THE CELEBRATION

After the second and third sacrifices, I see slaughter, not steak. Western sensibilities about cruelty to animals seem out of place here: this is no more horrific than inventing factories where chickens, cows, pigs and sheep are murdered on conveyor belts. The roasted pig fat and rice for lunch tastes good, too: and the pigs are even killed quickly, with a knife straight through the heart. Unlike the water buffalo. Many more sights made the rest of the day a fascinating glimpse into the Torajan way of life. Every half an hour the people from another village would arrive, bearing gifts of pigs and buffalo, cigarettes and food, parading themselves and their gifts round the arena, stepping lightly round headless carcasses and piles of excrement. A woman clad in a bright yellow dress guided the villagers, men first and then women, in a line round the edge of the arena, making sure that the details of every gift were noted down in a little book, so that every gift would be reciprocated at the next funeral; in this way a vague balance of payments is kept between villages, helping to prevent too much of an imbalance. For all these sights were too much for me to take. Guided by my faintly steps, I throbbed beside L. and Cora, who are also shivering down their spines as I held L's arms in support of my trembling body.

And then there's the tuak, or palm wine, served in long, green tubes of bamboo, and tasting rather like a fruity cider. If there's one justification that living in the tropics is as close to heaven as you can get in this life, it's the existence of palm wine. Certain palms naturally produce a sweet, sticky liquid, and if this is tapped in the morning, it slowly ferments during the day to produce a truly delightful alcoholic drink that's perfectly in tune with the way serious drunks like to drink. For tuak starts off in the morning almost free of alcohol, and is as easy to drink as lemonade, but as the day progresses the alcoholic content increases, the taste becomes more intense, and by the end of the day it's gone red, and it'll blow your mind. Drinking tuak all day not only rots your brain, it gets stronger just when you need more alcohol to give you the same effect: it's nature and man's self-destructive tendencies in perfect balance. I tried, puked and will I try again…nay!