Land of Funerals

In Tana Toraja, nothing is higher on the social scale than attending traditional funerals. These may be the ultimate fiesta (I thought Filipinos were food crazy). In Toraja there are 3 types of funerals: one for the lower class (not much fun to attend, according to the guides because they're not as elaborate and only last for a day or two), one for the middle class, and one for the higher class (3-4 day presentation with hundreds of guests, music, chanting and food).

I'll discuss the high class funeral, because this is the funeral we attended, but first, let's discuss the odd habit of foreigners to barge into funerals uninvited to watch how the locals grieve. One of the biggest draws of Torajaland are the elaborate funerals. At these funerals, white people generally pay a guide an exorbitant amount of money to act as an interpreter for the day. The tourists usually ask to be forgiven for crashing the event with by presenting the family with packs of clove cigarettes or kilos of sugar. Then the tourists proceed to stomp around the grounds shoving cameras into the faces of the cute and dressed up while the locals try to proceed with their traditions. It's all very bizarre. And though I'm just as guilty as all the other tourists, I'm not sure that if given the chance I would do it again because I have conflicting issues on this type of "cultural" tourism. I know I don't like it when Indonesians shove camera phones in my face to snap a picture at the "strange and unusual tourist" and I expect most Indonesians feel the same about me ogling over their everyday way of life.

Having said that, there were many interesting things I learned by going to the funeral. Like I mentioned earlier, we attended the funeral of a high class woman who was in her 90s when she died. There were literally hundreds of guests, mostly distant relatives and close friends who came from all over the island (and the country) to attend the four day event. The relatives generally bring gifts of live pigs, which are slaughtered as food for the guests. If the family can afford, they buy as many carabao as possible and slaughter most of them on the 4th day, though we were lucky enough to watch a killing because they needed food for dinner. In the case of the funeral we attended, the family had SEVEN (7) carabao to be slaughtered!!!

The food is generally pig or carabao cooked for 2 hours inside a bamboo tube. The meat is so tender! In between meals, there is LOTS of tea and coffee which are served with cakes.

The Torajan people are very class oriented and everyone knows their position in society. At the funerals, those from the high class get the best seats and the best service, the middle class get to sit in a large bamboo "stadium" and the lower class are the ones preparing the food and serving the meals. I think the classes are a bit like castes since I was told that a lower class person may become rich, but they may never become high class.

It's amazing how much of the funeral culture was retained, even after the rigorous proselytizing by the Dutch. Most Torajans are Protestant, though about 15% are still animist. Yet of the 4 day funeral, only the evening of the 1st day is the pastor present. The rest consists of chanting, dancing and other traditions.

The other draw in Toraja are the boat shaped houses. The houses are shaped this way because Torajans believe that when their ancestors came from China the valley of Toraja was still filled with water and the ancestors docked their boats on the mountains and settled. Traditionally these houses were built out of wood and bamboo with grass roofs, though many people now only use the oddly shaped architecture for their rice silos and they are almost all roofed with corrigated iron. The carvings and paintings on these houses are absolutely amazing! Such a contrast from the half finished houses of the 'Pines. Each wooden panel is carved with designs of carabao, swirls or other designs which are then decorated with 4 colors: black, white, yellow and red which symbolize participation, bones and purity, gold and blood respectively.

We had planned on doing some hiking in the area to get away from the tourists, but its the end of a long dry season and the surrounding land looks parched and brown. Also Laura sprained her ankle on our last expedition and thought it better to rest. We will begin our 3 day journey to the neighboring valley with in the next few days. This area is hopefully less touristy and I hear that there are some interesting architecture there as well.