(Bogor) Karmila Purba revs her motorbike and begins to roll horizontally in a large wooden cylinder, the “barrel of Satan” at a nocturnal funfair, leaving spectators speechless.
Posted at 8:37
With a smile and no apparent fear, the acrobatic biker circles horizontally and spreads her arms to receive tickets tossed by the delighted audience above her in the Indonesian city of Bogor, West Java province.
The intrepid, gravity-defying figure is part of a very small club in Indonesia of women performing this number, also called the “wall of death”.
Women who dare to drive into the “wall of death” are “very rare,” the 23-year-old told AFP.
“When I started, there was no one else […] I wanted to do something different, something no one else was doing”.
The “barrel of Satan” or “Tong Setan” in Indonesian has been the main attraction of fairgrounds in the Southeast Asian archipelago for decades, especially in rural areas where shows are rare.
Bikers use centrifugal force to spin their car at top speed without protective gear and fill the air with the smell of tires.
Karmila Purba grew up in poverty and lived from begging on the island of Sumatra before starting this career eight years ago, which allows her to earn around 6 million rupees a month (525 Canadian dollars).
She also receives up to 400,000 rupees (34 CAD) in tips on good days.
Tenacious prejudices
His beginnings, however, were difficult in the largest Muslim country in the world with conservative values.
“People were like, ‘You’re a woman, why do something like that? it’s not for young women”.
“I was criticized a lot.”
But fans eventually took a liking to the biker and dubbed her “the princess of the wall of death.”
She has become one of the stars of the carnival.
“A female conductor of the wall of death, it’s very interesting and it’s one of the main attractions of this night market because people are curious” to see her, explains Sumarno, a spectator.
“They can’t believe a woman would do something so extreme,” he told AFP.