PALEMBANG MICROCULTURE EXPOSED: RATS AND WHAT LOCALS DO WITH THEM

PALEMBANG MICROCULTURE EXPOSED: RATS AND WHAT LOCALS DO WITH THEM

REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE

02/10/2011

The smoke of an intesively burned South-Sumatra rain forest woke me up before 7 a.m. I sleepily looked through the window and there was no sun again. I knew this was going to be just another day in paradise. We were still in the middle of the “kamarau” season and days without sun were very common.

The lush rain forests of the exotic South-Sumatra have been burning for a couple of months now. The rain was forever on its way from Medan to Palembang, but it just never happened. The rainy clouds were just moving too slowly. “When would the real rain come?” I kept asking myself and returned to my bed...

I somehow “fata morganazied” myself on a beatiful Flores island being surrounded by the swaying coconut palms, the exotic flowers, white sand beaches, and the clear blue sky. As a matter of fact, the sky with thousand stars on was so close to the land that I could literally touch it...Everything was sooo real.

Oppps, I just remembered there was a time to through the last night’s garbage out. This was nothing unusual; just my morning routine. While still in my pijamas, I slowly put my sandals on and dragged myself outside. I carefully unlocked the fence and approached the garbage can, when something...something...smelled so horribly that I thought it would win the stink-out-of-this-world award; this aroma I still couldn’t describe!

After placing my gargabe into the garbage can, I had noticed a huge dead rat covered with thousand....ssss..... not “stars” but....ffff.... “flies”. Wow, I couldn’t believe it what I had seen! The size of the rat was three times the size of the skinny street cat that lives in my house gutter in Palembang, and the size of the garbage eater raccoon of Chicago suburbs.

I thought, for a second, I had entered into the twilight zone. In my life I have seen a lot of rats: street rats, jungle rats, the furniture eating rats, just name it, but I have never seen a rat that size. On a top of that, it was a dead rat already covered by thousand flies. “What should I do now?” I asked myself!

The first person I remembered of was my local neighbor Pak Tarza. I thought as he was guarding the couple of houses in my neigborhood including mine, he would know what to do. At least, I thought, he could take care of the stinky dead rat. Luckily, I was really lucky to find him at home. I carefully described my problem and took him to the spot. When he saw the rat he almost puked as well. Than, he collected some empty carton boxes from the store nearby, and placed a dead rat inside one of them. After that, he took the box down the street and through the rat at the undisclosed location far away from the house. “Wow,interesting way to get rid of the rat” I thought.

Pak Tarza mentioned that there was no particular place to put dead rats in Palembang. Local people were unfamiliar with the burning rats’ technique that include: burning rats with their own garbage (like on some “more advanced” islands) or making dead rats’ funeral and fertilizing the land. Instead, Palembang loved their famous “hide and seek game”. The dead rat in front of someone’s house today, could easily become in front of your house tomorrow, depending on perpetrators of the game.

Finally, I was still unable to figure out if I was a part of the sick joke, or the welcome to the neighborhood party. I haven’t asked my neigbors yet! What do you think?

13/10/2011

It was early morning in Palembang and I was going to work. The five minute easy walk turned to be a little bit longer. No, I haven’t entered into the twilight zone, but I was on the edge! Here is what it exactly happened:

I was walking on the .....edge.... of the road trying to avoid the muddy ponds from the yesterday’s light rain. I kept thinking how lucky I was by not wearing my white Aldo shoes (my wife’s all time favorite). Ding dong, my nirvana was heavily disturbed. I just passed the “spot”. The small mouse that was killed on the road and then left unattended for one week, unfortunately had already turned into “the flat skin with no bones” street-mark. I kept walking and thinking about....the life of the rats in Palembang. Then something “stinky” happened again...hmmmm....
Just hundred meters from the small mouse funeral which was attended by zillion flies, there was an another event. I had no idea that I was already invited...hmmmm....

The stinky rat(not as huge), dead of course, was placed on the edge of the main campus road in front of the security guard house (circa 8 a.m yestarday morning). While bypassing the “stinky” area, I have noticed a couple of “early bird” flies enjoying their morning feast. I told myself: “I don’t want to disturb that!” and I kept walking to work. At 4 p.m. on the way home, I noticed that the early morning flies had invited too many new friends. I had no idea what they were doing any more. I could barely see their meal as it was well wraped!

This morning while walking to work, I noticed that the early flies’ meal (call it the dead rat) somehow moved from the edge to the middle of the busy road. Well, then, I asked myself: “Toraja people of Sulawesi had famous funeral rituals where the dead buffalows were walking, but how about the people in Palembang?” As a matter of fact, I still haven’t heard any of famous Palembang stories of the “dead Zombie rats” walking to the middle of the road to become someone’s food! Because of that, I started believing that someone definitely moved the dead rat to the middle of the road hoping that the passing cars could destroy the evidence. The same person probably believed that the rain could make the rat’s skin flat before the flies would finish their early morning meal. Gross!

Conclusion: Burning dead rats or even burying them in the ground is something foreign to Palembang! What would you do?