Visiting Bena village, Flores, Indonesia

Hello Steemians and happy, healthy New Year,

In this post I will talk about the Bena village in Flores, Indonesia.

Bena is one of the most visited traditional villages in Flores. It is famous for its traditional houses, its impressive stone formations, and its ancestral shrines.

Image from http://florestourism.com

The village's traditional houses are thatch-roofed, made of wood, and arranged in two parallel rows.

Traditional village house

The ancestral shrines fall into two categories; ngadhu (male) and bhaga (female). Each clan of the village has its own pair of ngadhu and bhaga, and all lie along the center of the village.

The ngadhu, the male ancestral clan shrine, is an anthropomorphic umbrella-like pole, and symbolizes fierceness and virility.

Images of ngadhu

The bhaga, the female ancestral clan shrine, is a small hut with a thatched roof that resembles a miniature of a traditional house. It symbolizes the sanctuary of the house, and the female body.

Images of bhaga

Lastly, there are some impressive megalithic formations in the village center, as well as outside the village. These megaliths were used as sacrificial altars, where village people performed animal sacrifices in honour of their ancestors.

If you look closer at the houses in Bena, you will see skulls and horns of water buffaloes and pig jaws; they come from animals that were sacrificed at the ceremonies.

My guide was a local person. She invited me into her house and offered me coffee, and she told me stuff about the village.

In the end, I left my luggage, everything but my camera, and then we went for a walk around the village, and then outside the village, too.

As we were walking outside the village, she would tell me about the plants we came across.

There was also a human sacrificial site outside the village, where bad people would be sloughtered. The site was closed when I visited. I asked her what it was like, and she told me it was like a haunted site, and that each time she went there, she got upset, like she wanted to scream.

We ended up, after a long circle, at the geothermal station of the village; you could smell the sulphur in the air.

Night came, so we went back to the house. As we were sitting around the hearth, the family's dog came and sat next to the fire :D

Hey little doggie

I will finish off with this beautiful video I found on YouTube. Part of this video was actually shot at Bena.

And that's the end of this post. I hope you liked it, and that you will follow me to my next one.

Have a good day, and we'll speak again soon!

References:
1.Text from :http://florestourism.com/districts/bena-village/