Minangkabau

  In Padang there are many nice buildings but they have strange roofs. Every new person who comes to Padang must think the reason of this kind of roofs. There must be some stories behind it. One of the JEN local staff explained like this;
 

  Those buildings name is Minangkabau. This word is consisted of two words “minang” it means winner and “kerbau” means buffalo.

  Long time ago there was a festival of buffalo race every year. That race was mainly between Padang and neighboring Java people. Java was famous for its healthy and big buffalos and Padang didn’t have healthy buffalos as compare as Java’s buffalos. Java people always won the race. Some of the clever Padang people thought about the strategy to win the races. They started to use hungry baby buffalos for the race against Java buffalos. Then, Padang people attached some small knives and blades with their horns. The hungry baby buffalos were running very fast behind the buffalos for the milk, so the attached knifes and blades were making the body of buffalo scratched and wounded, when they were trying to drink milk from the buffalos. The speed of Java buffalos was automatically getting slower and at last because of too much bleeding they were felling down. After that the race always won by Padang. Finally Java people stopped to participate in the races and this festival was over.

These buildings designs are the memorial of those races and the symbol shows the horn of buffalo. Almost 60% government offices roofs are Minangkabau.