Minangkabau: Land of the Womb Mother

Traditional Bundo Kanduangs dress.

View Photos (4) Image © 2002 Grace Emilia

Minangkabau in West Sumatera is the land of the female. Daughters are more appreciated than sons as they inherit the family's name, treasures and pride. Its people, the Minang, are the only tribe in Indonesia who still applies the matrilineal system in their society.

Katherine Stenger Frey in her book "Journey to the Land of the Earth Goddess" says that the ancient belief of the Earth Goddess is still celebrated here. Every woman is treated as 'Bundo Kanduang' or a womb mother. Village meetings should be attended by a Bundo Kanduang or her representative.

At the same time there still lives a woman in the little village of Lunang who is regarded as the descendent of an ancient Minangkabau queen named Mande Rubiah. People travel from distant places to bring gifts and offerings for this queen and sleep in her long house or 'rumah gadang'. Frey reports about her journey back in 1985 to meet this ancient queen. Paradoxically, most of the Minangs are also ones of the most devoted Moslems in Indonesia.

Sons, as early as 8 years old, should sleep in the 'surau' or religious community center. They have been taught to be independent from the beginning. Probably it explains the diaspora of the male Minangs to all over Indonesia. Most of them are natural-born traders who succeed and become rich merchants or intellectuals in Java. Many open Padang cuisine restaurants all over Indonesia and in South East Asian countries. Even in Los Angeles, there are some Padang restaurants belonging to the Minangs. Though there are 3 million Minang outside West Sumatera, only about 800,000 are still in Padang, its capital city.

Padang could be reached in 1.5 hours by air from Jakarta or 1 hour from Singapore (by Silk Air). It is actually one of the oldest cities in the west coast of the Indian Ocean. The local government stipulates August 7, 1669 as the anniversary of the city. Fishermen, salt-producing community members and traders were the former citizens of Padang. Its ports were located close to the sources of highly demanded commodities in the past such as pepper, cloves, nutmeg and gold. These very sources first attracted the Dutch to Padang in 1660. They colonized the area up to Indonesia's independence in 1945. Asian traders from India and China were also settled here and left lots of cultural traces in the old part of the city.

Its China town, unlike other China towns in Indonesia, is surprisingly well preserved and very clean. Many of these Chinese old houses have signage bearing the name of the clan owning the house. So there is the 'Oei' house, 'Tan' house or other houses belonging to specific Chinese clans. Its old Chinese temple was built in 1861 by the first generation of Chinese who settled there and said to be one of the most beautiful Chinese temples in Indonesia.

Next to the China town is the Dutch area, with its art deco style buildings. "Believe me, McDonald's will someday try hard to acquire one of these old buildings!" says van den Bergh, my fellow traveller but also a Dutch tour operator who has brought his tourist groups from Holland to West Sumatera for the last 20 years.

As the matter of fact, an old Dutch bank used to be called Padangsche Spaarbank is already transformed into a boutique hotel called Batang Arau Hotel. Norma Duelfer, a German woman fell in love with this heritage and made it into a hotel which rooms are decorated in different styles. Some rooms are heavily decorated in Chinese' bright red colours and oriental ornaments, whilst other rooms have the traces of the Dutch's colonial style.

The Dutch named its colony in Indonesian archipelago after the 'East Indies', while at the same time its colony in the Caribbean was called the 'Dutch West Indies'. So it is not very surprising for travellers to find similarity in building's style between old Dutch's buildings here, such as this old bank in Padang with the buildings in say, St. Martin Island in the Caribbean.

Being an old and melting pot city, one could expect to find the real and old antiques here. A friend of mine got a very old and antique iron made of copper and brass from the traditional market for a very cheap price. She is a kind of treasure hunter and usually knows where to find antique stuffs.

Since I have a very limited time in Padang, I'm quite satisfied to find a big antique store in Ahmad Yani Street in Bukittinggi instead, a city located about 2 hours drive from Padang. There I found real antiques from China, India, Holland and other parts of Indonesia. "We usually sell them again to antique stores in Jakarta, Bali or even abroad.," says its shopkeeper. Beside this store, there are other smaller antique shops nearby.

Bukittinggi is center of the Minang culture. We can find lots of Minang's traditional 'long houses' or rumah gadang in the countryside around Bukittinggi. Rumah Gadang has distinctive roofs with a point at each end, which looks like buffalo horns. These horns are said to represent the legend of how the Minang defended their lands by winning a buffalo fight.

Buffalo is indeed a very important animal in Minangkabau. Everywhere I go around its beautiful countryside, I always see male, female, adults or children, herding buffaloes on the streets. The view is so picturesque. An hotelier friend from Bukittinggi showed me a documentary film about West Sumatera made by the Dutch in 1930. I see little differences of the then and the present time, except there are now electricity cables, cars and internet cafes in Padang and Bukittinggi.

Bukittinggi was formerly named Fort de Kock by the Dutch. It has a cool climate and is surrounded by three volcanoes. Since the Dutch made Bukittinggi its resort city, we can find lots of the art deco houses and buildings here, which sometimes acculturated with the Minang's architectural styles. Even a French chained hotel in Bukittinggi is built in such a mixture so it gives the feeling of an Indian palace but with Islamic inspired archways and fretworks.

Another distinctiveness of Bukittinggi is Ngarai Sianok, a steep canyon of about 150 meter high surrounded by a green valley with a winding river at the bottom. Panoramic as it is, the beautiful canyon is a silent witness of the Japanese army's cruelness during its occupation from 1942 to 1945.

A 1.5-kilometer Japanese cave was built next to the canyon by thousands of Romushas (forced labourers) abducted from Java. Before the cave was first opened for tourists in 1985, a team of surveyors found hundreds of human skeletons inside it. A purification ceremony was held here before it was opened to the public. A guide who brought me touring the canyon said that most of the dying Romusha were thrown mercilessly into the canyon via a small hole inside the cave.

Despite its potential, West Sumatera only receives a tiny percentage of tourists visiting Indonesia. The recorded number shows the province only receives 21,000 international tourists from the 5 million visiting Indonesia in 2001. This is probably due to the bad image of Indonesia in general and lack of promotion.

Most of the children in the countryside still show their excitement upon seeing tourists. They will usually wave, laugh and shout "bule, bule!" ('bule' means 'caucasian') when seeing the Caucasian tourists. Usually tourists will merrily wave back and give away pencils, cookies or other small things for these children. My Dutch friend always collects amenities from the hotel rooms and distributes them to these children.

These children's innocence and broad smiles are the sweetest memories I have of Minangkabau.

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Published on 11/2/02