to comfort or commend her.

The sibolang may well be
one of the oldest Batak textiles

Samosir Island was once renowned for its mystical impenetrability; according to myths, it was home to the first Batak. Here the weaving arts flourished, especially the great blue cloths that for centuries formed the woven core of ritual practice. They could very well be the oldest textiles in the Batak repertory. On Samosir Island, these textiles were woven with the greatest variety, size and quality of anywhere else -- not just for the Toba Batak who lived there, but also for the Simalungun Batak on the Northeast shore of the lake. They, too, used the great, wide, blue hipcloths, just slightly different in design from the Toba variants. Samosir weavers (or their agents) negotiated the trek downwards off the great height of the island to sell their finished wares through the markets located on the shores of the lake. When I visited the Island in 1986, I found a few weavers there who still dyed their yarn with indigo dye from plants that grew wild on the craggy, rocky surface land. When I visited in 2010, there was not a single weaver left. The elderly ones who had known how to weave had all hung up their looms -- or burned them assuming that nobody would ever again take up the art.. The devout, blue cloths no longer had much of a role to play in local rituals having been eclipsed by lightweight, colourful, fashionable things.  The blue tradition of Samosir may be declared dead.

Ompu Jonathan is a practiced weaver. She learned the art from her mother and she brought it to her husband's village when she married. There she is a solitary weaver. She used to make the sibolang and remembers its decline on the market and the rise of the sadum. She switched to making the red headcloth, sigaragara, for the Karo market, a cloth that, despite its colour, has many similarities with the sibolang. The Toba have also catered to the Karo market for centuries. In this way, she could still have an income. She also makes the Toba Batak surisuri textile if she receives an order. (Do any readers want to order this cloth from her? Let me know!)

I listened carefully to Ompu Jonathan

My path crossed Ompu Jonathan's again earlier this year when Lasma and I visited Ibu Tetti to discuss the possible futures for cotton on Samosir Island. Ompu Jonathan joined us as we teased the seeds out of the cotton bolls that ibu Tetti had spread before us. "How are your plans developing to revive the sibolang textile?" I asked her, half out of politeness, and half out of curiosity. Again Ompu Jonathan impressed me with her dedication to her quest. She still had not wavered from her course. "How long have you had this dream?' I asked. "About five years" she answered. (She is now 54 years old.) She had tried her hand at spinning and had been frustrated by the shortcomings of the spinning wheel that we had given to her.  She had done her best; she still wanted to be able to spin! It was clear that it was still worthwhile to assist her in achieving her dream.

I decided that Ompu Jonathan would be an asset that should be included in the Textile Revival Project with the Bank of Indonesia. This kind of spirit, this kind of dedication could only benefit the project! And she needed to be encouraged and rewarded!  If she had the tools, she certainly had the will!  What a shame if she were not able to succeed!

Ompu Jonathan is now looking for a person who can teach her how to make the ikat patterning in the sibolang textile. It used to be that every weaver of the sibolang made her own ikat. Where can she find an ikat maker now on Samosir Island? Like Ma Tika, she also joined us as we made our rounds from one weaving region to another during our last journey through Tano Batak. In Muara she returned from the market with a bundle of ikat patterned yarn, overjoyed that the maker had let her purchase it. She also made acquaintance with the natural dyer and learned the recipe for indigo dye. Like Ma Tika she broadened her network so that, as soon as she has found her ikat teacher, presumably she will have all the tools to be able to accomplish her goal.

....

This time we left Ompu Jonathan at Parapat where she was going to cross over to Samosir Island and look around on her own for an ikat maker. We had too little time left to be able to cross over with her and assist in the search. I wonder how she fared? As I write, curiosity is getting the better of me. I simply have to call…. 

… Alas, I have just learned through the telephone that Ompu Jonathan has not yet found her ikat guru. I have to get back there to help her as soon as I can.  That's two things on my list: her spinning wheel and her ikat guru. Oh yeah, and a souvenir from The Netherlands. I asked if helping her achieve her goal wasn't enough and she said, "No". There you have it!  Three things on my list.

"When I am gone..."

Ompu Borsak’s son lived in a large, quiet house (if quiet exists at all in Pangururan). We were given a seat in the entrance of the house, especially designated for receiving guests, and I told him my story about Legacy, but especially about his mother, how she had taught me that Batak women tied their hair in a knot on the side of the head and not at the back, and about the kinds of earrings women used to wear. She lived facing the remarkable sopo or rice barn that somehow had escaped the raging fires that the Dutch kindled during Van Daalen's expeditions in 1906. She told me about the raja class and I recognized the truth in her words from my readings about Batak culture. “Your mother is very halus” (a refined lady) I told her son and this touched him. He beamed. He was pleased to receive the book in the name of his mother and his sister and would take it to them. I explained that the book was intended to give the Batak an insight into their weaving tradition and that I hoped that they would show it to as many people as possible. I gave the book in the name of the Soroptimists in Arnhem.

The next stop was Simbolon in the Kacamatan Palipi on Samosir Island. I had been told that weaving there had ceased but I wanted to check whether there were still some weavers working with indigo dye.  We pulled up beside the white scar on the side of the road, where hot water bubbles out of the depths of the island and the smell of sulphur fills the air. One of the renters of the baths turned out to be a woman of highly advanced years. When I asked her if there were any weavers around, she answered in the affirmative and asked me what I wanted. She was prepared to make anything I wanted but she warned me that it would be expensive. She said that she had stopped cultivating salaon, the plant that yields the indigo dye, and that she hadn’t used her weaving equipment for a long time. This was the region that had specialized in making the three blue textiles central to Batak ritual and daily life: the sibolang, surisuri and bolean.

I suddenly remembered Boru Hite -- in Mogang, I believe, a place a little further down the road -- from whom in 1986, I had purchased a beautiful sibolang of the same quality as those made a century earlier. She sat beside a bag of indigo-dyed yarn. “This is the last of my yarn,” she had said. “When this is used up, I will stop weaving.” Now I was meeting another who had stopped weaving. The reason was the same: it didn’t make economic sense. She now invested her efforts in selling oil, gardening and renting the hot water baths. I write on a patio in a Muara Hotel, looking out over Lake Toba. I love the tranquillity, watching the paddlers guide their dug-out canoes across the surface of the water. It is idyllic and beautiful and why can’t it continue for ever, but the reality is that even the paddlers have to eat.

Several kilometers further, in Simbolon, Kec. Palipi, I stopped again to ask if there were weavers and was pointed in the direction of a village on the lake, and later to a house where another woman of highly advanced years was living: Ompu Nerda br. Marbun. In response to my question, she pulled out her loom, a bundle of sticks bound together and laced with dust and spider's webs. “This is my loom,” she said, “I don’t use it anymore.” Her textiles included an indigo-dyed bolean with brightly-coloured and gold supplementary-weft patterning. “This is for my family when I am gone,” she said.

I chose to present her with a copy of Legacy to honour her work. She was the first to see the irony in the gift. “I am 90 years old,” she said. And then to her daughter-in-law, “This will soon be yours.” There was nobody in her village who could weave and nobody who was carrying on the tradition. Her daughter-in-law pointed out that weaving was far too difficult and didn’t pay anyway. 

I gave the book away in the name of Ria Tobing in The Netherlands, someone who has supported the publication and marketing of Legacy in many ways and did translations for me for the Back to the Villages project.

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The longest day...

The plan was to head out from Pusuk Buhit to find Ompu Borsak’s son in Pangururan and gradually make our way south to Nainggolan at the southern tip of Samosir Island (across from Balige) and then to return to Pangururan and the land bridge to the mainland and head south to arrive in Muara, a bay west of Balige.

We accomplished that. However, the route was different than expected. From Nainggolan we drove back to Tomok (taking the long route over Pangururan because the road on the shorter trek is apparently bad) and from Tomok, taking the ferry back to Parapat and heading to Muara on the trans-Sumatra highway – again because the road from Pangururan to Muara is apparently bad. In both cases, we took the longer but apparently faster way. I am deeply sorry to not have been able to have seen all the landscapes. I promised myself to take a boat in the future. How much more pleasant the journey would have been in a boat!  Just as in the old days when the great dug-out canoes transported the Batak and their market wares criss cross over the lake. (Large  market boats still sail, but they are too slow for my current purposes.)

However, the spirits of Toba were once again guiding our day. In Balige, we had to make an unexpected stop at my old haunt, the nurse’s residence, which was my pied-a-terre in 1979-80. My photographer had developed such a severe toothache that he needed medical attention. Luckily we were in Balige when he announced that he needed care and the town played the same role as it had played for me in the past, offering care and guidance. My thoughts went back to Nuria Gultom, Ibu Hutabarat, in my day the heads of the residence and the nurses’s training; to Dr. Westerhausen, the kind Germany doctor then in residence. (As the fates have willed it, she phoned me unexpectedly just before my departure to Indonesia because she had purchased a copy of Legacy. The book keeps bringing me in touch with my past.)  My mind also went back to my attack of dysentery, and other medical issues that occasionally brought me back by boat from Harian Boho to Balige. My debt to the hospital in Balige is huge – and continues to grow! In no time, Mas Nashir had visited the hospital’s dentist and had a handful of medicine. We had dinner in Balige and pushed on in the dark to make our destination.

From the turn-off to Muara, the road has been immensely improved and although it was dark, the journey was not too harrowing. Our hotel is new and comfortable. I am hopeful that Mas Nashir will be recovered enough to be able to perform today with his regular spirit and energy.

(Ah! A text message from Mas Nashir. He is up and about, fresh from a good night’s sleep, taking photographs of the sunrise downstairs! Once again, our hotel is on the edge of the great lake.)

Yesterday, our day was long and successful, but I only disposed of 4 books and I would have liked to have had occasion to give more away. More about those gifts anon.

Today, we hope to find the women in the opening photograph in Legacy, the ones with the happy faces. Yesterday, we visited the market in Nainggolan and I saw several textiles there from Muara, so I know there is still active weaving here. Hopefully, we will be able to fill our goals here, if the spirits of Toba are willing.

Pages 10, 11 - fig. Acknowledgements 2 Weavers in Muara. 1986.

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Sulphur

On Samosir, the spirits are etched in the landscape. It is one of the most spectacular places in the world, a place of magic, myth, poetry and power. Waringin trees. Monoliths (the Batak have stories about them flying through the air to their destinations). Stone walls that defy physics. A spring with seven different flavours. Waterfalls. Scarred hills that tell of ancient cultivation. A lake so deep that it can only be described as bottomless, the highest and largest in all of Asia. 75,000 years ago, one of the biggest explosions in the history of the world occurred here. Lake Toba is the crater. The violence of the eruption has softened with time. Great, bald hills encircle the lake like gentle protective arms. The highest peak is Navel Mountain, the umbilical of Batak origins. The apical ancestress was a weaver who lowered herself from the realm of the gods on her handspun yarn. Weaving has traditionally occurred all around the shores of the lake.

I write, now, from the gash in Navel Mountain where hot water gushes and the air smells like sulphur. I feel that the spirits, today, have guided my journey. The meetings have all been precious. They have collapsed all time, from the first weaver, Si Boru Deak Parujar, to my first visit 30 years ago, to the realization of this Back to the Villages project.

Today I gave away five books. Each is a complete story in itself. Each was photographed extensively by MJA Nashir who, I could tell, feels in every fibre of his being exactly what this project is about. How wonderful to have him along and to have no concerns about this amazing journey being recorded.

The five books:

1. Simanindo Museum at the northern tip of Samosir Island. I gave this book in the name of the Volkenkunde Museum in Leiden to the daughter-in-law of the now long-deceased Sidauruk couple who so kindly helped me with my research. They allowed me to stay in their home and introduced me to Amang Adir, the village guru knowledgeable in esoteric Batak matters. I commissioned the spinning wheel (sorha), yarn pitter (pipisan) and bow (bosur) in my collection from him. The daughter-in-law, now widowed, looks after the vision created by her father-in-law whom she never met. She was pleased to receive the book and wanted to share it with the other family members (in Jakarta and Medan).

2. As we were leaving the village, we spoke to Lemar Sidauruk, a villager. He wanted to know what our business had been. When I described it, he said he badly needed a book because it would assist the village when it puts on dances and ritual re-enactments for tourists. Sensing that his interest was sincere, and realizing that if I gave him a book many more people would have the opportunity to see it (that, after all, being the goal of Back to the Villages project), I gave him one in the name of Andrew and Lily Wang whose message specifically thanks the recipient for perpetuating tradition. As we left, he had already been joined by a few men and they were thumbing their way through the tome.

3. Further along the road, approaching Pangururan, we stopped at the same village where I had been a few weeks earlier and had promised to return. One of the weavers was present. Her mother and neighbour were also weavers. 

We sat together on a mat in the mother’s house while she demonstrated how she winds yarn using a spinning wheel. 

I gave them the second donation from Andrew and Lily Wang. They were very enthusiastic about the book but decried current market circumstances. Weaving has become an almost worthless activity, they said. How could they keep the tradition alive?

4. After lunch at Navel Mountain, we continued over a very rough road to Harian Boho. My weaving teacher, Ompu Sihol, had lived there. She died many years ago but I hoped to find her descendants. It was as though her son was waiting for us. He was sitting in a make-shift coffee hut. He had gone blind. Fifteen years ago, he said.  My heart sank as this book was being given in the name of the book’s designer, Marie-Cécile Pulles. It was such a bitter moment because Cécile’s task had been to care for the appearance of the book. This bitter moment had a silver lining, however, because the blindness of the son meant that the grandson had to be sent for.  

He was 6 years old when I had taken my weaving lessons from Ompu Si Sihol and he still remembered me. Cécile had seen the children lurking in the background of my photos with Ompu Si Sihol and she had specifically asked for the book to be given to them, the future of the Batak tradition. From a bitter moment, it became a very emotional moment combining my memories of Ompu Sihol with the bond forged with Cécile as we made the book together. The recipient, Juni (from Juninto) Malau immediately recognized his grandmother in the photographs in the book and also her dye pots. He was a nice young man and his little daughter was with him. I asked him if she would learn to weave. He led me and his blind father to Ompu Sihol’s village which I had visited every day, walking along a babbling stream and through the rice fields.  

I visited the spot where she had cached her indigo pots.  It was close to where her grave is now. Much had changed and much had remained the same. I recalled my last meal in her son’s house. They had served me chicken wings to help me weave “in my country” (this was said with much flapping of arms and merriment). This time, I departed with a strong sense of a history that the future would bring.

 5. I left one book behind in SiHotang (valley and bay south of Harian Boho) with a family member of Ompu Borsak depicted on page 73 of Legacy. He was a farmer threshing his rice while we drove by. We stopped the car to ask him if he recognized the women in the picture and he responded without hesitation. They were family members. He said that the older one was still alive, but lived some 20 km. further down the tortuous road that we had managed only with the great skill, patience and willingness of our driver. The clouds were closing in over our heads and we knew the road would be impassable if the rains were heavy and it might be difficult to get back. I decided on the spot to request his help in giving the book to Ompu Borsak and her daughter.  We sat down in his lean-to shed amidst the threshed grains of rice and I explained the project. He listened attentively, periodically asking a question. When I was done, he said that he didn’t feel that he should receive the book, but that I should give it to Ompu Borsak’s son in Pangururan. Now, I liked this farmer a lot. His eyes were as bright as his occasional brilliant smile. He was clearly dependable, honest and sincere and was certainly in some awe of the gift. I told him that I would take a copy to Ompu Borsak’s son, but that I also wanted to, through him, give one to the valley of Si Hotang if he would be so good as to show the book to as many people as possible. He was pleased to assume this responsibility and the transfer was able to proceed.  I gave the book in the name of Jan Hofstede, a person who lives close to the earth, is a farmer at heart, and would have felt great affinity with this rice farmer.

As we left this remarkable valley, we caught a glimpse of the great stone walls depicted on page 106 of Legacy. I could not resist, despite the risks involved in further delay, clambering over the boulders marking the boundaries of the rice fields, and down to the gap in the fortress wall. I stepped once again, just as I had 30 years before, inside the great village of Simarmata. The magic was almost palpable.

fig. SR 1.1 Samosir village surrounded by a stone wall topped with thorny bamboo.  1986. Batak built walls around their villages to protect themselves from internecine warfare.

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Efficacy

Today, for the first time, I gave away a copy of Legacy to active weavers. It was an invigorating and inspiring moment. My favourite photograph of the event is the one in which four different hands are all pointing to a pattern on the same page. The weavers in the village, particularly one white-haired woman, absolutely devoured the tome. 

It was not a village that I had been to before, so I had no personal tie with any of the weavers. “Sangkalan” was in the vicinity of Lumban Suhisuhi, north of Pangururan on Samosir Island. The weaver with white hair kept trying to convince us that the textiles that she had hung out for sale as soon as she saw our vehicle pull up had been woven in the village, while it was clear that they had been made elsewhere on a semi-mechanical loom. I thought it might be a useful strategy to give her a copy of Legacy so that she might begin to speak to me seriously. Moreover, this was a village that our weaver tour could visit next year and it seemed to be a wonderful opportunity to test the reception of the book after a year had lapsed.

First I asked the white-haired weaver to sit with me in the shade. We took our places on the bright blue tarpaulin that she unfurled and I placed the book in front of her, inviting her to look through it. From that point onward, she was totally engrossed. I recognized that, purely by chance, I’d given absolutely the very best person a copy of my life’s work. Nobody could have appreciated its contents more; it was immensely satisfying to see how deeply it moved her.

The other weavers in the village deserted their looms and joined us. Villagers emerged from their houses and gathered around. Finally, I asked if I could interrupt their inspection of the book to tell them something. When I had their attention, I told them about the project, read the inscriptions aloud and told them about the work of the donors, the Soroptimists of Arnhem, for the good of women. I asked them to pass on their knowledge to the youth.

I continue to try to determine the most efficacious way of distributing Legacy in the Batak community. I heard, today, of the death of two more weavers in the region to whom I had wanted to present a book. I think that it would be most meaningful to present their copies to young weavers in their villages. They might be inspired to continue to weave and do inventive things. One of them might be the Picasso of Batak weaving!

I loved being in the villages today, loved watching the weavers at work. I know how difficult their work is and they make it look so easy. Their strokes are clean and efficient, like music in movement. I know that it will only take one generation of not weaving for the tradition to completely disappear. That kind of beauty in motion can only be learned when generations of practice gets passed down from mother to daughter, from aunt to niece, from friend to friend. Their legacy is inscribed in their motor skills.

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Didn’t pay? It was costing money!

In the fertile Purba region of Simalungun, yesterday, in the village of Negori Tongah, we found Roslina br. Purba’s husband by showing her laminated picture to some men on the road. 

One of them turned out to be her husband and he led us to her. She had a large cloth on her head to protect her from the sun, a huge rake in her hand and a red wad of tobacco and betel nut in her mouth; she was returning from the ladang. I didn’t recognize her, but the driver of my car saw immediately that she was the same person as the younger version in the photographs.

When she saw the pictures, she shook her head and said, yes, they were taken when she was performing the technique of warp substitution (tingki manuloki). I’ve stopped weaving, she said. It didn’t make sense, any more. It was better to work the land.

Roslina br. Purba (then known as 'Mamak Si Dirita', mother of Dirita) substitutes the warp in the Bulang textile. Naga Panei, Simalungun. 1986. Legacy, Page 495, Fig. Tech 6.19.

I opened the back of the car and prepared to give her a book, a donation from my dear high school friend-for-life, Colleen Flood. It was the usual story, children gathering around, people jostling each other to get a look at the pages. The former weaver’s eyes sparkled. 

Roslina br. Purba holding her copy of the book with fellow villagers, June 2010

During the course of conversation, I mentioned that it apparently didn’t pay enough to weave. Her husband corrected me. It was not that it didn’t pay enough, it was costing money!

Later in the day, I had a happy reunion with my former assistant, Linda, in Parapat (and gave her a book privately in my own name). Her brother Jonny also came by. He had been a marketing co-ordinator for weavers in the Silindung Valley and nobody understands better than he the financial circumstances of textile production. He explained that the Batak people had become too poor to purchase their own weavings. That is why they purchased cloth commercially produced on a semi-mechanical loom when they needed one for ritual purposes. The consequence of this was that money was leaving the community and going into the pockets of the (relatively richer) directors of the commercial workshops – to say nothing of those on Java who are producing printed textiles resembling hand-woven Batak textiles.

I then understood the decline and death of weaving in the Batak area more clearly. It has always been the local market that has supported textile production. The foreign market, including the tourist market, though welcome, has just been incidental. If the Batak are not able to support their own production through their local markets, and the external markets are too weak, weaving is precisely as Nai Ati’s husband explained: an economic liability and no longer a way to supplement farming income.

We searched in the Simalungun region and found only one maker of the bulang textile type. She was old. She will not continue much longer.

Later in the evening, a young Batak man, Torang Sitorus caught up with me in my hotel on Samosir Island. He wanted a copy of my book. He had fallen in love with Batak ulos, he said. Prosperous in business, he was making a collection of ancient pieces. I could tell by the way he approached me that he had the skills to find and acquire the very last heritage pieces that people might still have stored in their closets. 

He had plans to set up a museum and to work with designers to inspire the continuation of Batak motifs.

I pointed out there were probably just a few possibilities for the future of Batak textiles. One would be their incorporation in fashion and the other would be their recognition as an art form. In both cases, their survival would depend on wealthy external markets and the highest quality of production.

This is a sad time for me. I am beginning to understand that by giving away my book to weavers, I can thank them and return their heritage to them, but I can’t do much for the future of Batak weaving. I feel angry at the banks (and all other structures for which banks have recently become a symbol) who milk the poor to support their own wealth. The gigantic, luxurious, superficial, meaningless wealth in this world has developed at the cost of indigenous culture, among many other things. The weavings of great integrity of which Batak women are still technically capable can no longer be made. I mourn for the Batak weavers who have the creative talent to produce amazing things, but no social avenues available to express their talent. What a waste of lives, of creativity, of knowledge built up through millennia of experimentation and carefully selected influences.

The idealistic young man sitting in front of me at the table last night talked about reviving indigo and showed me pictures of the attempts by a weaver in Muara. He invited me to come to inspect his collection. He talked about his future museum. He talked about setting designers in Jakarta loose to work on clothing inspired by Batak designs. And he wanted one of my books very badly.

In the end I gave him one. It felt like a capitulation, an admission. He is not a weaver, and I had intended the books for weavers. But he may represent a future for Batak textiles. I did not say, as I say to the weavers when I hand them a book, “Thank you”.  I let him know that the book that I gave to him was an investment and that the gift came with expectations attached to it. I still feel sad and torn about this donation. I hope that his initiatives will represent a phoenix that rises from the ashes.

The day has sent me into a tailspin. We left Nai Ati in the Simalungun area after giving her a book and when we returned ten minutes later to ask a question we found a huddle of people, mostly school children, around the book. My Back to the Villages project is just an experiment. It is an expression of hope and of thanks. It may have practical consequences and it may not. A school child might become inspired. It is a seed. I am planting it here and there. Even in the garden of a wealthy business man. May it bear fruit. 

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