Tana Toraja, Sulawesi

In the last week we have experienced the fascinating culture of the Tana Toraja people from central Sulawesi. They are most known for their funeral ceremonies, and now I know why. The Torajan's celebrate most of their funerals in July and August. That doesn't mean that everyone dies in those two months but means that's when they have the ceremony and burial of the deceased. When the person dies the family gets together and decides when they want to bury their loved one. So until they decide the date they mummify the body and put it in a special room in thier house with them. Some keep the body for months and others for years. They believe that until the body is buried it is still alive and the spirit is still there. They give it water and food and other offerings. The funeral ceremonies are held in July and August because it is vacation time and it is when they harvest the rice, and since they serve allot of this at the funeral they wouldn't have to buy it in the market. The ceremonies are various days long, depending on the importance of the person and how many guests will be invited. The first day is a procession day where they carry the body all thru the village and the surrounding areas. The second day the receiving day, when they receive their guests. And the third day the burial day. But if there are many guests sometimes they need more than one receiving day and they also plan other activities such as buffalo fights. The guests usually give live pigs as gifts and if they are very close they give a buffalo. This is a very expensive gift and if the buffalo is light skinned, blue eyes and with big horns it could cost as much as a car. They have open bamboo platformed houses made so that the guests can sit and watch all the activities. They are served coffee, tea and snacks by the family. Each group of guests is announced and filed in by the immediate family, who is dressed in their traditional dress, and sat in a special receiving house during which time all their gifts, mostly pigs and some buffaloes, are brought out into the open middle area and the master of ceremony announces who gave what so that the family knows exactly which pig is from which village or family. The pigs are tied on bamboo posts and the morning of the ceremony we saw pigs in the back of pickups, on the back of motorbikes, on the side of the road, in the back of cars etc. The ceremony we attended they must have been given over 100 pigs as gifts. During the ceremony, out back, they slaughter the pig by driving a knife into it's heart. It lasts all of about 1 min and there isn't much blood. Then they remove the stomach and insides and throw it whole on the fire. On a different day they slaughter the buffaloes. These they slaughter in the main area with everyone watching. There is one man and he cuts the buffaloes throat, the buffalo spins around and pretty much bleeds to death. Then they skin it and cut it into pieces. They can slaughter over 20 in one day. The meat is served to the guests during the funeral days and the rest is sold to restaurants.
Later we went and visited some of the grave areas. They bury their dead in family graves in caves, or rocks and children are buried in trees since they believe the trees and childs life is tied together and the child will grow with the tree. One of the cave graves we saw had many coffins lying around the front, the richer people hang the coffins from the top of the cave but the ropes or rock has given way and most of the coffins were broken and on the ground. You can see many skulls and bones lying around. The upper class or important people are buried high up in the cave and at the base have a wood statue that is made to look just like them.
The torajan's have houses with roofs that look like an upside down boat or to me the horns of a buffalo. The roofs are red and the house is made of wood and is built on stilts. They have replica ones that are smaller for the grain. The area is full of rice fields, coffee plantations, cacao plantations. The green rice fields are speckled with big black boulders from the nearby volcano. It is quite a site to see. We took a hired car from town to take us up to the countryside to hike thru the villages. The mini van that we hired looked like at one time it had been in a fire, then rolled down into the river to be put out and sat there until our driver fished it out and fixed the engine. It was full of mosquitoes and I wasn't quite sure how it was held together. Antonio asked if there was AC and our guide laughed and said that that car was considered in good condition and was a good car. The people here are very nice and have a great sense of humor. As we walked thru the small villages the children called to us asking for candy and the older ones saying "hello mister". They haven't learned to say misses yet.
Tomorrow we leave for a 14 hour bus ride, not to excited about that. And then another 5 the next day to a town called Ampana where we will catch a boat to the Togian Islands. There is supposed to be great snorkeling there with some interesting marine life, reef sharks, turtles etc. We will spend the next 2 weeks island hopping and looking for the perfect beach. I don't think I will access to internet until the 3rd week of July.