Ma Tika: Portrait of a Weaver

Ma Tika at work in her loom

During my last journey to Indonesia, I met Lasma's weaving teacher, Ma Tika, Nesli br. Saragih, a Simalungun woman. I invited her to travel with us as we were at the beginning of a journey that would take us to various weavers in different Batak regions. She had other plans, but she cancelled them and seized this new opportunity with both hands. She was quiet and modest in the extreme (a bit intimidated), but as the days went by, I got to know her a little bit. I loved watching her single-mindedly take every single opportunity that presented itself to expand her weaving knowledge and skill. For her the journey must have been a once-in-a-lifetime chance.  For me it was an affirmation of how important it is for weavers to have a network that inspires and teaches them. If that network was once available in a weaver's village, now a weaver has to travel far and wide to construct it. Such is the consequence of the decline and disappearance of the weaving tradition.

Ma Tika (the mother of Tika; in the Batak area you reference people by the names of their children or grandchildren if they have them) started to weave at the turn of this 21st century. She is now 48 years old, so she must have been around 30 years old when she began. She had watched her mother weave the bulang as a child and did the things that children do, like winding the weft. Her weaving spirit expressed itself very early; she longed to work in the loom rather than in the fields and so at one point she insisted on learning to weave. For various reasons her mother refused to teach her; undaunted, she taught herself. This is remarkable. She had watched her mother weave, and she had an example of the bulang in her possession. She simply went to work by trial and error learning how to replicate the textile in her possession. She explained that this important textile  -- afterall, it is worn on the head !!! -- cannot have flaws. As she struggled to learn she unravelled her work every time she made an error. Wove and un-wove, wove and un-wove. This is the most difficult textile in the Siimalungun repertory! When I met her, she showed me her work and asked me to critique it. I didn't understand the significance of her request at first as I thought: you are a weaver, you know better than I how to weave!

Weaving supplementary weft is all about counting the warp yarns to
make the correct shed

Gradually, however,  I came to understand what she wanted from me. She needs colleagues and also technical insights into how to produce a high quality textile. She learned to weave when the marketplace was already enforcing shortcuts on the weavers, demanding that they weave more loosely to use less yarn and more quickly in order to have another cloth ready for the next market. She never learned in the 'traditional way' that emphasized quality. When she was learning, meeting the parameters of the market meant being able to eat, so she learned how to make a textile fast, using shortcuts. Since those days, the bottom has fallen out of even that very poor market  because mechanized producers have started to make a version of the bulang -- certainly a version of lower quality, but also a cheaper version that the market has welcomed. Almost every backstrap weaver was forced by these new circumstances to stop weaving the bulang. Ma Tika has been able to continue because she obtains orders from the Church where there are some people willing to pay the higher price. Ma Tika does not know how much one of her textiles fetches; she only knows how much she is paid for her labour. One cannot claim that it is a living wage, far from it; the amount she earns is painfully, heart-stoppingly low. But Ma Tika continues to weave. She is a weaver at heart, not a gardener. She loves the bulang.

She knew from Lasma that I had an old bulang textile in my possession and she begged me to bring it to show to her. I did this and her reaction was remarkable. She pulled out a needle-like instrument and immediately started counting the yarns in the supplementary weft section.  Her own textiles are loosely woven; she wanted to know how to make a more densely woven cloth and the impact that would have on the patterning. By examining the old cloth, she obtained her answer.

Ma Tika, Lasma and I examining the old bulang.
In my hand is a blown-up, laminated image of a pattern in one of
Pamela's bulang textiles
(Photo by MJA Nashir)

From my friend, Pamela Cross, a bulang aficionado, I had received detailed photographs of several bulang end fields (where the supplementary weft is located). I printed them larger than life, laminated them, and gave them to Ma Tika to refer to. She latched onto them with the same alacrity and started to count yarns. Her findings yielded all kind of insights about different time periods, availability of various kinds of yarn, the ways of working of weavers in the past and variety in patterning.

I was able to contribute from my knowledge of museum collections and Batak textile history. I pointed out that machine-like perfection is not a characteristic of the textiles made long ago, that there is in fact charm in the hand of the weaver and in the imperfections. I told her that each region once had its own specialty expressed through technique, design and colour, that different yarns have come onto the market at different times, that the tradition is dynamic and has never been stable, that there is also room for her to experiment and build on the past. All of these were new insights to her. She works in a time when a single template is replicated and the standard of weaving has become extremely narrow. Initially Ma Tika was inclined to judge the textile that was closest to what is made today as the "correct" textile. Exploring the images and discussing them gave birth to a new goal for her. Now she wants to replicate the one that is most 'foreign' to her and thus represents the greatest challenge. In fact, she is up for replicating them all. I reminded her that she also has a creative spirit that could express itself in the cloth.

 

Comparing the old with the new in Ma Tika's home
(Photo by MJA Nashir)

As our journey proceeded, we met Batak women who plant cotton. Ma Tika collected cotton seeds. We met a natural dyer. There, Ma Tika collected the seeds for the indigo plant and the bark of the roots of the morinda citrifolia that yields red dye. She also collected the recipes for the dyes. In addition, we ordered enough yarn to be dyed with these colours that she will be able to make many bulang with natural dyes even while she is learning the dye technique herself.

We met twiners, the specialists who make the patterned edgings in Batak textiles. Ma Tika watched their work and learned the technique but decided that she would rather stay with her own regional specialty for her bulang textile.

She saw weft holders used in the Toba Batak region and brought one home to Simalungun, only to discover that it did not function properly for her because her weft is wound differently. She learned that her region was not 'lacking' in a weft holder, but that even the way weft is wound is a regional specialty in its own right.

Ma Tika has been using a loom passed down from her mother. She claims that it is too small for her. During the journey she met a weaver who was willing to pass on parts of the loom that she needed to be able to make a wider textile.

And our sponsor, Bank Indonesia, agreed to purchase a new pair of glasses for her so that she can see better as she weaves.

All in all, our journey may well have supplied Ma Tika with all of her basic needs to be able to revive a bulang textile of former glory: sumptuous, beautiful, densely woven.

I love to work with self-motivated, enthusiastic weavers. In fact, I say over and over again that there is no point trying to work with a weaver who does not have these characteristics. Ma Tika's road to the future will not be an easy one. She will only be able to conduct her experiments in her 'free time' and she has little of that because she weaves for a living and earns so desperately little. She is a widow and still has dependent children. Moreover, she only has one loom and can't have two textiles on the go at one time. But she has will and determination. She learned to weave by herself, she loves the bulang tradition, and she loves a challenge. She is clever, strong and determined. She will give it her best shot -- and she will share her work with Lasma every step of the way. If a bulang revival happens in Simalungun, it will be due to her. May she remain healthy and spared from disasters!

Towards the end of our journey we visited the T.B. Silalahi museum in Balige. Ma Tika was disappointed with the Simalungun textiles she saw there on display. Now she has an additional goal: to make a textile that will one day be displayed in the museum and become a source of pride for all Simalungun visitors.

Go Ma Tika, go!

Hudon Tano

 It was a pleasure to meet Ompu Jonathan again. I had not seen her since she participated in our spinning workshop with Ompu Erwin in Sianjur Mulamula a year ago (February 2015). Her goal remains unwavering: she wants to make a "sibolang" textile, the textile typical of Samosir Island where she lives. I quickly learned that she faces many more stumbling blocks. The cotton that had been planted in the vicinity seems to have contracted a disease and needs to be resown. The spinning wheel that we revived with Jesral Tambun's help has some structural flaws and needs adjustments if she is to spin with greater ease.

Ompu Jonathan showed us the changes she wanted to her spinning wheel.

She also needs an iraniran or yarn winder.

This was when I realized Ompu Jonathan needed a yarn winder.

She has no access to information about dyeing with indigo and even if she did, there are no longer any earthenware pots to hold the dye. On top of all of that, she does not know how to decorate her warp yarns with ikat. Oh yes, and the leaves needed to tie off the ikat no longer grow in the vicinity, her weaving sword is too short and she doesn't know anyone who can make a new one for her. The wood is also no longer available. A breathtaking list if one is struggling alone to revive a textile. Of course I wanted to help in some way.

We (Lasma, Ishak, ibu Tetti -- our Johnny Appleseed in cotton revival, Ibu Theodora and I) sat sitting together on a woven pandan mat picking the seeds out of cotton bolls. I had my computer nestled amidst the white fluff and duly took note of Ompu Jonathan's challenges.

We picked through them one by one, discussing options, sounding out Ompu Jonathan on her comfort zone and preferences. Her advantage was that she remembered procedures from her childhood, even if she had perhaps never done them herself, and from the sound of it, she was an accurate and careful weaver. Where and how to start helping her to realize her goals? The one thing that we could do on the immediate term was to enquire whether her elderly acquaintance would be able to assist in reviving the 'hudon tano', the earthenware pots needed for the indigo dye.

Bataks used to make these pots in large, medium and small sizes. They had the red colour of the clay, often with a blackened side from the firing process, and a wonderfully round and friendly shape. In the modern day, plastic pails are used to hold the dye, but the hudon tano has the advantage of having a narrow neck that restricts the surface of the dye exposed to the air and oxygen, whereby the dye bath has a longer life.  In times past, the clay pots were also used for cooking and storage. Production ceased probably in the 1970s, victim of the plastic age and of prices that support neither handicraft nor small-scale home production. Ompu Jonathan remembered how they used to be stacked and tied at their necks and then carried to market on a stick. There was someone who lived fairly close by, she said, who used to make them. We were up for a walk, so we conceived a plan to visit this elderly person to explore the possibility of reviving the pot.

We climbed, rode and hiked our way up and up Samosir Island to find Ompu Heki.  The scenery was gorgeous. Every time we came to another turn we had a yet wider view of Lake Toba and Pusuk Buhit, Navel Mountain, with its head in the clouds and its feet bathing in the inky dark water (the water used to be blue before the fish farm craze at the edges of the lake).

We passed occasional villages. The road became lumpier and the human population scarcer. This was increasingly Tano Batak as it used to be before the days of loud speakers, lurching mini-buses and dusty, busy streets. The top of Samosir Island. The weather was gorgeous. Despite the threat in the distant clouds, the air was pleasant. Not too hot. The air was clean. It was a pleasure to be there.

Around one more turn we saw a few houses standing in a row. The first one was our destination. An elderly woman with grey hair wearing a sarong and a loose blouse was slowly making her way towards the front of the house and clambered up the stairs. She said she was sick. She seemed tired. But her door was open and all seven of us gradually assembled cross-legged on the hand woven pandan mats that were lying next to the doorway inside the house. It was dark; the only light was from the open door. It was possible to discern an old cupboard with a shelf above it along the back wall, and another along the side wall. In front of it were plastic pots and a plate bearing a small tomato and an onion. Above the doorway there was a kind of platform used for storage. The abode had been a Batak traditional house before the attempt to modify it into something "modern".

The elderly woman scarcely knew Indonesian. Her language was the 'old Batak' that I remembered from my days more than thirty years ago in Harian Boho. It had a flowing and cheekily aggressive character and was packed with idioms. She was very serious and direct but her eyes were distant. She seemed neither happy nor well. Her cough was painful. The betel-chewing Ompu Jonathan, who was the only one who knew our elderly host, explained why we needed the hudon tano. Ompu Heki listened with a dull, unmoved expression. She told us that the person we were looking for had died. Ompu Jonathan then asked if she would be able to help us because hadn't she also made pots?

Then followed a long turiturian, a story that my command Batak was unable to follow. Afterwards Ibu Theodora explained that that Ompu Heki had shared her associations with earthenware pots. It was a painful story and some emotion had surfaced during the telling, although not enough for a tear to dribble down her cheek. There had been a long drought. The rice crop had failed; the kernels were yellow and empty. Ompu Heki's children were still very young and absolutely dependent on her. In desperation she turned to making a few pots and sold some on the market. Thus she obtained enough money to put a little bit of food into each child's mouth.

She did not want to make pots for us. She could not bear the pain of these associations. She refused adamantly to help us revive the craft. And there we sat with one after the other using the power of argument to get her to change her mind:

The culture was dying out; if she didn't help us, who would? She was the last who knew, who remembered.

Ompu Jonathan needed the pots. Take pity on Ompu Jonathan who is struggling to achieve a noble cultural goal.

Would it not be a sin to not pass on cultural knowledge? The future stretches endlessly ahead of us -- a yawning gap if the pots belonged only to the past.

We would do the work; she would just have to say how it is done.

The arguments were repeated again and again. Finally she capitulated but not with pleasure and not wholeheartedly. Her eyes remained dull and distant. And then we bade her farewell and left to make our way back down the hill leaving her sitting in the doorway.

Could this be it, then? One reason why young people don't weave? Associations that are too painful? How poverty ruins the art in craft? Certainly parents discourage their children from taking up craft because it will only give them a hard life. I reflect on our Rangsa ni Tonun film in which the guru praises the practice of weaving as perpetuating the work of the goddess. This, then, epitomized the flip side. I had been shown in very stark terms how poverty interferes with the perpetuating of culture, makes the practitioners feel anything but close to a goddess.

The experience was surreal. Ridiculous, absurd, even silly:  a group of adults sitting there in a Batak house pleading with an elderly woman to share her cultural knowledge. It felt a bit desperate, as though the whole future of the culture was in her hands, and we simply had to convince her of the importance of her skill. I don't think I will ever be able to forget that moment. Sometimes I wish I could. Will I one day recount to grandchildren these minute details of how Batak culture slowly died out in the early 21st century?  How I met the last woman who could make earthenware pots….

Postscript
A week later I have met a younger woman who can help us make earthenware pots. She is vigorous and full of humour. Batak culture suddenly feels resilient. There is hope….

Weaving Reflects the Soul

Batak weavers know, at some fundamental level, that their craft is sophisticated -- despite the poor returns they get on their work and their low social position. They have an awareness of the intricacy and level of difficulty of their work.

I shudder when I recall the tall tales told to aspiring young weavers by those former Batak weavers who have been deeply disappointed by the reception of their work, things like "Don't learn to weave or you will go blind," and the well-meant advice, "Weaving will condemn you to poverty; it is best to not begin." Of course these are reflections of, and reactions to, the drop in prices and lack of appreciation that weavers have been experiencing.

Lasma's first bulang ready for the complex technique
called warp exchange

In Lasma's village the women had all stopped weaving and none was willing to teach her the craft. Slowly Lasma has been making a difference. Some can't stop themselves from giving a word or two of instruction as they pass by her window and see her at work at her loom. Lasma's enthusiasm is unflagging and appears to be infectious. She is convinced there is a future for these textiles -- especially now that weaving has become a rarity. Some are willing to take up the sword and shuttle again because they are convinced that there may be a market. Weaving may have stopped but suffering from poverty has not.

Lasma has reached that stage in her learning curve when she wants to seriously work on a textile for ritual purposes. She has selected the bulang, as consistent with the tradition in her village. I was touched deeply when she told me her neighbours' reactions. Their story has changed. They are acknowledging the nobility of the work once again and they are encouraging her in wise ways.

"Weaving is a highly complex craft," they confide to Lasma. "We can see and sense the spirit and characteristics of a weaver through her finished textile. Weaving is not just about practising complicated techniques, it is about learning patience."

Postscript

I am writing this blog in Thailand. For a brief two weeks I have joined a team in Bangkok that is studying the collection of batiks collected by King Rama V in 1871, 1896 and 1901 in Java. Some of the works are truly extraordinary but there is next to no information available about the makers; they have been left out of the annals of written history. They are present only in the cloths they decorated. This presence is reminding me of the words of Lasma's neighbours. I detect from these cloths that the makers were patient to an almost incredible degree. Applying the wax on those detailed, precise cloths can only have been an endless, meditative, spiritual exercise.

Everyday I emerge from the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles where I have undergone an intensive encounter with those batiks and I return to my hotel and an intensive encounter with the buzzing Khao San district of Bangkok, famous for its confection sales and entertainment scene. I reel from the dissonance between the two worlds. I wonder how Lasma will fare in her self-imposed challenge to enter the cognitive space of the master weaver.  We will talk about that when I see her in a few weeks. 

Saving Lasma Sitanggang

I have never seen the harrowing war film, 'Saving Private Ryan' but the title has always intrigued me. It points to the story, the complications, of following one's heart to do good for another.

When I met Lasma, she was in a state of desperation. The purchase of medicine for her chronically ill mother used up all of the family's resources and Lasma had not been able to qualify for a grant to go to university. The spectre of perpetuating the poverty into which she had been born stared her in the face. She would have to kiss goodbye to her youth. Her friends had gone off to school and she was left behind to work in the fields. With tears in her eyes she defiantly claimed that she had honest hands that could do an honest day's work, that she would follow in the footsteps of her ancestors and there was no reason to feel shame.

Thoughtful Lasma

I couldn't bear to see the unhappiness in this young woman who was so articulate and clearly so intelligent and deserving. I took her under my wing. It was a gradual process that took a few years, but now she is firmly lodged there, under my wing. I have committed to walk with her on her path and to confront the devil of poverty with her. Lasma and I are on a journey together. Where it will end we do not know. Where we want it to go is clear to both of us.

Lasma is a kind-hearted soul. She is bright and capable. Perhaps her only fault is her boundless sense of her own capacities. But this is also her greatest strength. It is the source of her positive 'can do' approach to everything. She shoulders every challenge thoughtfully and enthusiastically with both feet solidly on the ground. I know that this kind of drive in an individual can change the course of history. I don't try to correct her. I try to facilitate her dreams. I approve of them. Time will tell how far she will be able to run with the ball.

Thoughtful and critical

I try to put myself in her shoes. What would/could I do in her position? I dialogue with her, challenge her, think with her. What kind of course is strategic and effective? What is wise? I ask myself and her, what can I do as an outsider to clear away obstacles and facilitate her marching to her own drum? What are the needed interventions? I want to save her from that breaking point that I have seen far too often in the lives of young poverty-stricken Batak adults: that moment when they concede to poverty, when they know that they are defeated and are fated to never get ahead or achieve their dreams or realize their capacities and ambitions. This is the spectre that terrifies Lasma. It is what brought us together and continues to bind us: this need to present some opposition to the needless, senseless waste of talent and life!

The question that Lasma and I share is huge. Where is the path that will give her a good, fulfilling existence? What does it mean to have a 'good' life? What does it mean to be fulfilled? These are existential, political, social, historical, cultural and environmental questions; the soul-searching is not just psychological and individual. The answer does not lie in tearing her away from her family and village and turning her into a relatively wealthy Westerner. The answer is so much more complex. It lies in negotiating a path that is appropriate for her within her culture, situation and environment. It would break her heart to become alienated from her home in any sense. She would not be able to live with herself. She cannot rest until her parents are secure in their old age and her neighbours are no longer suffering. She is not the kind of person who coûte que coûte will run off to seek gain for herself leaving the rest to face hardship. The path to her goal is not lying there waiting to be trod; it will have to be constructed while walking on it.

'Saving Lasma Sitanggang' means saving the whole village. It means struggling to answer the challenge of how to make a good life despite all the forces that slap down the little farmer in Indonesia. This past year alone, four people in her village have committed suicide for reasons related to poverty. Lasma wants to honour her cultural heritage as well as find her way through this world that champions only the value of money. For me, traveling with Lasma Sitanggang means being willing to share the burden on her shoulders, to help construct strategies that fit with her local circumstances, to construct ways that will give everyone a chance to win and climb out of the hole together. What we undertake, the interventions that we construct, must meet the criterion of serving the well being of the whole village.

This must be possible because the alternative is not bearable to consider.

Lasma is not the same as all the other people in her situation because I am there beside her making sure that she does not drown. That lightens her load a little, but it does not render her challenge easier. And I also must not flag.

Life in the city is not what Lasma wants

We ask ourselves, "What is well being?" Lasma is not interested in an urban existence. She disparages of the dirt and buzz of a city. She loves to work with the soil and enjoys the beauty of a farmer's field, the breathability of the air in the countryside. That makes it easier for us to work on a program of well being that takes into account the health of the air, soil and water. We do not seek monetary wealth. We seek cultural, physical, environmental and community health. We focus consciously on the lasting, important values and the needs of this poor, beleaguered earth. Money is but one of the resources that we can deploy to make this happen. I often refer to the beauty of a tree and suggest that we should be like a tree. It gives abundantly. It gives and gives. It makes the soil richer and the air cleaner; it provides a home for every kind of creature; blossoms infinitely and so much more plentifully than what is needed just to reproduce itself. It offers shade and anchors the water and soil. It does not ask what it will get in return; it does not count beans and has no ledgers. It is simply generous. Even when it is old and falls over it continues to provide a home for species and the opportunity for new life. "Lasma, our job in this world is to be like trees. How can we do that?"

In future blogs I will write about our choices and selections. Saving Lasma Sitanggang is about a different kind of war, the everyday kind that we really have no choice but to fight.