Gugu Tahun Dayak Benuaq. East Borneo. Indonesia.

[Agus Makkie]

https://vimeo.com/37067112

A Wisdom Traveler Project for One Day on Earth 11.11.11.

Ceremony "Gugu Tahun" is an annual agenda for the Benuaq society that is usually carried out at the end of the year. Meaning contained in this ceremony is to send prayers and offerings to the ancestors and their ancestors for a special community Benuaq who lives in the village of new spontaneous healing and pain can be kept away from harm and given the long life of prosperity in the world. The ceremony is usually carried out or started from at 20.00 pm until the dawn or morning. 2 or 3 days before D-day society has prepared a wide range of needs and requirements that will be used for the ceremony. In addition to temporary longhouses made of wooden walls and thatched palm leaves (pandan leaves a lot of kind of grew up around the river Mahakam), large tents, the kitchen will prepare food for 300-400 people, all the knacks that are made from coconut palm, rice, glutinous, 7 large live pigs, chickens dozens of village life, a set of gamelan and drums, a long cloth of red and yellow langit2 decorate the house, fruits, the rice paddies and fields and offering 1 x 2m table which is made from bamboo and placed in the middle of the house.
A crowd gathered around and play gamelan music accompaniment and drums beat fast with the Benuaq typical for 15 minutes, a new spontaneous village chiefs Osik Baron gave a speech that essentially to keep preserve native customs and culture of their ancestors in order to stay there or not extinct, and there are always consulted if deemed important matters (deaths, births, marriages, etc.). Chiefs also said issues related to today's ceremony that ban carrying weapons, drunk, making a scene, criminal in nature and will provide a very large penalty for the offender to a fine animals or pigs or money to reach millions of dollars.
Do not forget to thank him for the citizens who had been present at this ceremony and introduced the evening's leader or handler to come from the village of Pondok Labu, about 2 hour road trip. The event was started by the handler who was accompanied by his assistant 3 male and 1 female parents with costume wearing a white skirt worn as often used (if spinning skirt will expand), which in bids garnished without wearing colorful clothes and leaf bracelet and headband of woven coconut powder. The face given flour or called Tinak Torup which means prosperity for society as a carrier of the Benuaq. For women to dress like a woman carrying your seller java bun wearing kebaya, but not only from the leaf headband, bracelet of coconut and was given the flour powder on the face is uneven. The handler reads the prayer or mantra or a spell called crate followed by his assistant who prepared some sajen or offering prepared to put around the table offering consisting of several rectangular containers made from coconut bowl of meatballs that were given a small lamp / candle and 1 chicken fried. At ancient offerings handler for the event Gugu year using a human head. Along with the completion of meter reading by the handler's music began to play the beat faster and the handler and his assistants began to shake her body and rotate in every corner of her mouth looks moving from the handler. The sooner the handler's body shake and gathered in front of an offering table, the handler takes a kind of yellow cloth with worn and rolled into rope-like or who later called Ulap wakku this rope worn around the patient's / patient to be treated. After completion of the process dimension to ulap wakku the handler began to dance around turn 360 degrees with a footstool so quickly that he was wearing fluffy skirts followed his assistants are on call Sentui Belian dance, this dance continues with a pause of 5 minutes and they wonder do not feel dizzy at all and this is done during 1 hour around the entire length of the house until the handler's body was possessed by ancestral spirits.
After the handler in the unconscious by the assistants, handlers started taking ulap wakku and began calling one by one patient to be cured. Way of healing for the sick or just worn ulap pasian wakku and in spells and prayers read out meter is only about 1 or 2 minutes for a mild illness but can be 5 minutes more for patients who have severe disease. After all patients had received treatment, the handler immediately end the show that night with a meter reading without mantra and prayer followed by the strains of music and the silence was loud signing about the event has finished. The handler is called sweat chiefs spoke for a moment and continued with a little joke indicates the event was successful and uneventful, followed by cutting pork and chicken to eat the whole village together a new spontaneous. The handler is asked to splashes pig blood in the room throughout the house building as a sign that ancestral spirits come to see the ceremony tonight and hopefully the patient is given relief or healed and all citizens are given a new spontaneous live in a world of prosperity.

Thanks to all my friends, crews and people who help us to make this happen in Jakarta and East Borneo.