You will agree with me that most of us do not like to think or talk about death, but there is a tribe of people who do. In the Toraja region of Sulawesi, in Indonesia, the dead are a constant part of day-to-day life.
After someone dies, it may be months, sometimes years, before a funeral takes place. In the meantime, the families keep their bodies in the house and care for them as if they were sick.
They are brought food, drink, and cigarettes twice a day. They are washed and have their clothes changed regularly. The dead even have a bowl in the corner of the room as their “toilet”.
Furthermore, the deceased are never left on their own and the lights are always left on for them when it gets dark. The families worry that if they don’t take care of the corpses properly, the spirits of their departed loved ones will give them trouble.
Rather than burying their loved ones and leaving them there, in Indonesia, the Toraja people exhume the corpses of their fellow villagers.
The corpse is dressed in special garments and paraded around the village while special care is taken to clean the body, the corpse’s garments, and the coffin.
If someone’s death took place outside the village, the corpse will be taken to the spot of death before being walked back to the village as an act of returning home.
Traditionally, special leaves and herbs were rubbed on the body to preserve it. But nowadays, a preserving chemical, formalin, is injected instead. It leaves a powerful chemical reek in the room.
