Tengger People

Madurese People

a) speaking local Tengger language.

When Tengger people meet to each other, they will speak the local language. Anyone who would like to be called Tengger people. He/she must speak the language

a) Ability to speak local language.

Madurese people, wherever they are, can speak local language. Madurese community are spread all over Indonesia and they have excellent ability to speak the local language.

b) hardworking community

Tengger people are hard worker. A farmer needs to walk one to two hours to go the farm fields, and sometimes they stay overnight on the fields especially during harvesting seasons. They never feel frustrated if bad thing happens such as failure of harvest. They will try any other way to earn money for the next farming investment.

b) hardworking community

Madurese are hard working people. The newcomer Madureses were normally working as farming labourer. They will work very hard to be able to buy land. Though they have farm field, they keep working as labourer in other farming areas for extra money.

Being a hard worker as a Tenggerese is not difficult for Madurese people, it has already part of their value of life.

c) maintaining family ties

There is a local rule that couple who has family order from the father line cannot get married. There are also obligations for each Tenggerese to help and to attend occasions held by the family members such as traditional rituals, marriage or death ceremony. Therefore, the family ties are maintained properly due to these obligations.

Tengger people also has a term of “sanja-sanja”, which means visiting family members and friends for a small talk. They enjoy to have people around the house.

c) having a very close family ties

Madurese are good in keeping the family ties and orders. The parents keep reminding the children who and where their family are, at least for 4 (four) generations. They will gather at any time when they are free.

The Madurese people are enjoying family and friend’s visits, like the Tenggerese.

d) obeying the leader and obeying the customary rules

Tengger people are very much obeying the customary rules. The informal and formal leaders will remind them continuously about these things. Administrative sanction and/or peer pressures occurred when they ignore the rules.

Tengger people will never oppose to whatever their local leader says dan do. If they feel uncomfortable about it, they believe that the local leader will have “the karma” afterwards.

d) obeying their leaders particularly 4 important figures, who are mother and father (parents), local administrative leader, and teachers, especially religious teacher (ulama)

Madurese people are very much appreciated their parents, religious teacher and the local leader. They will ask for advises and approval to those 4 figures before doing big things, such as education, marriage, etc.

Therefore, it is no problem for the Madurese people following local leader directions, when they become a Tenggerse.