Selasa, 09 Februari 2010

A brother in the distance???

It wasn't long ago when I was back in Banda Aceh, met a girl in a Sunday afternoon service and greeted her in my local language. Oval shaped face, big brown eyes, a bit dark skin and short straight hair, she looked at me calmly and amazed, probably with my thought of her as a local fellow. Since I was accustomed to greet new face at the end of a service, I chose this freshly face young lady who did not understand a word I said. She smiled at me, and softly said 'I am sorry, can't understand the language, I am a Filipinos'. Gosh, my face must be red, because she suddenly added, 'It's okay, people often think of me as an Indonesian...'

I dont think I would be different anyway, why I talked to her in the first catch with my local language was because I have no doubt she comes from a place around the hills of North Tapanuli or a huta by the side of my beautiful Lake Toba. It reminds me when I spotted a column on a newspaper (forgot already) about two weeks ago, where I read a story of a local tribe in Philippine still holds a tradition to unearth the corpse and rebury the bones in a new 'house', similar procession to what Bataknesse called 'Mangukkal Holi'.

A coincidence? could be, however this encourage me to make a little explorations on the history of Bataknesse. That would be good to know the history of our own ancestor, a way to pay respect to them.

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