Tree of life
Forty-nine-year-old Alexander Haninuna reckons he has climbed the three trees in his backyard 42,840 times. Like most men on Roti, a small, dry island southwest of Timor, he’s an expert climber and has been scampering up and down these trees since the age of 15. But then, these are no ordinary trees.
The lontar palm (Borassus sundaicus) is one of the world’s most efficient sugar-producing plants. Growing up to 30 metres tall, this drought-resistant palm is the ‘tree of life’ and provides security against famine for the Rotinese people.
It’s thought that Roti, which is more vulnerable to erosion than its neighbouring islands in the south of the Indonesian archipelago, became infertile hundreds of years ago. Gradually, its inhabitants learnt to use the tens of thousands of lontar palms that grow on the island, in the process reverting from an agricultural society to one of gatherers.
Today, they rely on the palm for food, shelter and a bewildering array of other products. The sweet, freshly tapped lontar juice, known as tuak manis, is the first nutrition that a newborn Rotinese child receives, even before its mother’s breast milk. And when that child grows old and dies, it will be buried in a coffin constructed from the hollowed-out trunk of the palm.
Ample nectar
It’s 4.30pm when Alexander rouses from an afternoon nap and prepares for work. I had agreed to meet him at this hour and, as I enter his home, shafts of light cut through the walls of stripped lontar leafstalk. He buckles up his climbing belt, from which an assortment of palm-tapping tools hang in woven lontar-leaf sheaths, along with a basket called a haik, fashioned from the fan of the lontar leaf. In this he will collect the tuak manis from his three palm trees.
With the assurance of one who has done the job thousands of times before, Alexander steps up onto a palm. His leathery feet grasp the footholds cut into the lontar’s fibrous trunk and in less than 15 seconds, his wiry frame is pushing through the crown’s thick barricade of leaf stalks 30 metres above my head.
Alexander has no sons. When his career finishes, his extended family will work his three trees to continue supplying the family with tuak manis. The ownership of lontar palms on Roti is decided within the immediate community, and care of the trees – through tapping and pruning, and maintenance of fences surrounding the communal field – ensures continued ownership.
Climbing and tapping the lontar is strictly a male activity. Boys begin by practising on shorter palms at an early age. From the age of 15, if they climb and work hard, they win not only the respect of their family and community but also the adoration of the local girls. ‘I was the best climber in Oenitas,’ Alexander tells me with a glint in his eye.
His daughter Adele arrives with three glasses, which are quickly filled with the sweet nectar. During the tapping season, tuak manis is the prime nourishment for the Rotinese people, who often drink more meals than they eat.
The lontar blossoms twice a year, and two or three palms can support a family with juice and related products when other food is scarce. Because of the lontar, Roti and nearby Savu are the only islands in the region that don’t experience the annual period of hunger, known as lapar biasa.
Both the male and female lontar provide large quantities of juice – a palm might yield 200–400 litres of juice a year for up to 35 years. The female, however, must be tapped prior to fruiting. If left untapped, large aubergine-like fruits develop, which the Rotinese consider a delicacy.
Sugar production is at its peak at the end of the dry season (September–October), and villagers work to get their harvest in before the rains come. Some climbers sleep beneath their palms and will start work as early as 1am, climbing and processing up to 30 trees a day. The juice sours very rapidly, so whatever isn’t drunk immediately has to be processed as quickly as possible. Family members run from the palms to the kitchens, where wives will cook for as many hours as the men climb.
It’s in this main peak season (a less intensive tapping season takes place in May–June) that the Rotinese families gather their surplus lontar juice to gauge their needs for the rest of the year. Gula air – boiled-down tuak manis – diluted with water will see them through the rainy season when no juice is available. Fortuitously, climbing isn’t possible at this time of year anyway, because it’s too windy.
The treacle-like gula air can also be cooled to make gula lempeng – delicious biscuits of set brown sugar. Alternatively, tuak manis can be boiled to form gula batu (stone sugar) or gula semut (granulated brown sugar). Vinegar, tuak asam, is made from tuak manis that has been allowed to stand and sour.
When fermented, gula air or tuak manis can be distilled to produce a potent spirit called sopi, which has an estimated 50–70 per cent alcohol content. The Rotinese learnt this distilling process from the Dutch during the 18th century. The production of sopi is outlawed nowadays, although backyard production still continues.
From fans to coffins
The lontar palm supplies much more than sustenance for the Rotinese. In addition to the haik and kapisak (a woven lontar-leaf satchel) used for collecting tuak manis, the broad lontar leaf is woven into everything from mats, fans, umbrellas, belts and betel nut boxes to containers for watering the garden, trays for winnowing rice, knife sheaths, thatch for roofing houses and handbags for transporting chickens to market. It’s even used to make cigarette papers. The leaves are never wasted: for example, when a house is rethatched every five years or so, the old leaf thatching is burnt on the garden as a fertiliser.
The Rotinese also plait a distinctive hat, the tilannga, out of the leaf. Inspired by the designs of 16th- and 17th-century Portuguese helmets, they feature a phallic appendage sprouting from the front. Men traditionally wear these hats, and there are tilangga for different occasions, ranging from everyday use to celebrations. The celebratory hats tend to be larger and more elaborate, with wider spiked fringes often painted in bright colours.
The lontar leaf even provides the Rotinese with a unique musical instrument known as the susando. With a technique similar to the one used when making a haik, the leaf is fashioned into a hemispherical sounding board into which a copper-stringed bamboo tube is inserted, producing a harp-like sound when plucked.
When interlaced, lontar leaf stalks, which can grow to a length of up to 1.5 metres, make excellent fences, house partitions and even birdcages. The stalks may be worked by stripping and twisting their fibres to make ropes, halters, bridles and a multitude of other items. When a lontar tree finally becomes old and unproductive, the trunk, which is stronger than a coconut shell, is shaped into house beams, posts and rafters and hollowed out for pig troughs and coffins. (When someone dies climbing a tree – a relatively common occurrence – the offending lontar will be felled to make his coffin.)
It’s my final evening on Roti, and as I stroll the dusty tracks near my beach cottage, I greet several lontar tappers heading home with their haiks full of tuak manis. It’s a custom on the island for lontar tappers to offer fresh juice to anyone they encounter, so I have my fill of this delicious elixir directly from the haik, and consider that the palm from which it comes is truly a tree of life.
Photographs by Andrew Marshall
January 2010
The lontar palm (Borassus sundaicus) is one of the world’s most efficient sugar-producing plants. Growing up to 30 metres tall, this drought-resistant palm is the ‘tree of life’ and provides security against famine for the Rotinese people.
It’s thought that Roti, which is more vulnerable to erosion than its neighbouring islands in the south of the Indonesian archipelago, became infertile hundreds of years ago. Gradually, its inhabitants learnt to use the tens of thousands of lontar palms that grow on the island, in the process reverting from an agricultural society to one of gatherers.
Today, they rely on the palm for food, shelter and a bewildering array of other products. The sweet, freshly tapped lontar juice, known as tuak manis, is the first nutrition that a newborn Rotinese child receives, even before its mother’s breast milk. And when that child grows old and dies, it will be buried in a coffin constructed from the hollowed-out trunk of the palm.
Ample nectar
It’s 4.30pm when Alexander rouses from an afternoon nap and prepares for work. I had agreed to meet him at this hour and, as I enter his home, shafts of light cut through the walls of stripped lontar leafstalk. He buckles up his climbing belt, from which an assortment of palm-tapping tools hang in woven lontar-leaf sheaths, along with a basket called a haik, fashioned from the fan of the lontar leaf. In this he will collect the tuak manis from his three palm trees.
With the assurance of one who has done the job thousands of times before, Alexander steps up onto a palm. His leathery feet grasp the footholds cut into the lontar’s fibrous trunk and in less than 15 seconds, his wiry frame is pushing through the crown’s thick barricade of leaf stalks 30 metres above my head.
Alexander has no sons. When his career finishes, his extended family will work his three trees to continue supplying the family with tuak manis. The ownership of lontar palms on Roti is decided within the immediate community, and care of the trees – through tapping and pruning, and maintenance of fences surrounding the communal field – ensures continued ownership.
Climbing and tapping the lontar is strictly a male activity. Boys begin by practising on shorter palms at an early age. From the age of 15, if they climb and work hard, they win not only the respect of their family and community but also the adoration of the local girls. ‘I was the best climber in Oenitas,’ Alexander tells me with a glint in his eye.
His daughter Adele arrives with three glasses, which are quickly filled with the sweet nectar. During the tapping season, tuak manis is the prime nourishment for the Rotinese people, who often drink more meals than they eat.
The lontar blossoms twice a year, and two or three palms can support a family with juice and related products when other food is scarce. Because of the lontar, Roti and nearby Savu are the only islands in the region that don’t experience the annual period of hunger, known as lapar biasa.
Both the male and female lontar provide large quantities of juice – a palm might yield 200–400 litres of juice a year for up to 35 years. The female, however, must be tapped prior to fruiting. If left untapped, large aubergine-like fruits develop, which the Rotinese consider a delicacy.
Sugar production is at its peak at the end of the dry season (September–October), and villagers work to get their harvest in before the rains come. Some climbers sleep beneath their palms and will start work as early as 1am, climbing and processing up to 30 trees a day. The juice sours very rapidly, so whatever isn’t drunk immediately has to be processed as quickly as possible. Family members run from the palms to the kitchens, where wives will cook for as many hours as the men climb.
It’s in this main peak season (a less intensive tapping season takes place in May–June) that the Rotinese families gather their surplus lontar juice to gauge their needs for the rest of the year. Gula air – boiled-down tuak manis – diluted with water will see them through the rainy season when no juice is available. Fortuitously, climbing isn’t possible at this time of year anyway, because it’s too windy.
The treacle-like gula air can also be cooled to make gula lempeng – delicious biscuits of set brown sugar. Alternatively, tuak manis can be boiled to form gula batu (stone sugar) or gula semut (granulated brown sugar). Vinegar, tuak asam, is made from tuak manis that has been allowed to stand and sour.
When fermented, gula air or tuak manis can be distilled to produce a potent spirit called sopi, which has an estimated 50–70 per cent alcohol content. The Rotinese learnt this distilling process from the Dutch during the 18th century. The production of sopi is outlawed nowadays, although backyard production still continues.
From fans to coffins
The lontar palm supplies much more than sustenance for the Rotinese. In addition to the haik and kapisak (a woven lontar-leaf satchel) used for collecting tuak manis, the broad lontar leaf is woven into everything from mats, fans, umbrellas, belts and betel nut boxes to containers for watering the garden, trays for winnowing rice, knife sheaths, thatch for roofing houses and handbags for transporting chickens to market. It’s even used to make cigarette papers. The leaves are never wasted: for example, when a house is rethatched every five years or so, the old leaf thatching is burnt on the garden as a fertiliser.
The Rotinese also plait a distinctive hat, the tilannga, out of the leaf. Inspired by the designs of 16th- and 17th-century Portuguese helmets, they feature a phallic appendage sprouting from the front. Men traditionally wear these hats, and there are tilangga for different occasions, ranging from everyday use to celebrations. The celebratory hats tend to be larger and more elaborate, with wider spiked fringes often painted in bright colours.
The lontar leaf even provides the Rotinese with a unique musical instrument known as the susando. With a technique similar to the one used when making a haik, the leaf is fashioned into a hemispherical sounding board into which a copper-stringed bamboo tube is inserted, producing a harp-like sound when plucked.
When interlaced, lontar leaf stalks, which can grow to a length of up to 1.5 metres, make excellent fences, house partitions and even birdcages. The stalks may be worked by stripping and twisting their fibres to make ropes, halters, bridles and a multitude of other items. When a lontar tree finally becomes old and unproductive, the trunk, which is stronger than a coconut shell, is shaped into house beams, posts and rafters and hollowed out for pig troughs and coffins. (When someone dies climbing a tree – a relatively common occurrence – the offending lontar will be felled to make his coffin.)
It’s my final evening on Roti, and as I stroll the dusty tracks near my beach cottage, I greet several lontar tappers heading home with their haiks full of tuak manis. It’s a custom on the island for lontar tappers to offer fresh juice to anyone they encounter, so I have my fill of this delicious elixir directly from the haik, and consider that the palm from which it comes is truly a tree of life.
Photographs by Andrew Marshall
January 2010
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