Inside the World of the Baduy
Once, a woman of the Inner Baduy tribe told her grandson a story. On
top of the earth, she said, women gave birth from their heads. On the
bottom of the earth, they gave birth from their feet. But here at the
center of the earth, in the forested Kendang highlands of West Java’s
Banten Province, babies came from their mother’s bellies.
Young Kodo thought it was a silly story. There was no such thing as the “top” or “bottom” of the world.
Many years later, on a September night filled with the screech of
cicadas, Kodo sits on the floor of a thatched Outer Baduy home. Beneath
the once-white cloth he wears wound around his head, his face is
alight with interest, his eyes intent on the atlas lying open in the
center of an unlikely circle of people: several his fellow Inner Baduy,
their Outer Baduy hosts, myself and two other visitors.
The owner of the house, Jakam, is explaining that the earth revolves
around the sun. Kodo and his compatriots, taking this in stride, have a
few follow-up questions for us.
Why is your skin white and ours darker? How does that camera work? And how big is the Internet?
An Unlikely World
There are not many places in the world where this type of exchange is
even remotely possible, but the Baduy — or most of them — have
steadfastly rejected modern conveniences and knowledge in accordance
with the ways of their ancestors. The extremely conservative Inner
Baduy live in a small, sacred area that foreigners are not permitted to
enter and their mystical leaders, the Pu’un, are not allowed to leave.
The Outer Baduy, slightly more lax when it comes to things like modern
clothing and cellphones, live in villages that dot the hills around
this inner sanctum in a protective buffer zone.
It is all the more incredible considering that the Baduy live within walking distance of the sprawling,
smoking megacity that is Jakarta.
Walking distance for the Inner Baduy, that is. Gas-powered vehicles are
off-limits, but they still go into the city on occasion to sell honey
they have harvested or palm-sap sugar they have made. The bumpy,
120-kilometer trek — drivable in about six hours — takes them about
three days. Wearing shoes would also violate their animist religion,
known as Sunda Wiwitan, so they walk barefoot.
Just how sturdy their feet are becomes clear the next day as Kodo and
his cousins Dede, Carakin and Sapri lead us on a walk through the
highlands. Not a single one of them falters as we trek over high passes
and through cool, wooded areas to see a bridge that Vita Ardiyana
describes as an “icon” of their people.
Vita, a young woman who grew up just outside Baduy territory, organized
our tour. She speaks Sundanese, a modern form of the Baduy’s ancient
dialect that is close enough for her to be understood.
Every month or two, depending on demand, she’ll arrange trips from
Jakarta for people to spend a night in an Outer Baduy village.
“You will take showers and swim in the river with the community,” she
told us in an e-mail before our trip that also instructed us to bring
drinking water, a flashlight, a raincoat and other basic necessities.
As for things to leave behind, she wrote: “The attitudes of an ignorant and selfish city dweller.”
About halfway to our destination, we encounter someone well-known to
Vita: Aya Mursit, an Outer Baduy who acts as a liaison with the local
government and the Muslim Sundanese who inhabit the villages that border
Baduy land.
Hard Work
No community remains as unspoiled as the Baduy without deliberate
intention, and talking to Aya Mursit, it is clear that it would be a
grave mistake to underestimate his people because of their simple
lifestyle. They are able to live the way they do in this modern world —
without paying taxes to the government, with no deeds or titles to
their land, refraining from formal education for their children —
because they have some serious diplomatic talent.
To appease outside pressure, for example, they once built a mosque on
their land. They didn’t use it, but it threw government envoys off the
scent. When census takers pushed for access, the Baduy helpfully gave
them a detailed list of answers they had compiled themselves. On the
new e-KTP electronic identity cards that all Indonesians are required
by law to possess, their religion was not listed, so the Baduy have
left that field blank.
Each year, the government doggedly tries to
give
them money to build a school. Each year, they decline, seeing it as an
insidious erosion of their culture. “If the children go to school,
it’s just the same as the outside world,” Aya Mursit says through Vita.
“They would be exposed to different values, and risk becoming greedy.
“A lack of an education isn’t the same thing as a lack of intelligence.”
The Baduy have long been considered a source of wisdom and magical
power by other Indonesians. Many have sought an audience with the
spiritual Pu’un leaders over the years, but they are picky about who
they will see. Former President Sukarno, who granted them government
protection, sometimes consulted with them. When his successor Suharto
tried to visit in his helicopter, the Pu’un sent an envoy.
The Good Life
By and large, the Baduy are walking advertisements for clean living.
Their skin is glowing and unblemished, their physiques are the type
that gyms plaster on billboards. Their society has essentially zero
crime.
But Baduy is not utopia.
One of Jakam’s neighbors, a young mother, was bitten by a snake some
months ago. She was treated by a traditional healer but received no
modern medicine and died horribly over three days.
A 2006 study by the Bina Karta Lestari Foundation, an NGO that works
toward sustainable development, found that the government considers the
Baduy to be living in poverty. Using income, education level,
sanitation, access to electricity and savings as indicators, they are
indeed. But measuring access to adequate clothing, food and housing,
they do not lack for anything.
So how long can they hold out and keep their way of life intact?
Considering their long history of sustainable practices, the answer
would seem to be “indefinitely” — if they are left to their own
devices.
But as we continue our trip, there is more evidence of encroaching
modernity. Politicians’ campaign signs crop up even in this remote
area. A few cement pilings are in place, presumably the vanguard of a
modern bridge over a river.
But that’s not the bridge they brought us to see. Our destination comes into view, and they smile at our gasps of astonishment.
The bridge is a wild tangle of roots that have naturally twined together across a stretch of rocky stream.
It is equal parts mossy and smooth, held up, at least for now, by an ingenious blend of old and new.
