Siwaluh jabu

The Karo highlands, North Sumatra

Siwaluh jabu means eight households, and that is the building: one raised room with no partition anywhere, and four hearths each shared by two households. What makes it worth building here is that it is the third answer to a question two other buildings have already answered: what a building does when several households live in it. A rumah betang gives each household a room of its own; a baileo makes every clan’s seat equal; this one divides nothing, and standing is stated by position. The order of those positions is set by the timber: the great beams are laid with the root of the tree at one end, and the household at that end is the senior one. The sun in this model is computed for the Karo highlands, 3.19° N and 98.52° E — the northernmost site in this collection.

The eight places each have a name in the literature, and only two are printed here — jabu bena kayu and jabu ujung kayu — because the author is not confident enough of the other six; the rest are called by their end and their side. The carving on a Karo house, which on a real one is the part given the most attention, is entirely absent. The ayo-ayo head at the end of the roof is not modelled. The tersek is drawn as a second roof standing on the first, which states its height correctly and its shape approximately. And not one figure here comes from a measurement.