Toraja 2

A month and a half ago I went to a corpse-moving ceremony in my counterpart's village with Mary Barnes (another ETA) and her parents, who happened to be visiting that day from Makassar (side note: this is the village he currently lives in. This village is associated with his wife's Tongkonan. The pictures from the previous post are from in or near the village he is from originally, Nanggala). The old bunker style grave got too crowded, so the Tongkonan (technically the group of people associated with the Tongkonan associated with the grave) built a new one next to the first. They moved three of the coffins from the old grave into the new one. As might be expected, a corpse moving is sort of like a funeral, just more low-key.

Soon after we got there we saw a buffalo slaughter. While almost every buffalo I have seen killed has needed only one slash of the parang (machete) to the neck, this slaughter did not go so well. It took a lot of tries to get a good cut. This is the first whack. I would be up all night if I uploaded every attempt I caught on camera.



The buffalo was not too happy. We weren't too happy about it either. A lot of the Indonesians were laughing. This probably makes you uncomfortable. This made Mary's parents uncomfortable (I think). Indonesians tend to laugh when they are uncomfortable. Sometimes communication across cultural norms can backfire. Oops.

The four bules:



After the slaughter, Mary and her parents left. I ended up nongkronging (hanging out) with my counterpart and some other Indonesians under a rice barn (the usual place to hang out during ceremonies like this). You'll see a picture of the underside of a rice barn in a second. From the side and front they look like small Tongkonans without the buffalo horns.

After nongkronging for a bit, a few of the Indonesians started moving the coffins.

The inside of the old grave:



During the move, at least one of the corpses had its clothes taken off (the clothes probably had been on top of the bodies rather than actually on the limbs). I did not notice whether new clothes were put on, though I do know that there is some (yearly?) ceremony where the dead are undressed and redressed in new clothes. Here is the pile of clothes tossed behind the two graves:



At least one of the coffins had an inspection panel, allowing me to look in and see the dead person's face. And the cigarette in its mouth. Note: I have not mentioned gender since I'm not quite sure. I remember thinking the person was a woman, but I don't remember how I concluded this. Very few Indonesian women smoke, however, so the mere presence of a cigarette suggests it was probably a man. For more on smoking in Indonesia, see one of my perpetually forthcoming posts.

The new grave from the outside. The clump of people is carrying one of the coffins inside:



The inside of the new grave:



While the coffins were being moved, the butchers were preparing lunch:

My counterpart (Marthen) with some of the meat:



Fun for all ages:



After the meat was ready, it was time to nongkrong again. Here's me under a rice barn, eating rice (the photo interrupted the nongkronging; photo credit to Marthen):



After lunch we prayed for a while. Incidentally, my counterpart led most of the service. Apparently he has some sort of leadership position at the church. I'm not quite sure how he has time for everything. On top of teaching more hours than any other teacher at school and teaching Saturdays at an SMK (technical high school) in Makale, he finds time to be a church leader.

All in all, a good day, and a good experience.