FT260

A new eyewitness account of the orang bati! [FT255:52–53] It is understandable that I rubbed my hands and hummed the tune of Batman as I started reading, but soon found myself disappointed. The picture of a Homo habilis (right) that, according to the witness, came close to what she saw also came close to what I saw in the Moluccas: it resembled an old, little Moluccan… maybe an ugly one. The fact that he didn’t seem to be impressed by the car also makes sense. Most Molucc­ans are not impressed by cars; they have seen them before. He was eating from a box. So what? The most simple and logical explanation is that he brought the box with him.

Since 2003, when I wrote that the orang bati is well known in the Moluccas as a tribe with allegedly magical powers [FT169:55], I have searched for more information about them and found nothing that corroborates the story of a flying bat/man.

There are 40,000 Moluccans living in the Netherlands, also from Seram (formerly Ceram), and although they all know about the orang bati as a tribe, the story of the flying bat/man is unknown to them. I went to the Maluku Museum in Utrecht, where they collect every scrap of paper concerning the history and mythology of the Molucc­ans – and this story was completely new to them. In the whole 300 years of Dutch colonialism, there is no trace of this bat-like creature. And the people of Uraur village have lived there for a shorter period of time; the original inhabitants of west Seram were wiped out in the 17th century. Seram is abundantly blessed with mythological stories of people transforming into animals. These have been written down, [1] even categorised by species, but bats are not among them.
There are also stories of famous warriors and leaders (kapitans), often associated with birds like the frigate bird, a real fire-eater with a red throat (Moluccan warriors wear red scarves) and in these stories they often can fly, or jump from mountaintop to mountain­top. They also carry bird names like Radja Baikole or Paikole.

The most famous is kapitan Jongkor of Manipa, who led a successful rebell­ion against the Dutch and was offered an officer’s rank in the colonial army and, when he later turned against the Dutch again, was imprisoned and killed “while attempting to escape”. This happened on the island of Java and according to the legend, he was not killed, but transformed (as was his wife) into a pigeon and flew back to the Moluccas. Even today, Moluccan soldiers on patrol, when seeing a pigeon, are convinced kapitan Jongkor is with them to protect them.

The only source of the story seems to be Tyson Hughes, and I wonder how well he spoke Bahasa Indonesia, or how well his informants spoke English. It is very easy to misunderstand or to be misunderstood when communicating in different languages about subjects that in any case are doubtful, to say the least.

According to Hughes, the villagers (plural) of the coastal regions (plural) live in fear for the orang bati. I would say fearful respect. But not the orang bati as he describes. “The fear of the orang bati is considerable among almost all the indigenous inhabitants of Seram island.” This suggests he investigated it, but the orang bati as he describes is, again, unknown to the “inhabitants of Seram island”.

He also says that the majority of the police are Javan. Not so. I was on Seram in 1987, [2] the same time as he was, and most of the policemen were Moluccan. During the civil war in 2000, the police took the side of the Christians to protect them against attacks from Islamists, who were supported by parts of the army; later, neutral Navy forces were brought in to stop the fighting. The police are, says Hughes, aware of these stories. True – but again, not the story as Hughes tells it. I refer to Shirley Deane and her meeting with an orang bati Radja in the company of a police officer, as quoted in the article by Karl Shuker and in turn quoted by me.

The people of Uraur, who are so afraid of this man-eating bat, live on the coast. How the hell would they know that these creatures live in caves in the centre of Seram? People of the coast don’t go inland. Hughes may have been led into dense jungle by village hunters, but I can assure you that going to central Seram from Uraur takes weeks, climbing and descending one mountain after another after another after another after another. I would say he was misled and they are probably still laughing. I suppose this laughter sounds like the long mournful wail of the orang bati.

As for the eyewitness who saw somebody eating his lunch at an unusual spot, the hysteria was caused by her driver, who was not from Seram but from Ambon and “had heard” of the orang bati. Yes, the people of Ambon have heard the stories of the orang bati – but not a flying bat-like man with wings, but a tribe with alleged magical powers. The informant of the eyewitness who (I quote) “wasn’t really clued up” hardly seems a reliable source of information.

I wrote in 2003 that the atmosphere on Seram is imbued with magic, hearsay, sagas, fairy tales, legends, mythology and superstitious beliefs ­ and this is very contaminating. During my stay, there was a scientific expedit­ion in Seram (‘Operation Raleigh’) and in one place I was told they were there searching for Noah’s Ark, in another that they were really soldiers of fortune, trying to wage guerrilla war against the government.

Two leading scientists, both experienced mountaineers, went mountain climbing. It hadn’t rained for months, but when they were halfway to the top it started pouring. One fell to his death and the other lay down with his limbs broken and was found barely alive after several days. Everybody knew what happened: they forgot to ask permiss­ion from the local Kepala Kampong (village head) who was a well-known magician, famous for rainmaking. (One wonders why he let his people suffer from drought for such a long time, only to take action when insulted.) If, in this atmosphere, tourists ask questions, the locals are very willing to oblige.

There is another – possibly feasible – answer, based upon a remark by the driver. This man said he had heard of the orang bati, but first referred to the creatures as ‘mountain men’ (orang gunung) – a different name with a different meaning. The witness also stated the tribespeople were reluctant to talk about them. Tyson said people all over the island were talking about the orang bati. Were the tribespeople reluctant to talk about the ‘orang bati’ – or about the ‘orang gunung’?

The phrase ‘mountain men’ was used by the inhabitants of the coastal regions of Seram only during the RMS uprising [3] in the last century and referred to the guerrilla fighters who – until their defeat around 1970 – resisted the Indonesian government from their hiding places in the mountains, supported by mountain tribes who took the opportunity to start head-hunting again. It was said that some diehards refused to give up and still roamed the Seram jungle at the time of my visit. “A dozen here, a dozen there, with rusty rifles, nothing serious,” as a hotelkeeper on Saparua island told me.

Can it be that after all those years some old, battle-hardened, leather-faced RMS guerrillas are still going strong in that area, as some Japanese soldiers did in the jungle of the Philipp­ines for decades after World War II? Many had long black hair and swore not to cut it as long as the last Indonesian soldier upon their territory had not been killed. That would explain the hairy appearance. They surely would see the trans-migrants as intruders and try to rob them for food, clothes and shoes. It would also explain why the driver and tribesmen were reluctant to talk about them.

The subject of the RMS and everything connected with it is strictly forbidden in Indonesia – talking about it is severely punished. Merely uttering the letters ‘RMS’ means a beating in the police station, so even in private conversations it’s referred to as “the three letters”. It is understandable they would hesitate to talk about it to a tourist. It would make sense that the driver, panicked by seeing them, at first called them by what he saw and later, realising he had said too much, blamed it on the bati-man.

That the trans-migrants carried guns to protect themselves against the ‘orang bati’ is very unlikely and I would say impossible. Since the civil war that raged over the Moluccas in recent years, the Indonesian army forbids civilians to carry guns that could harm something as big as a monkey or human. Only light weapons for hunting small animals are allowed.

A guerrilla fighter, being 30 years of age in 1967, the year the Indonesian government claimed the guerrilla war ended (the RMS claimed they fought on until about 1977), would now be in his 70s, so it’s quite possible that he would still be around. I met a retired RMS guerrilla fighter in a kampong on the neighbouring island of Saparua. He was then 90 years old and still climbed trees to pick coconuts. Oddly, his first names were William George – the only English first names I heard of in the Moluccas. The only reason he retired, he told me, was because in 1967, at the age of 70, he was shot down by the Indonesian army in the jungle of Seram.

I am not saying this is the explan­ation for what the eyewitness saw, but it sure is the fourth leg of the elephant.



Notes
1 AE Jensen and Herman Niggemeyer: Hainuwele: Volkserzählungen von der Molukken-Insel Ceram (Ergebnisse der Frobenius-Expedition vol.1, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1939).
2 In 2003 [FT169:55], I wrongly wrote 1989.
3 RMS: Republik Maluku Selatan, or Republic of the South Moluccas.