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BAJAWA |
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The hill town of BAJAWA is one of the most popular tourist
destinations in Flores, surrounded by lush slopes and striking volcanoes.
Gunung Inerie is just one of the active volcanoes near Bajawa: it's an
arduous but rewarding hike, but you can see all the way to Sumba from
the summit if it's clear. Not for the faint-hearted are the local
specialities of moke, a type of wine that tastes like methylated spirits
and raerate, dog meat marinated in coconut milk and then boiled in its
own blood.
Bajawa is the largest town in the Ngada district , an area that
maintains its status as the spiritual heartland of Flores. Here, despite
the growing encroachment of curious travellers, indigenous animist
religions flourish and the villages maintain fascinating houses,
megalithic stones and interesting totemic structures. Up to 60,000
people in the Ngada district speak the distinct Ngada language, and a
good proportion of the older generation don't understand basic Bahasa
Indonesian.
In the centre of most villages in this district stand several ceremonial
edifices which represent the ancestral protection of, and presence in,
the village. These include the Ngadhu , which resembles a man in a huge
hula skirt, the thatched skirt sitting atop a crudely carved, phallic,
forked tree trunk, which is imbued with the power of a male ancestor.
The female part of the pairing, the Bhaga, is a symbol of the womb, a
miniature house. The symbolic coupling is supplemented by a carved stake
called a Peo, to which animals are tied before being sacrificed.
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