Buru

Buru (formerly spelled Boeroe, Boro, or Bouru) is the third largest island within the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. It lies between the Banda Sea to the south and Seram Sea to the north, west of Ambon and Seram islands. The island belongs to Maluku province and includes the Buru and South Buru regencies. Their administrative centers, Namlea and Namrole, respectively, have ports and are the largest towns of the island, served by Namlea Airport and Namrole Airport respectively. About a third of the population is indigenous, mostly the Buru, but also the Lisela, Ambelau, Kayeli, Masarete, Rana, Wai Apu, and . The rest of population are immigrants from Java and nearby Maluku Islands. Religious affiliation is evenly split between Christianity and Sunni Islam, with some remnants of traditional beliefs. While local languages and dialects are spoken within individual communities, the national Indonesian language is used among the communities and by the administration. Most of the island is covered with forests rich in tropical flora and fauna. From the present 179 bird and 25 mammal species, about 14 are found either on Buru only or also on a few nearby islands, the most notable being the wild pig Buru babirusa. There is little industry on the island, and most population is engaged in growing rice, maize, sweet potato, beans, coconuts, cocoa, coffee, clove and nutmeg.…

Buru (formerly spelled Boeroe, Boro, or Bouru) is the third largest island within the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. It lies between the Banda Sea to the south and Seram Sea to the north, west of Ambon and Seram islands. The island belongs to Maluku province and includes the Buru and South Buru regencies. Their administrative centers, Namlea and Namrole, respectively, have ports and are the largest towns of the island, served by Namlea Airport and Namrole Airport respectively. About a third of the population is indigenous, mostly the Buru, but also the Lisela, Ambelau, Kayeli, Masarete, Rana, Wai Apu, and . The rest of population are immigrants from Java and nearby Maluku Islands. Religious affiliation is evenly split between Christianity and Sunni Islam, with some remnants of traditional beliefs. While local languages and dialects are spoken within individual communities, the national Indonesian language is used among the communities and by the administration. Most of the island is covered with forests rich in tropical flora and fauna. From the present 179 bird and 25 mammal species, about 14 are found either on Buru only or also on a few nearby islands, the most notable being the wild pig Buru babirusa. There is little industry on the island, and most population is engaged in growing rice, maize, sweet potato, beans, coconuts, cocoa, coffee, clove and nutmeg. Other significant activities are animal farming and fishing. The island was first mentioned around 1365. Between 1658 and 1942, it was colonised by the Dutch East India Company and then by the Crown of the Netherlands. The Dutch administration relocated many local villages to the newly built island capital at Kayeli Bay for working at clove plantations. It also promoted the hierarchy among the indigenous people with selected loyal rajas placed above the heads of the local clans. The island was occupied by the Japanese forces between 1942 and 1945 and in 1950 became part of independent Indonesia. During former president Suharto's New Order administration in the 1960s–1970s, Buru was the site of a prison used to hold thousands of political prisoners. While held at Buru, writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer wrote most of his novels, including Buru Quartet.

Geography and geology

in July 1949]] Buru island lies between two seas of the Pacific Ocean – Seram Sea ( ) on the north and Banda Sea ( ) to the south and west. To the east, it is separated by the Manipa Strait ( ) from Seram Island ( ). With an area of , Buru is the third largest among the Maluku Islands ( ) after Halmahera and Seram. Buru is shaped like an oval, elongated from west to east. The maximum length is about from east to west and from north to south. The coastline is smooth, with the only major indentation being Kayeli Bay located on the eastern coast. The bay also has a smooth, oval shape. It extends into the island to 8–12 km and has a maximum width of 17 km; the width decreases to 9 km at the mouth; the coastal length of the bay is about 50 km. At the northern part of the mouth stands Namlea, the largest town of the island. The highest point on the island ( ) is the peak of Mount Kapalatmada (also called Kepala Madan, Kepalat Mada or Ghegan ). Off the coast of Buru there are several smaller islands; those permanently inhabited are Ambalau (the largest, about 10 km in diameter, located about 20 km south-east of Buru) and Tengah ( ). The largest uninhabited islands are Fogi ( ), Oki ( ) and Tomahu ( ). The island is mostly mountainous, especially in the central and western parts. Of the 9,505 km 2 of the island area, 1,789 km 2 lie 900 m¹ above mean sea level, 872 km 2 above 1,200 m and 382 km 2 above 1,500 m. Flat areas are located in narrow strips near the coast and along the banks of river Apo. There they form a valley of the same name. Much of the island is covered with tropical rain forest. The Apo River is the longest river of Buru. It flows nearly straight to the north-east and empties into Kayeli Bay; however, its bed is very winding for hundreds of meters, with loops all along its length. Two other permanent rivers are Geren and Nibe; the rest are intermittent rivers with discontinuous flow. The river discharge varies significantly through the year, reaching a maximum in the rainy season. Indonesian sources often include wae (meaning river) before the river names; thus Apo is often referred to as Waeapo or Wae Apo, or Apu in some local dialects. In the center of the island, at an altitude of , lies freshwater Lake Rana ( ). This is the only significant lake on Buru; it has a nearly rectangular shape with the length of about 4.3 km, width of about 2.7 km and an area of The crust consists of several types of deposits. It is dominated by Cenozoic sedimentary rocks, probably originating from the Australian continent; Also present are younger volcanic rocks and more recent alluvial deposits. Sedimentary deposits in the form of silt, peat, sand and mud are mostly found in the river valleys. Metamorphic rocks of slate, schist and arkose dominate the northern part of the island. Very few mineral deposits of Buru have industrial value, and only limestone is mined commercially. However, significant reserves of oil and gas were discovered in the shelf in 2009. There are numerous coral reefs around the island. The soil mostly consists of yellow-red Podsol, Organosol, Grumosol and various mixtures.

Precolonial period

One of the first mentions of Buru occurred in the Nagarakretagama – an Old Javanese eulogy to Hayam Wuruk, the ruler of the Majapahit Kingdom, dating back to 1365. The island appears in the third line of 15th song in the list of lands subordinate to Majapahit under the name Hutan Kadali. In the 16th–17th centuries Buru was claimed by the rulers of Ternate island and by the Portuguese; both claims were, however, symbolic, as neither party controlled the island, but only visited it on trade matters. More active were Makassar people from Sulawesi island, who had built fortifications on Buru and forced the natives to grow valuable spices, such as clove.

As part of Indonesia

Between 1950 and 1965, the policy of the new government was aimed at rapid social, political and economic integration of Buru into Indonesia. In the 1960s and 1970s, during the military regime of General Soeharto, Buru became one of the main places of exile and imprisonment of political dissidents – primarily communists and other left-wing representatives, as well as dissident intellectuals. Most camps were closed on Buru in 1980. More than 12,000 people had served a prison sentence in those camps by then, and at least several hundred had died or been killed. One of the prisoners was a prominent Indonesian writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who spent 14 years (1965–1979) in prison, mostly on Buru, and wrote there many of his novels. Those included a large part of the Buru Quartet, in particular its first part This Earth of Mankind. Until 1975, Toer was deprived of writing tools. He committed his novels to memory and was reciting them to his cellmates, partly relying on their memory. During the late 1970s, a number of transmigrants from Java arrived at Buru. These transmigrants, along with the political prisoners, established thousands of hectares of rice fields on the island and built irrigation systems in the Waeapo River alluvial plain, significantly increasing local rice production and making it the largest rice producer in the Maluku Islands.

Traditional occupations and culture

Whereas local people traditionally occupied villages, variation of their seasonal activities – predominantly hunting and farming – tended to either disperse or gather them. Men hunted the wild pig Buru babirusa, deer and possum, in the forests, mostly during the peak of east monsoon (June and July); meanwhile women were gathering wild vegetables. However, during the west monsoon (November to April) both men and women were working together in the fields. The position of the villages was also changing with time, mostly because of the low soil fertility on the island – recovery of the soil took significant time urging long-distance travel to the new fields. It was rather common for a family to leave the village for most of the week to their field and return only for the religious service on Sunday. It was also rather common to move the entire village after some 20 years of exploiting a plot of land. Partly because of this, most settlements were rather small, with the smallest type accommodating one-two families (hum-hawa or hum-tapa), middle-type (hum-lolin) consisting of 3–10 houses and accommodating 20–50 people, and larger ones of 30–50 houses and 150–300 people (fen-lale). On the coast, there were several multi-ethnic settlements with more than 200 houses (ibu kota kecamatan). This local variety of terms for a "settlement" puzzled the Dutch colonizers trying to systematise the local registries. Traditional Buru houses were made from bamboo, often on stilts. The roofs were covered with palm leaves or reeds. Cement, metal and tiles were introduced in the 20th century and urged to build more permanent dwelling, but with limited results, as the locals continued to relocate. This was partly due to the habits of relocation and partly due to local disputes or superstitions, such as cursing a place where a certain number of people died within a short period. Presence of a church in a village might hinder relocation for a century, but not always. Traditional Buru costumes are similar those of most other Indonesia peoples. Men wear sarong (a kind of kilt) and a long-skirted tunic, and women are dressed in sarong and a shorter jacket. However, the dress color systematically varies between the different tribes of the island.

See also

Waeapo River

References

Further reading

Grimes, Barbara Dix (1994). Buru inside out. In: Visser, L.E., ed. Halmahera and beyond. Leiden: KITLV Press. pp. 59–78. .

External links

Buru's official website (in Bahasa Indonesia)

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1363904271 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.