1. This indicates that the family was not well off financially, as they apparently had so little inherited rice land that both parents had to supplement the family's income via peddling and transport service work. It is striking that Pospos sees fit to admit this forthrightly.

2. Toba villages in this area near Lake Toba indeed had several varieties of houses, graded by family income. Most magnificent were the large, ornate, carved adat houses, shaped like jaunty boats floating on a sea of green paddy rice. These were the homes of aristocrats, inherited through noble lineages and constructed at great cost, with many lavish public feasts. There were also simpler, plank-sided Malay-style houses, and small bamboo-walled structures, like Pospos's boyhood home. Today few new adat houses are being constructed and the older ones are falling into disrepair.

3. The Dutch colonial state's corvée taxes and corvée labor obligations extended throughout Toba, Angkola, and Mandailing.

4. Toba adat had many such name taboos between special pairs of relatives who should deal with each other with great reserve and respect. A particularly strong name taboo is found, for instance, between men and the women who marry into those men's wife-giving lineages. These men and women may not even speak directly to each other. There is much discussion about speech rules in the Batak societies.

5. Pospos often uses the Toba Batak kin term of address and then immediately translates it for his readers in Indonesian, in parentheses. In Toba and the southern Batak societies, children call their mother Inang ; she in turn will call her daughters "Inang" and her sons "Amang" (the term of address used toward a speaker's father). That is, a reciprocal usage holds here. One's children are often said to be the replacements for one's own parents (after the parents' deaths).

6. This usage of Amang conveys respect for the teacher.

7. Market selling was at this time and remains today a major economic activity of Toba village and market-town women. The goods they handle include betel, spices, coffee, machine-made cloth, homespun ceremonial ulos textiles, and fruits and vegetables. Toba market women are reputed to be aggressive, hard bargainers.

8. This technique for guessing age shows up again in Radjab's memoir.

1. This Sipoholon Seminary was locally quite famous in Toba and Angkola in late colonial times. Status-conscious families would brag about having a son who had graduated from there.

2. Adat feasts involved the slaughter of water buffalo and the politically astute distribution of its meat (so that the family hosting the feast could solidify interfamily alliances and out-compete old rivals, via an idiom of profligate generosity). Earrings, armbands, headdresses, and piles of ceremonial ulos cloaks were worn at these occasions as public signs of wealth and good breeding. Toba retained the practice of earlobe holes for men longer than many other outer island Indonesian cultures.

3. Literally, "adat-strict." And streng is Dutch for "strong, harsh."

4. Minggu is the Indonesian word for Sunday, also often used in the Batak languages. Mar - (similar to the Indonesian ber -) is one of the main Toba verb particles.

5. The honorific Tuan was in common usage by Batak for high-status Europeans at this time. It was never used for Toba men or members of other ethnic groups.

1. A sour fruit, sometimes grown commercially but more often found in home gardens.

2. The pungent, beanlike fruit of the petai tree, eaten raw or cooked.

3. Water closets. In Tapanuli, W.C . is a common term, even today, for toilet.

4. H.I.S., Hollandse Inlandse School, was a Dutch-language primary school of extremely high prestige, in the eyes of Batak commoner families. The children of Batak church officials, government workers, and school personnel could sometimes succeed in getting a son or daughter into one of these illustrious elementary schools.

5. The Dutch schoolteacher was doubtless just mispronouncing the child's name.

6. Special sorts of water buffalo all have different honorific names, in Toba.

7. Literally, "tidak teratur," said of something which has no sense of proper order to it. This is strong opprobrium in Tapanuli.

1. Doubtless Malay would not have been used in the boy's home at this time, so the language took much conscious study.

2. Today in Tapanuli, translation is often referred to as "changing" or "transforming" a sentence from one language into another. That is the usage employed here in this sentence too.

3. The colonial road system had stone markers at one-kilometer intervals on major roads. Each of these named places are little villages, or huta .

4. A Dutch military command meaning "To the left?

5. This contrasts with the Indonesian language, where anak-anak can mean children of both sexes. Boru is closely linked in meaning to the category of anakboru , "our girl-children," and (at the same time) the men who marry our daughters. That is, our wife-receivers.

1. This behavior is strikingly unusual, for Toba fathers (stereotypically at least) are quite affectionate with their young sons and daughters.

2. Jengkol is a sort of tree with edible beans that can be consumed raw (the Pithecolobium ).

3. Indeed, there is a strong respect relationship between Toba brothers and sisters, according to the idealized adat at least. The two should not repeat ribald jokes around each other, or engage in rough and tumble play as children.

4. Toba apparently imagine that the formal form of the second-person pronoun is kamu , although standard Indonesian usage employs kamu as a fairly intimate form of "you." The formal and plural "you" in Toba Batak is hamu , which may help explain the usage (also prevalent in the Angkola region when people there speak Indonesian).

5. In Batak adat funerals and in more personal lament songs, parents of dead children sometimes angrily denounce their youngsters for "having the heart to leave us."

6. Special fish meals are indeed used in Toba village medical belief in this way. The notion that sickness can result from unrequited cravings for certain fish is also common throughout many Batak areas; it is a major theme of oral stories, too.

7. Kweekschools were very selective teacher training institutes. A degree from a kweekschool was the ultimate badge of status and educational accomplishment for a rural Batak schoolteacher. Sumatra had kweekschools in Kutaraja (Banda Aceh) and in Bukittinggi, in West Sumatra. The kweekschool in far-off Solo of course had special luster.

8. The Chinese have been stigmatized as greedy, amoral, usurious people in Tapanuli for many decades. Calling a Batak a "Cina" is an ethnic slur, or, as in this case, a pointed jest.

9. This popular practice engages the attention of children and adults for many hours, as they memorize large chunks of biblical text to recite in church on Christmas, as part of a serial recitation of the story of the birth of Jesus. Toba and Angkola Christians enthusiastically continue this practice today.

10. Toba and Angkola Christians consider New Year's Day to be a major Christian holy day. It is a time when families take care to clean off the graves of ancestors and invoke their blessings for a prosperous new year. Much praying to God also occurs, in and out of church.

11. Apparently the English word long is meant.

12. The serunai is an important part of the Toba adat ensemble of musical instruments, for ceremonial music at feasts.

1. Peci are the black felt caps worn by men in Sumatra as part of formal dress. During the Indonesian Revolution the cap became an important badge of nationalist sentiment.

2. The implication here is that the school had an aristocratic air about it, as it was confined to the true "native elite."

3. Ulos textiles are hand-loomed cloaks given as gifts between families at major life-crisis events such as births, weddings, and funerals. Toba well recognize the political benefits of giving ulos gifts to foreigners, thus obligating them to help the givers.

4. At this time Toba teenagers would often sleep together in single-sex groups, away from home.

5. That is, the Mandailing Batak language, which is a moderately different dialect of Batak than Toba. Many of the early Batak schoolteachers were from the southern Batak societies of Angkola and Mandailing; these men gave Toba education a southern slant, still evident in the 1920s.

6. Pospos uses the Indonesian word keponakan here, which means niece or nephew in a rather generic sense. Doubtless he is using this word from the national language in place of a more specific Toba Batak kin term, perhaps bere (speaker's mother's brother's daughter's child).

7. The Gouvernements-Vervolgschool was intended to offer a continuation of lower schooling but at government standards, with the possibility of continuing to higher levels.

1. The word used here is dongeng , which means a fanciful story with an air of the tall tale about it.

2. Debata Mula Jadi Nabolon means Great-Creator-God-of-First-Origins, while the place name Sianjurmulamula means Source-Spring-Spot-of-First-Origins. It is located near Pangururan, near Samosir Island.

3. Marga can be used to mean a single pattilineal clan, such as the Pospos clan, or an entire cluster of clans, whose origin point is said to be further back in time nearer to the era of Si Radja Batak.

4. Sometimes the martarombo question-and-answer conversations between new acquaintances are quite stylized and involve sly rhymed jousts and counter-jousts. A pair of speakers' marriage alliance relationship toward each other's lineage is also of great importance in determining their proper behavior (in adat) toward each other.

5. Literally, a way that was ''not halal ," which means not pure or permitted according to the tenets of Islam. This conversational turn of phrase has the sense of something "not being kosher," in English usage.

6. That is, newcomer marriage alliance partners had eventually swamped the village "owners" in political influence and number of residences there.

7. Toba village life is filled with political disputes of this sort, between men jockeying for influence and prestige. The loser in a dispute will indeed often cut his losses and leave the village for a brief or extended period.

8. The two children were probably matrilateral cross-cousins, the ideal boy-girl pair for marriage according to Toba adat. In other words, Djohanis was engaged to his mother's brother's daughter, or at least to some little girl from his mother's father's lineage. In that way, if the marriage was eventually carried out, the boy would have repeated the same sort of marriage his father made years ago by marrying Djohanis's mother.

9. Its own Koor .

1. Ingwar Nommensen was the great missionary converter of the Toba to Protestant Christianity.

2. District head, or Kepala negeri .

3. Wild schools were proprietary institutes offering extra instruction to supplement the education children got in the regular schools. Parents hoped that these additional lessons would afford their children access to good higher-level schools, and after that, salaried jobs. Schakelschool was the Dutch term for these wild schools.

4. MULO, Meer Uitgebreide Lagere Onderwijs, was a sort of junior high school but one of high standing, since several European languages were taught there and much instruction was in Dutch.

5. One ringgit was equal to two and one-half rupiah.

6. That is, as opposed to converting to Islam, a religion that of course forbids pork consumption. Toba was something of a Christian enclave by the 1920s within largely Muslim Sumatra.

7. These areas in (respectively) northeast Sulawesi and the Moluccas were ethnic home regions that sent many migrants to Java and even the Netherlands.

8. Encik , a Malay usage, "young lady teacher." Often used in Sumatran school discourse.

9. Pospos conveys a Dutch phrase badly butchered in both pronunciation and meaning.

1. The author actually uses a roundabout saying here, to convey the boys' surprise at doing so well on their entrance exam: "We'd hoped, you might say, for something so simple as leafy sprouts to be served, but lo and behold real vegetables were brought to the table."

2. "Betawi" was a reference to Batavia, now the city of Jakarta.

1. GAIB probably stands for Gouvernements Akademie (GA) and Inlands Bestuur (IB). The Indonesian word "gaib" means mysterious and magical.

2. A demang was a district head, in the Dutch colonial administration in Sumatra. This was quite an exalted post from the viewpoint of village Batak.

3. A.M.S. stood for Algemene Middelbare School, while K.W.S. was Koningin Wilhelmina School, begun in 1901, where the Part B course of study was for machinists, mining engineers, and so on.

4. From the Dutch meester , itself a shortened form of meester in de rechten , or bachelor of law.

5. In colonial Sumatra, a controleur was the district administrative official.

1. Angkola is the Batak subethnic region lying to the south of Toba, near Sipirok and Padangsidimpuan. Toba and Angkola have long enjoyed a heartfelt ethnic rivalry, phrased in terms of which Batak society "has the most adat," the best cooking, the best way of raising children, the greatest interest in their children's education, the greatest fidelity to agama (world religion, Islam or Christianity), the best ritual dances and gong music, and so on.

2. These are subregions within Toba, said to have slight differences in adat practice.

3. A large commercial town in the Dell coast plantation belt in East Sumatra.

4. Medan is located in an old Malay ethnic enclave. The city also acted as a magnet for migrants from the nearby Batak rural regions.

5. That is, with Minangkabau.

1. A perjamuan , clearly a reference in this Toba context to a blessing meal. These are often held, within Toba adat, to "firm up the soul" of the person being fêted.

2. Batak teenagers boarding at relatives' houses while they attend school are generally expected to do house chores.

3. This is the road up into the mountains leading toward Pahae, a gateway town near the border with Angkola.

4. That is, from Angkola or Mandailing.

5. This is a confusing comment.

6. Malay was the language soon to be established as Indonesia's national tongue, with the 1945-49 revolution. In Indonesia, the language is now called bahasa Indonesia. In 1920s Tapanuli schoolhomes, though, Malay was an outsider's language, an unfamiliar idiom to many, although it had been a widespread trade language for many centuries.

1. The English word is used here.

2. The missionary converter of the Toba, Reverend Ingwar Nommensen. Poso pos seems to have used the incorrect first initial here.

3. Mandrek is a sweet, thick drink: colored water sugared with syrup, with bits of fruit such as coconut mixed in.

4. A Dutch borrowing from French or English, applied to food and meals, meaning "complete" in the sense of "with all the trimmings."

1. Literally, this phrase reads, "The world had changed a great deal." The implication here seems to be that the changes in question were the ones of the last several years.

2. The English word "modern" is used in the text.

3. That is, to listen in to all the tandang courtship speech going on.

4. In the text, "mode à la tahun dua ribu." Apparently a reference to fashion styles in the eminently modern, future year 2000.

1. The author does not explain the difference to us. However, Section B apparently was the track that prepared students for further schooling.

2. Straat is "street" in Dutch.

3. An "excursie" in the text.

1. In the text, "sapa-menyapa," trade inquiries with each other. This Indonesian phrase gives a sense of the Toba conception of friendly speech as a series of verbal ripostes, especially when it concerns young people's communications with each other.

2. "Si" is attached to names in many Indonesian languages to convey an air of familiarity and a sense that all users of this appelation know the person in question.

3. Gambier is an ingredient of betel-nut chewing.

4. MOSVIA was Middelbare Opleiding School voor Inlandse Ambtenaren, a school, accompanying OSVIA, for native officials.

5. A "drilschool."

6. The word here is "watak," character, nature, disposition.

1. The words "back" and "trainen" are used in this paragraph. In the next paragraph the word "kompetisi" is used.

2. In the original, the soldiers are said to think of themselves as "anak kompeni," company guys. "Kompeni" was a popular way to refer to the Dutch colonial state, in 1920s and 1930s Sumatra. The reference is to the Dutch East India Company, whose export enterprises in the archipelago predated the establishment of the civil government of the Dutch Indies colony.

3. The author places quotation marks around the word "kuat" (strong) in this sentence.

4. "Fors," in the original (robust, massive, loud, forceful). The author uses Dutch words at several junctures to discuss soccer.

5. Padang Sidempuan is the commercial and administrative hub of the Angkola region. The town's name has several spellings.

1. In schakelschooh.

2. "Modern" is used in the original.

3. An idiom in the original: Their resolve and determination was like iron.

1. "Fiasco" in the original, in quotation marks.

1. Galling a person "black-skinned" in Toba is a way of chiding them for being ugly. However, one can also be "sweet and black" ( hitam manis in Indonesian).

2. In French in the original.

1. The word here is kitab , "book"—but in Sumatra it has the connotation of holy texts.

1. Pork stew is the main ceremonial food in Toba adat; it is available as well for big splurges at food stalls.

1. This practice continues today as a common means of slipping a relative a cash gift, usually in an adat context.

1. "Intiem" (Dutch) in the original.

2. Homeland is "tanah air" here. This could refer to Toba or to Sumatra as a whole. It is not a general reference to Indonesia, in this particular context.