Baduy Part II

I wake to muffled voices and shuffling feet and rain slapping on the thatched roof. I drift through the doorway to the kitchen and Adik pats the floor beside her in front of the small flame burning in the hearth.

It's a cool morning and Mang Udine scrambles to make me tea and our hosts pour me a glass of tua, palm wine, to warm me. How can I not be completely enamored of a culture that offers me wine first thing in the morning? The men explain to me through Adik that every man born in the baduy is given a palm tree at his birth. It is never marked, there is no need, because everyone knows whose tree is whose and, because every one has one, no one would ever try to take from a tree that is not his. From this tree they make the medicinal palm sugar to keep them strong and the tua that keeps them warm.

Mang Udine pours a bowl of sun dried banana chips and we wile away the morning in front of the hearth, swapping stories, me telling them of Mennonites, Hutterites and Amish and they, in turn, sharing the beliefs of the Baduy.

The Baduy are an ethnic mountain people who have resisted the intrusions of the modern world and maintain their traditions in the face of ever growing pressure to assimilate with the outside. Like the Amish, they live simply using what the environments provides for them, but unlike the Amish, these traditions don't seem to stem from religion per se, but from a belief that they have been chosen to be the protectors and keepers of the mountain.

They do have a religion, it's close to Islam though the men don't pray five times a day. In fact, they don't pray at all. "We believe that every time we share or do a good act or kindness that is an offering of prayer." I smile and nod. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

The men wear special bandanas and bracelets around their wrists that they believe will keep them strong and ward off evil spirits that dwell on the mountain. When they are old enough, the boys make the bracelets from hemp or twine and give them to the chief for three days. Nobody knows what the chief does with them but when he returns them they have been imbued with special powers and no one in the Baduy has ever fallen ill to diseases of the mind.

 Inner Baduy returning to the inside after going to market

In the outer Baduy, the ring of villages I am allowed, as a bule, to travel through, the men and women may divorce but they may never marry an outsider. In the inner baduy, the part I want so badly to reach, the people dress only in black and white and may not get divorced.

"Sometimes," Mang Udine tells us, "people choose to leave the inner baduy but then they may only return to visit their families, they are no longer welcome to live there."

I tell him about the Amish , and rhumspringer, and how if anyone chooses not to return they are never allowed back, not even to visit their family. My hosts and Mang Udine are shocked to hear this and marvel at the cruelty of such a rule.

Our hosts explain further that they act as a buffer between the outside world and the inner baduy and Adik asks if, as a man at the bus stop in Jakarta had suggested, it is possible for bule to visit the inside if they come from the other side of the mountain. But no, it most definitely is not. Once, a group of bule men found their way inside by coming over the mountain on the other side but they were forced to make a deal with the baduy in order to be allowed to leave.

"What was the deal?" I ask.

Mang Udine shrugs. Nobody knows.

We wait most of the morning but the rain doesn't stop so we finally pack our things, say our goodbyes and cross the bridge to begin another day of trekking. The path is sloppy mud and we try to pick our way through it stepping on slippery rocks but eventually resign ourselves to slogging through the muck. Climbing is even harder today, involving a lot of backsliding, but descents are even more treacherous requiring skilled downhill mud skiing manouevering and a lot of luck.

"Jalang, jalang," Mang Udine admonishes. We nod. We've really no choice but to go slowly.

Like yesterday, the baduyness themselves hurry past us without any hesitation, carrying wood or tending to the rice fields on the that dot the sides of the mountain.

I settle into a comfortable pace and though I have to concentrate hard I manage to remain standing. After about two hours of hiking I am in a sort of meditative trance, enjoying not only the scenery, but the challenge of climbing. I am several meters ahead of Adik and Mang Udine when I round a bend and am stopped dead in my tracks when I look up from the narrrow path to see a steep wall of
mud.

I am not an expert in guided outdoor adventures, this being the first I've ever undertaken, but when Mang Udine, our intrepid guide himself, roundsthe corner and says, "Uh ohhh" I interpreted it as Bahasa Indonesia for "We're #@#$." Still, when he offers me his arm, I stubbornly refuse realizing the path was so narrow this would leave him teetering on the edge of that sloppy mess of earth. Convinced that I will slip and somehow knock him over and send him hurtling to his death I turn instead to the clay cliff wall behind me and inch my way sideways along it by digging in both my feet and my hands.

"Like spider man," says Adik.

It takes me all of thirty seconds to realize this is the most preposterous thing I could do. Feeling utterly defeated, I reac out and take Mang Udine's arm and, though we both nearly fall twice, he drags me up the slope unscathed. There's no time for a victory dance at the top though as the climb only necessitates another descent, but the village and our next rest stop were thankfully within sight. I make it down unassisted but Adik falls twice before finding herself, literally, stuck in the mud.

It was a relief to stop for a rest on the stoop of one of the villager's houses and share a snack while waiting for the rain to ease up.

At Mang Udine's cue we gather up our things and follow him down the mountain, but, if I'd known what was waiting at the bottom of the path I'm not sure I'd have gone so willingly.

Staring at the dilapidated bamboo bridge in front of me, all I could think was, "This is how bule die. They go to foreign countries and slip off bridges, fall off cliffs, drown in turgid rapids."

This bridge is even longer than the first and even more worn. It shimmies and sways beneath me as I carefully choose each forward step in order to avoid falling through the holes that remain where the bamboo has either rotted or given way beneath the weight of an earlier traveler. My heart hammers my chest, my palms tremble with fear and sting with sweat. Time slows and the ninety seconds it takes me to cross feels like an entire day. I don't breathe, can't breathe, until I reach the other side and my feet are once again planted firmly in the mud.

We climb up again for another twenty minutes alongside a diamond clear creek that cascades over black rocks and when we reach the top  if we look back to see the slope we slid down to the village where we rested

and if we look forward we see the ridge beyond which the inner Baduy live.

We continue our descent to the only natural freshwater "lake" in the outer Baduy. It's more like a pond than a lake, maybe a ten minute swim across but it does have very large freshwater shells. Yesterday I was promised I could swim, but today, when we arrive, I am told no, I must not swim because people have been drowning here lately. I don't argue. I am already cold and damp and the water smells peculiar.

 It finally stops raining and the rest of the afternoon is a pleasant hike for me but Adik is still being bogged down by the saturated clay earth.

Adik decides she has had enough and rather than stay on the mountain in a village about an hours hike to the east, we walk another hour down to the base and stay in the first and final village. It isn't until we drop our bags and sit on the stoop that I realize I'm famished. As if having read my mind a ten year old boy appears with a container of opak, a sort of crispy cassava tortilla found only in Baduy, and a pitcher of chili sauce. He sells us two each to start but we keep going back for more so he sits down beside us and waits until we have eaten every last one.