The Decision to Return to Tano Batak is one I Value Highly

Harian Boho nestled beside Lake Toba as seen from above

A highly educated Batak woman, born in Tano Batak but brought up outside, has sought my anthropological opinion about returning to her homeland. The prospect is daunting to her. She has not been there for a long time. Will she and her family be able to adapt? Understandably, she is a bit nervous about the big move.

Maybe there are others who find themselves in the same situation? And perhaps some who long to return to their homeland. For you I would like to share my advice to her:

First, I would like to compliment you. I value your choice to Pulang Kampung. I am convinced that Tano Batak needs your presence and your influence more than anything else. I am convinced not only that you will be able to adapt, but that you will be able to create an important niche for yourself and your family and you will be able to do good things for your culture.

We all know that Batak culture has been drained. Young people who want to make something of their lives have to leave Tano Batak to obtain an education and find a job. Villages are emptying out. The people who remain behind feel that their contributions to the world have no value. It is a sad and regrettable situation.

Nevertheless, Tano Batak remains the centre of Batak traditional culture. If it is not healthy and vibrant, Batak culture will continue to decline. The region is beautiful and unique. It needs to be cared for by an educated and vocal population or it will continue to degrade. For decades voices have been raised about the decline in the quality of the physical environment. There needs to be a turnaround and soon! I am convinced that people like you, who decide to return to Tano Batak, can turn the tide and make the difference. Tano Batak needs to be turned back into a home, a place that is valued, championed, and cared for. Alas, it has been the victim of people who milk it for what it has to offer, leaving it depleted, degraded and compromised.

I hope that you will return to Tano Batak with the resolve to good things for the area. To my mind, this is key.

You mentioned that you once lived in Harian Boho. When ompu Sitor Situmorang died and was buried in his village (January 2015), a group of artists came to pay their last respects. They spoke about making Harian Boho a centre of artistic activities: theatre, music, dance. Ompu Sitor’s widow, Barbara Purba, spoke about the need to set up historical markers to remind young people in the village about their own background and heritage. Other family members who live far away spoke about wanting to return and care for the houses that they have left behind.  There is a nostalgia, a longing, to restore Harian Boho to some of its former glory and to start building a future glory. I don’t know whether you will return to Harian Boho. If you do, you can be part of this energy that links Harian Boho and its past with artists and historians and cultural specialists who live all around the world. It is so important to have someone like you living there who can serve as a bridge between the worlds. You could be the spark to make the change.

If you do not return to Harian Boho, but to some other place, I am convinced the situation will not be radically different. In Pangururan, for instance, I am so proud of the work of ibu Tetti Naibaho. She works with women and the church to build a stronger and healthier community. She has taken the initiative of planting cotton so that weavers will be able to produce their own yarn. To do this, she works with schools and inspires weavers. One person can make a huge difference to the lives of children and adults, and the physical and cultural environment.

You will soon be in a position to create a lifestyle that is a model for a sustainable future, in the cultural and the physical sense. You can provide a badly needed role model for the people living there and for politicians who govern the area. If you do this, you will become a community leader and a focus of admiration and appreciation. You can ensure that you dispose of your garbage responsibly and look after your yard and street so that it becomes a place of beauty. You can rescue and beautify local Batak architecture. You can insist on purchasing organic produce and thereby support local farmers who grow organic crops. You can help children to follow their dreams and make their way into the future. You can encourage the people to feel pride for their culture and history. Each of these tasks can fill your life with activities and satisfaction. There are wonderful people in Tano Batak who will work with you. You could get involved to make the new Geopark initiative a success and the Geopark initiative could give you a focus to invest your energy.

You will probably have more wealth than the local people around you. Instead of spending it on useless and wasteful displays of status, you can deploy it to create opportunities for a better future for the community and your culture: purchase solar panels and community computers, create jobs, protect cultural monuments, plant trees, set up a workshop facility for adults education, assist schools, the list is endless.

If you have time and the inclination, I would be very grateful if you chose to work with me to encourage the revival of Batak weaving with natural dyes and fibre and traditional techniques. We need people everywhere in Tano Batak to begin to work on this common goal so that Batak textiles will survive into the future.

I am sure that if you set yourself goals and you keep a positive outlook, you will be very happy in your new situation. It won’t always be easy. In many ways you will be doing the job that governments should be doing. At times the work will be frustrating. And the rewards will be in your successes but may not translate into financial rewards. Your choices will reflect your values.

Have respect for “local knowledge” and get to know the people as well as you can. You will learn about your own culture. This will enrich you and your family. There is much to learn and the process is exciting. Little projects could help you learn about the cultural wealth in your Batak community. For example, you could work with the people in your community to create an exhibition of photographs of the ancestors. They all have a precious store of photographs. If you wanted, you could even create books about the local knowledge that you discover around you. What better way to instil pride and encourage the culture!

These are my ideas as an anthropologist. You are a doctor and have your own training and talents. I am sure that if you devote yourself to good projects for your community you will enjoy your stay among your people.

Please keep in touch. I would love to visit you and find out how your initiatives are going.

May your path be blessed.

Batak Texts go Back to the Villages

I have said it before: my Pulang Kampung projects have been the most inspiring that I have ever undertaken and this is because of the reactions of the Batak people. There is nothing more exciting, more moving, than to restore elements of a people’s culture to them and to be privy to their reactions. All of these Pulang Kampung projects have been driven by a longing to return something of value to these people who have given me so much of value to me and other researchers through the years. As satisfying as each project has been, I have felt disappointment because I couldn’t do more. It has all just been a drop in the bucket compared to what is truly needed to reinvigorate this culture that has not been advantaged by recent history. Hence my bigger dream: to repatriate Batak texts.

The Batak texts were written by intellectuals: shamanic figures, medicine men, orators, astronomers and astrologers, poets, writers, philosophers, specialists in ritual, augury and the spiritual world. When especially this facet of Batak culture was condemned by the church (out of concern that this information came from the devil), the intellectual core of the Batak world was dealt a fatal blow. My film, Rangsa ni Tonun, was a creative project that demonstrates the power of one small text. It has inspired many, invigorated new conversations, generated new insights. It has been a cultural spark. How much more could be done if others had greater access to the Batak written heritage! It has become my dream that these texts be returned to the Batak people.

Reintroduction of the texts will not be easy. The number of people who are able to read these texts can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even in digital form, who will devote the effort needed to understand them, with their esoteric language and illustrations? And yet one must begin somewhere. Distributing my book, Legacy in Cloth, was like tossing seeds in the ground; if just one seed were to take root it would all be worth the time, effort and expense. One seed can grow and multiply. Afterall, Batak culture emerged, in all likelihood, from a small handful of people. But that one small initial seed is critical.

I have peddled my idea of the repatriation of the texts (nota bene in digital form) to those in charge in the library of Leiden University and the new National Museum of World Cultures in Leiden. Due to recent institutional mergers, these two institutions now hold the bulk of Batak textiles outside Indonesia. The idea has met with an enthusiastic response. What could be more gratifying than to restore to a people their intellectual corpus! My current journey to Indonesia meant that our inaugural project meeting date, very regrettably, had to be postponed, but I was given the green light to share our intentions.

It is as though the project is “in the air”. Angry Batak youth on Facebook have expressed their frustration that this body of intellectual work is not accessible to the Batak people. The textual privation is mentioned now and again in passing. Just two days ago an elected representative in the Samosir Regency noted the importance of reclaiming Batak texts. He said it during a formal meeting called to explore options for remembering the great Batak poet, Sitor Situmorang. It was a little off topic but somewhat apt as well. If Sitor had lived two hundred years ago, even just a century ago, I am sure he would have been one of those Batak gurus. If he was still alive, he would have supported this project whole-heartedly. I was grateful to have been given the license to talk about this new Pulang Kampung project openly. The writings will be coming back, I said, albeit in digital form. Let’s work together to make it happen in the best possible way. Those attending the meeting were pleased and surprised.

I personally don’t regret that they will be coming back in digital form. It is a more democratic form. Nobody will be able to horde the stash and restrict access (this is one of the most frustrating things about trying to do research in Indonesian museums, libraries, galleries and archives). The possession of knowledge in Batak culture has never been a democratic thing. Men new to the written arts had to pay dearly and long-term to those in the know to be able to gain access to the esoteric knowledge. The restriction of access meant that the cache of knowledge remained special, sacrosanct, a little frightening, commanding respect. I am convinced, however, that this knowledge must return precisely to the villages that are dying out, emptying out as they lose their resources and as the youth go to live in the cities. Let there be something in the villages on which the inhabitants can build an intellectual life! The villagers have been disadvantaged too long and too much by power being in the hands of those living outside their domain.

…

A few days ago I met with Jesral Tambunan in his home. (He is a young Batak wood carver, honourary member of the last Pulang Kampung project.) He showed us drawings that he had come across in the context of woodcarvings. What did they mean? Of course the written Batak intellectual tradition also has strong connections with the carved tradition. I longed to have a computer at hand and to be able to download some of the indigenous Batak texts that would give Jesral the answers that he is looking for and that would send him down new rich pathways of discovery. Instead, I could only promise that when I am back in Holland, I will (labouriously) look up some books, make scans, send them to him. And then we would both still have to count ourselves lucky! How much better it will be in the future when access is easier.

Another great loss in 2014

It is December 23. In the final hours of December 20 Sitor Situmorang, the great Batak poet, passed away in his home in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. His remains are now at Schiphol Airport; he is returning one last time to Indonesia. Facebook is teeming with tributes, photographs, memories, and discussions about where he should be buried and the role that the government should take.

Sitor was very influential in my life and especially in my research into Batak culture. After he died, his wife Barbara sent me an email. The next day I took the bus to Apeldoorn and had dinner with her and their son, Leonard in their home. I was able to pay my last respects to Sitor, for which I am truly grateful. I had spent the day writing down some memories of Sitor and going through old boxes of photographs. I would like to share here, on my blog, what I contributed to the outpouring about Sitor on Facebook.

Pierced by the arrow of remembrance: Sitor Situmorang 1924 - 2014

Last night Sitor Situmorang took his final leave from us and from this world. A monumental figure in modern Indonesian literature has departed. He had been ebbing away, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Sitor was a man of words but he shared his greatest wealth more easily with the page than with people. His vast interior vault slowly became silent. We had been losing Sitor for a long time. He became pale and so painfully thin, more and more transparent until even his whisper was gone. His dedicated wife, Barbara, sent me the news late last night and I woke up to it this morning.

Sitor was the second Batak that I ever met (the first was B.A. Simanjuntak who was studying in Leiden at the time). The year was 1978. I had come to The Netherlands to do my PhD and Sitor had come to Leiden to explore his culture through colonial writings. Jan Avé, then the S.E. Asia curator at Leiden’s Museum voor Volkenkunde, told me about him and probably introduced us, but my first memory of Sitor is in the KITLV library. He was wearing a jaunty blue French beret and scarf. He was tiny, had a special vigour, a ready laugh, and an equally quick temper.  I quickly learned to be afraid to say the wrong thing. There was always that sense that he was working on something monumental while I was a mere mortal; Sitor guarded his boundaries carefully.

We met at a remarkable crossroads: Sitor had come to The Netherlands from Indonesia. He was trying to come to terms with his own Batak identity by consulting the archives and ethnographic literature. He must have been around 55 years old and was just beginning an exploration that would fill a significant part of the remainder of his life. I was 22, and had just come from Canada. I knew neither Dutch nor Indonesian. I was still a tabula rasa preparing to head out to conduct fieldwork in North Sumatra, which I had not yet laid eyes on. I was also in The Netherlands to research the Batak archives and ethnographic literature.

Sitor had recently been released from a long imprisonment and had obtained a Ford Foundation grant to facilitate his inquiry. He had a new and beautiful blond Dutch wife. He was embarking on a new life and was excited to be in The Netherlands. The Suharto era had been the watershed of his life. Previously he had held diplomatic posts, gained fame as a poet and member of the ‘Generation of ‘45’. His Dutch was perfect, English excellent, French very good. I remember his eagerness to take stock of Dutch culture. I had no knowledge context in which to situate Sitor and he had little patience for my detailed inquiry into the skipping generation principle in Batak kinship terminology. He had other things on his mind. He was impatient with me, but he believed in my anthropological quest and supported it by giving me contacts in North Sumatra and occasionally excitedly sharing his findings from the KITLV library.

I left for North Sumatra in 1979 and Sitor came back to Tano Batak in 1980. He asked me to travel with him. I had a tape recorder and tapes; he had an itinerary and specific people he wanted to meet. He wanted to hear their views about his father (Ompu Babiat, the head of the Situmorang clan) and the Si Singamangaraja (the ‘wife-taking’ clan of the Situmorang in neighbouring Bangkara Valley); he wanted to see Batak history through their eyes. He said that he could use my anthropological perspectives to help him understand his childhood memories, put them in cultural/historical context. Perhaps I had insights, queries or language that were important for Sitor; I hope so. My sense was that he mostly needed a sounding board and that his insights grew from formulating his reactions and questions. I provided an ear and asked questions. I also manned the tape recorder and observed.

I learned the momentousness of Sitor’s exploration. His life straddled eras and cultures. He was the son of a Batak leader and thus eligible for a Dutch education. He left his valley/bay and went to the city: Balige, Tarutung, Jakarta, Yogyakarta. He learned the language of the colonial power. He became a journalist and writer. When his country threw off its colonial shackles, he became a Sukarno diplomat. He traveled the world at a time when few Indonesians enjoyed that privilege. He loved to tell about meeting Marilyn Monroe in New York and life in Paris. He revelled in being a citizen of the world. I imagined that his years in prison gave him the time to reflect on all of this and awakened within him the need to understand the historical forces that had carried him out of Harian Boho and into the world. I traveled with Sitor Situmorang, but it was his journey; I was an observer.

I think this is the only photograph that Sitor took of me. He made sure
to include the great Pusuk Buhit and Lake Toba.

(I treasure to this day that I was able to join him. When I reached the age that Sitor was when we met, it was my turn to explore my own history and culture. His journey served as a beacon for my own, but that is another story….)

The tape recordings I made are still in the box; Sitor never consulted them. He relied on the memories and insights that he gained and gathered as we traveled. He was not a man of notes and personal archives. He was a man from an oral culture, a person who filled his inner chambers, swelling them to untold richness and releasing only in small, precious doses. How many letters I have from Sitor telling me that he will be sharing something important with me, but he never does. That was not his way. He let things out, occasionally, a brief story, an allusion, a poem.

Years later, when we met up at a conference in Switzerland (1991), we had the opportunity to take a boat ride on Lake Zurich. Sitor fell silent, became withdrawn. He said that a poem was brewing. A few days later he shared it with me. Lake Zurich had brought him back like a lightning rod to Lake Toba, tapping into his store of memory and feeling.

The Wind on Lake Zurich

The wind, the sky, the sun: a momentary theme

That echoes in your laughter on the lake.

Nature and remembrance, which for a moment fuse,

Expire in the expanse of the seven seas

in your gaze. Yet here

idle, a listless boat, in a forgotten land

sticks in the craw and resounds

a gaping wound that will not heal

pierced by the arrow of remembrance

a primordial murmur, the water and sky of Lake Toba

Ompu Babiat, Sitor's father.

When we traveled together, he sometimes shared a node in his intellectual universe. He told me how he had worn a gelang as a boy, a large Batak bracelet befitting a person of his high status. Apparently it was one of those things that one never removed in traditional culture, but when Sitor went off to school, it became a millstone. He mentioned his embarrassment to his father. His father quietly fetched a tool and freed Sitor’s arm. And that was that. Sitor told the story without emotion, but it sticks in the craw when I think of the significance of that act for Sitor’s father, and also for Sitor in later life.

A vantage point overlooking Lake Toba. The photograph was
probably taken by Barbara Brouwer

Once we climbed to a high point on the Western edge of Lake Toba. Sitor had shown us paths carved into the hills along which his father had walked. Now, from this lookout, he pointed out the territories belonging to various clans. He stood where his ancestors must have stood, generation upon generation, strategists in politics and war. He explained how marital relations among the clans were ways of consolidating alliances, ensuring safety. The Si Singamangaraja must have stood like that as he planned his resistance against the Dutch. The wind played with our hair. I perceived the succession of eras. Later the geo-political insights that Sitor had shared informed my understanding of how weaving patterns and techniques spread around the lake.

Sitor was very fond of his younger sister. She had never left the valley. They could not communicate by telephone or letters. We met up with her in Harian Boho. She was a betel-chewing, patient woman who spoke only Batak. Standing beside Sitor, I saw a woman steeped in her culture and a man of the wider world. The juxtaposition made me feel some of the loneliness that Sitor must have experienced. “A gaping wound that will not heal.” It was Sitor who told me, when I confessed difficulty in knowing how to combine and make sense of my Canadian roots, my Dutch heritage and my Indonesian life, just to let it be. Uniting it all is an impossible task. They are united in your being; no selections need be forced and no unity need be forged. Acceptance brings peace.

The last time I saw Sitor was a few months ago. We had lunch together and for a moment, when Barbara left the room, I was alone with him. We were both silent. I did not know where to find Sitor in the silence, but I badly wanted his wisdom on the current decline in Batak culture. I sketched the decline as I knew it. What did Sitor make of it all? This man who had known the Batak pre-colonial culture, who had grown up during the colonial era and had become a world-famous poet, this intellectual who had devoted a great part of his life to piecing together Batak history: what did he make of the disappearance of the culture of his own origins? Sitor mumbled something about remnants in the villages and then stood up and busied himself in the kitchen closing me out. When Barbara came back into the room she assessed the situation immediately. “Did you ask him a difficult question?” she asked. “If it is beyond his capacity, he withdraws.” Sitor had ebbed away.

The Musical Accompaniment to Rangsa ni Tonun

On the last day before leaving Medan, I made the long trek from my hotel to the home of Irwansyah and Rithaony Hutajulu. This is where MJA Nashir stays when he is in Medan. He is a great admirer of this musical couple, their tremendous artistic potential and their accomplishments. He assists them where and when he can with his computer skills. In this way, he has been able to come in close touch with them and has gotten to know the members of their musical group, called Suarasama.

Reciprocally, this couple has become familiar with Mas Nashir’s skills and have been privy to all the steps in the editing of the film. Nashir loves to show the results of a day’s edit or a recent shoot. Suarasama knows better than anyone else how he has been burning the midnight oil to make this film. They also appreciate the goals of the film. They covet knowledge about ancient Batak society and know how to value a text like Rangsa ni Tonun.

Living in their house, Mas Nashir has had ample opportunity to discuss the audio accompaniment and challenges to the film. By the time I arrived there, they had everything sorted out. When Irwansyah told me about the choices, I felt his pleasure at the selections and what he and Suarasama had made of the opportunity. He loves his work. The same smile of enjoyment is on his face when he plays music. I loved the fact that Rangsa ni Tonun is giving these people an opportunity to apply and even expand their repertory. For me Rangsa ni Tonun is not just about the recovery of the past, but a chance to build culture here and now and for the future. Art must always build on what has gone before. Like Nashir, Irwansyah and Rithaony are artists. (It would be so much fun to have a film about the text in the time when it used to be recited and then juxtapose that with our adventures with the text in the contemporary world.)

The music that they selected adds a new symbolic layer to Rangsa ni Tonun and enlivens the film. Each of the melodies is traditional and has been inserted with care according to its meaning. On the day when I was there, the members of Suarasama came out in full force, including:Marsius and his brother Sarikawan Sitohang, Ophir Yanto Sihombing and Syainul Irwan. It was the climax of the musical accompaniment for the film.

Sarikawan Sitohang put his heart in his music.

The film opens with Gondang Sitoluntuho / elekelek. This music accompanies the cotton drifting own from the Upper World. Usually it is played to accompany the arrival of guests at a Batak ritual event.

When the narration by Ompu Okta doli begins in the film, a gondang melody called Sibuka Pikiran is played. This encourages the listener to be open, to be receptive to the knowledge that will become available.

The Gondang Silage Buang follows. The name of the music refers to a woven straw mat and it alludes to a foundation, that on which other things can rest or be placed. It sets the mood and legitimizes what the narrator of the film, Ompu Okta doli, is saying.

In 1980, I made a very brief recording of Ompu Sihol playing the mouth harp (sagasaga). She explained that when a weaver was tired, she might retire briefly and play this little instrument to relax herself with a change of pace. She also explained that you really needed two people to play the melody, but she was the only one left who still knew how to play. We have decided to include this ancient recording in the film when the cotton is being fluffed using a bow. Incomplete as it is, it is still a rare recording of a musical tradition that has disappeared. It was tempting to insert a melody played using a musical bow, but in the end I think that we did the right thing by opting for Ompu Sihol’s mouth harp.

On our last day together in 1980, when we had our communal meal, Ompu Sihol sang a song for me and I recorded that as well. She said that weavers were courted while at their loom and they often sang teasing songs about their suitors. The young man courting them had to really want them badly enough if they were going to accept his attentions! This kind of song was sung while winding spun yarn (mangiran). Weavers used songs to help them keep count when winding yarn, a melodious way to measure. In the film, we use the scratchy, old recording of Ompu Sihol’s wavering voice as an introduction to the fully accompanied version that Irwansyah has composed based on that recording. It leads into Rithaony’s silver and crystal voice and all of Suarasama put their hearts into the piece. Without question this Weaving Song has to be the theme song of the film (see blog Iraniran: Symbolism and Song).

The next musical component of the film is a hasapi solo. The hasapi is a wooden guitar-like instrument with only two strings. There are various kinds of hasapi and Irwansyah has had some exquisite ones made for his use. The solo that he plays is improvised.

Towards the end of the Rangsa ni Tonun text we have a representative of the first Batak weaver, Boru Hasagian, standing in prayer at the edge of Lake Toba. This beautiful image is graced with a so-called andung melody. Andung is sad and haunting, and fits the meditative mood of this special moment. It is played by the brilliant Marsius Sitohang, probably the best Batak sulim (a kind of flute) player alive today.

As the film cycles around to end where it began, the Gondang Hasahatan Sitotio emerges. This melody is played at the end of every Batak ritual and ceremony. Every Batak recognizes it. It will be especially satisfying, therefore, for the Batak viewers of the film.

When the day was done, the sound had been professionally recorded by Avena Natondang (another member of Suarasama) and Mas Nashir had filmed the players, I went over to thank Irwansyah for the great privilege of having his participation in the film. I also expressed my admiration for the quality of the music and for how fitting it was to our needs. He and Ritha explained that it was rare that they received requests to do absolutely traditional music, although this is what all of the members of Suarasama love to do most. They had enjoyed the opportunity – and recovered an old melody as a result of the recording of Ompu Sihol. When they perform it in the future, they wish to announce it as a tribute to this excellent weaver who would have died in anonymity like hundreds and thousands of others, had it not been for our historically accidental meeting – part of the legacy of Sitor Situmorang who advised me, some 31 years ago, to look for a “traditional” weaver in Harian Boho….
Thirty-one years ago! At the time, she was the only one left in Harian Boho….The decline in the Batak weaving arts has accelerated in the intervening years. Nashir, Irwansyah, Rithaony, Suarasama…by re-constructing they are building anew a culture that will win respect, that will be loved, appreciated, admired.

Sitor

On 4 March I visited Sitor Situmorang, the Batak man, now 85 years old, who had such an influence on my work in the early years. 
 
I remember our first meeting in Leiden in 1978. He was wearing a beret that he had picked up in Paris, one of his favourite cities, at a jaunty angle. He was friendly, but very impatient because I did not understand his status in Indonesia nor what I could expect from my acquaintance with him. At the time I was 23, and obsessed with Batak kinship terminology and kept pestering him about the Batak terms for various kinship catgories.
 
When I undertook my first period of fieldwork in Indonesia, he was also in Indonesia and we joined forces for a short time so that he could introduce me to some of his extended family and facilitate my fieldwork project in that way. He has a very dominant character and I faded into the background, but from that back seat, I learned alot about the way that the Batak interact and expectations of adat or customary law. Sitor also shared with me many of his reactions and impressions about being back in Toba, the country where he had been born and raised, but which he had left when he was still a young man. He often leaned on my anthropological knowledge as he tried to make sense of what he was experiencing. 

Sitor is a poet and writer. He sought the deeper meaning in every circumstance in which he found himself.  His return to the Batak area was not just a personal voyage but an investigation of the social history of his people. Since then, his writings have focused heavily on Batak history. Because of his life story, he has been able to blend an insider’s and an outsider’s perspective.

Sitor was the one who introduced me to Harian Boho, a rather out-of-the-way bay on the west shore of Lake Toba where he grew up. His family helped me find Ompu Sihol -- I was searching for a weaver who could introduce me to the traditional Batak weaving arts, and she was the one they recommended. This was certainly a crucial moment in my fieldwork and in my life, as it was she who taught me how to weave with a backstrap loom. Legacy in cloth is peppered with photographs of her at work.
 
I often think back on that journey.  It was a turning-point in both of our lives. He was as old, then, as I am now. I now understand the need that comes with this age, to reconnect with one’s roots as one tries to make deeper sense of one’s being-in-the-world. The way he shared his insights and discoveries was precious to me because it opened up a whole new world and gave the Batak traditions vibrancy.  His example was also a kind of permission for the blending of the personal and the sociological that is my current path in the town of Oosterbeekk, the Netherlands.
 
When Legacy was launched in 2009, Sitor was in Indonesia. Upon their return, his wife, Barbara contacted me and invited me for lunch.  It was a reconnection after a long time and some bumps in our relationship.  Anxious to see his reaction, I handed the book over to Sitor immediately.  I was anxious to see his reaction. This book was so long in the making that I know that he had given up on me ever finishing it. 
 
He sat down and looked at the front cover: Legacy in cloth. Then he looked at the spine: Batak textiles of Indonesia.  “This is just about BATAK textiles? ” he asked, surprised. When he started to look through the book, it was as though he couldn’t stop.  I was very aware, as I watched him inspect the tome, that there were few people for whom this book would have more meaning than Sitor. Finally, he placed it to one side and looked at me sidelong. 

 He said just one word: “Congratulations.”
 
After a pause, the conversation began to roll.