I remember this day with vivid accuracy; almost frightening to hold the past with such detail. It began as a rainy and windswept morning in the kampung of Pusut, a hamlet of subsistence-level farmers nestled in a valley in the West Manggarai Regency of Flores, Nusa Tenggara Timur. My elder brother, Yeremias Uril, and I had been planning to climb some of the area's peaks for some time. We had already managed Golo Tado - a strategic rise from which the sub-ethnic group take their name, as in: The Tado People - and today we had our sights set on Golo Tara. I remember our father, the supreme traditional leader of the Tado People, Ame Tu'a Golo Beo Tado (his Christian name is Johannes Djehabu) cocking his ancient eyebrows at us as we strapped machetes to our waists and assembled our hats and bags and binoculars and cameras. From Pusut, Yeremias and I began at a brisk pace to the foot of Golo Tara, passing by the neighboring hamlet of Noa. "Where are you going?" Passers by on the trail called out, their bare feet quickly shifting between rocks and mud. "Up there!" We shouted back.
We left the path in a heavy rain which made the red earth bleed molten clay. The path began to leap upward and finding our footing became difficult. Yeremias unsheathed his machete and quickly hacked a forked stick that we used to hook branches and pull ourselves up particularly steep sections. By mid morning the rain had slowed and we had left the dense vegetation of the river bed. We climbed and toward the top the trees became fewer.
Empo Tang, who by my calculations must have lived in either the seventeenth or eighteenth century, called this peak, Golo Tara, his home. He lived atop the mountain with his wife and dogs, and there raised his only son, Kase. In the mid-sixteenth century the Sultan of Gowa converted to Islam; and he was so enthusiastic about this personal development that he forced his subjects to follow. Many refused to abandon their animism and traditions and so fled from Gowa, central Sulawesi. Many ventured east, to Ngucalale, now known by a name the Portuguese bestowed upon it: Flores.
Among the boats bobbing westward several hundred years ago was one containing Andi Lau and his wife. Not much is known of him, except that he is the starting point of Tado genealogy. Ame Tu'a Golo Beo Tado can trace the lineage of his people orally back thirteen generations (fourteen if he includes Yeremias), from Andi Lau to himself. Tang was, I believe, the great-great grandson of Andi Lau, and atop this mountain he lived and atop it he died; he and his wife are buried not far from the summit on the southern face.
Story has it that some travellers from Rekas ambled by Tang's mountain one day several centuries ago and glimpsed smoke from a cooking fire curling into the air. They moved closer and from a now-famous rock opposite the western face called out to Tang. There was no response. They tried another language, calling out again. And this time Tang hollered back. The details of what they shouted across that steep divide are lost to history, but the fact that Tang did not and could not respond to the Rekas-ians Manggarai language, forcing them to communicate in Bugis language, is significant. Manggarai and Bugis share many similarities; kaba, for example means water buffalo in both languages. However, many modern usages of Manggarai have diverged from older words and meanings, which are of great similarity to the Bugis language. The reasons why this has happened remain unclear, but Manggarai and its many dialects and sub-dialects are still spoken widely throughout western Flores, though many old usages are being abandoned in favour of a youth patois which mixes Manggarai with grammatical and vocabulary elements of Bahasa Indonesia.
Atop the mountain that day my brother, Yeremias, explained many interesting things. Behind us and to the south lay the Plains of Lembor, which descend to Todo and the land of his mother. Beyond lays the Sawu Sea and Flores' southern coast.
We squatted over wet rocks with our machetes and smoked wrinkled kretek cigarettes. The air was thick with the recently passed rains, and the clouds swirled overhead like oil slicks. "Let's hike over to Golo Wesa," Yeremias suggested. We nodded our heads to Tang's grave - after he died his son Kase fled to another area across Wae Rakeng, and the mountain has been uninhabited since - and shouldered our bags.
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