PENTI CEREMONY

Penti is a Manggarai ritual to celebrate the harvest and the journey in life in the past year. The ceremony is conducted after the harvest is taken to the village as the new planting season approaches. The community will discuss when they will hold the ceremony, considering the time of the harvest. In Waerebo, it is usually conducted during the wulang beko, or the change of season from the dry to the rainy season, allowing the planting season to begin in October to December. The planting season also signifies a new beginning, new lives. 

The people in Waerebo live from their land. To them, when plants start to grow, new lives begin. This is why they use the Beko month to signify the New Year. The Penti ceremony can be considered as a wuat wini event, the occasion to prepare seeds for planting and to welcome a new planting season, which will hopefully be full of blessings. Usually people will start to plant corns or rice after the Penti ceremony.  Penti is also the occasion for all members of Waerebo community to gather, and those who live far would try to come home for the ceremony. 

The Penti ceremony is conducted for one whole day in several stages; the first of which would be the blessing of the wellspring, followed by praying for the safety of the village and protecting the village from evil spirits. People would gather at the Gendang house to go to the place where they would perform the blessing ritual, accompanied by the Sanda song, sung only during the Penti ritual. This would then be followed by the Caci dance, which would also be performed only during the ritual. The dance would be performed well into late afternoon.  As the sun sets, the ritual to bless the Gendang house would begin with the slaughter of a chicken. The ceremony then reaches its apex in the Tundak Penti ritual, in which all members of the community gather inside the Niang Gendang. They would then slaughter a pig, sing a special song such as the Sanda Lima, and end the ceremony with prayers.