• Photo by Rantje Allen

  • Photo by William Tan

  • Photo by Rantje Allen

  • Photo by William Tan

  • Photo by Rantje Allen

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Monthly Archives: July 2018

Hari Ketupat Festival Celebrated in Gorontalo

Hari Ketupat is an annual festival held throughout Gorontalo. It falls on the seventh day after Idhul Fitri, the religious holiday that marks the end of Ramadhan. Although the government usually does not recognize this festival

, Gorontalo people celebrate it anyway. Few local people show up to work on Hari Ketupat!

A Record for Ketupat Broken

Ketupat is a cube of rice that lies within a casing. Someone will hand weave a casing from young palm leaves. Once stuffed with grains of white rice, she will boil the woven casing in water. The rice inside cooks and compresses, creating a cube. Then she cuts open the casing and dices the rice cube inside. It is now ready for eating.

In 2018 the Gorontalo provincial government decided to create extra interest in the Hari Ketupat Festival. The governor launched a drive to make an incredible number of ketupat. Officials from Indonesia’s Record Society (MURI) attended the festival to verify the number. Gorontalo people made a record-breaking 34,000 ketupat. Kampung Jawa in Gorontalo Regency is the traditional center of the Hari Ketupat Festival. So, the record breaking initiative took place there.

Hari Ketupat in Olele Village

coin pulling context
Ladies compete for coins

Coastal communities in Gorontalo avidly enjoy their own versions of the festival. This included villages where staff of Miguel’s Diving live. Olele Village, where a marine park is located, hosted a big event in 2018. Although villagers there did not participate in the record breaking ketupat contest,they did create their own merriment.

Fun activities included the traditional sack race. Contestants step inside an empty, fifty kilo rice sack. Then they hop down a designated track to the cheers and laughter of their friends. Another silly challenge is to pull out coins stuck in cuts on a coconut using only the teeth. The coconut is hung on a string. To complicate matters, the other end of the string is tied around the leg of the contestant. This forces him or her to raise one leg in order for the coconut to descend level with the face.

Hari Ketupat boat race
Outrigger canoes race to the finish line

More serious contestants vie for big prizes. The signature event in coastal villages is the outrigger canoe race. Since several villages gathered at Olele for this year’s race, participants and spectators crowded the beach. The organizing committee placed a series of buoys in locations around the small Olele Bay. Boat captains must pass each buoy without hitting it and return to the starting point to finish. Only three boats at a time can run the circuit, so there are many preliminaries. The final winner received two new boat engines.

Guests of Miguel’s Diving typically dive the Olele Village Marine Park. For help with your dive trip to Gorontalo

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, please make a booking with us.

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