A Keystone Cock Fight

At the markets and elsewhere you'll see them being shown off. Their fine plumage, plus their aggressiveness to other birds, is what is being evaluated. I think it is thus all over Indonesia.

The actual cock fights take place a little more secretively. They are illegal, or at least gambling is, and that's what it's all about.


So I was somewhat curious when my guide, my driver, and I stumbled onto one during one of our day tours out of Rantepao, in Southern Sulawesi's Toraja region. The boys weren't curious. They were almost ecstatic. What a bonus for them! Like most Torajan men, I imagine, they were wild about cock fighting and the gambling that went with it. Even if I'd had no interest in the event myself, I  couldn't deprive my companions of this thrill!

They knew immediately what was happening, by the big collection of parked motorbikes outside the small village we were passing. So we parked the car and wandered up the path to join the throng.

I don't have any pictures of the actual fights, or of the aggressive warming up sessions between the participants, or of the attaching of the sharp knife blade spur extensions that were to deliver the fatal blows, sometimes only two or three seconds into the match. Or of the furious placements of the bets and payouts to the successful punters. I was told it wasn't OK to photograph most of this. Some photography would have been OK, but my companions were so consumed by the action that they weren't answering my questions at all. I did photograph one of the little sideshow gambling games that was also going on.

Then there was an announcement by an authoritative man with a loudspeaker. The police were on their way, he said. But don't worry. He and his fellow organisers would head off down the road to meet them. It would all be OK. And they had to come from Makale, 30km away.

How the situation got resolved I didn't hear. I can make a good guess though. And also, as guide John pointed out, the police and the villagers are all friends. How would they decide who to arrest and who would do the arresting?

Later in the day, on the way back to Rantepao, the motorbikes were gone. But we passed another very similar collection in another village nearby. Looks like they had relocated.

Some Sulawesi tour guides

I've forgotten this chap's name, but he was a veteran at the game, and a total professional. He'd claimed me before I even got off the bus in Rantepao. And there was no way he'd take no for an answer, and no way he'd budge from his asking price of Rp 800,000 for a day's tour guiding, including car and driver. That's the tour guide union's agreed rate, he said, and that was that. He was pretty good though. Here he's playing with a giant stag beetle, for some reason.

This is our driver, whose name I think was Arief. A jovial young happy chappie and an excellent driver. He was quite a ladies' man too. Whenever we stopped at a tourist site,  he's be chatting up a young woman or two!

On day two I found myself with John here. He did an adequate job I thought. He's posing here with a giant deposit that looks like it was left by our car.

John told me that we'd be climbing Mt Sesean, the 2150m high peak on the range in the picture. I knew that we wouldn't, as there was only an hour or two budgeted for it, and the driver was waiting for us to return for lunch. Sure enough we only made it to the first peak there, and he announced we'd have to turn around and go back down.

The chap on the left was a bit of a pain. He was the becak (cycle rickshaw) driver in Makassar who managed to lure me into the 'it's up to you how much you pay' con for his quick tour of the harbour and local markets. I knew it was a bad idea, and would have really rather walked to these places and took my time there. And of course once the tour was over the friendly and relaxed disposition vanished and he was demanding ridiculous sums. I gave him three times what I really should have, and pointed out that this was the same as the amount I'd just paid for my ticket for the 10-hour bus ride to Toraja Land.

Stocking up on livestock

It was a Saturday, and the big livestock market at Bolu, near Rantepao in Sulawesi's Toraja highlands, was in full swing.

The main events were the pig and buffalo auctions. These are big deals indeed in Toraja Land. The region gets through an enormous number of pigs and buffaloes. They are shipped in from far and near to satisfy the local funeral ceremony demand, and the prices are high. There was talk of buffaloes being worth more than houses, and they were mostly not going to be used in the fields.
Those pigs above were 'hog-tied', very much alive, and possibly resigned to their nasty fate to come.





It's cruel, but not nearly as cruel as what was to follow when they arrived at the funeral site.

Albino buffaloes feature prominently. They are 'sacred buffaloes', and fetch much greater prices still. If you're a high status Torajan, you really ought to have a sacred buffalo or two included in the sacrificial mix at your funeral.