I See Dead People

Yesterday was wild! We are in Tana Toraja in central Sulawesi and spent yesterday visiting a few villages. The Torajan people are really fascinating, particularly their funeral and burial customs. When a person dies they keep the body in their home for months while saving up money for elaborate funerals. They still talk with the person and sit and have tea with them. Most funerals are held during July and August and are huge events. After the funeral some bodies are put in tombs in cliffsides--they literally carve a grave out of the stone, which you can see in some of our pictures. Others are put in wood coffins and put inside caves, which you can also see in our pictures. We went in one cave that was quite large and filled with many dozens of coffins. Many had rotted and skulls and other loose bones were strewn about the ground. In one part many skulls had been meticulously placed on ledges right inside the entrance. Jason and I were the only ones in the cave at the time and our light wasn't working well, so it was a bit eery. Jason would use his camera flash to light up an area, and we could see glimpses of skulls and rotting wood and clothes every time the light went on--it reminded us both of a horror movie. As we stumbled through I didn't want to reach out and grab the rock for fear of grabbing a body! Outside of the caves they carve shelves into the rock where wooden effigies of the dead stand. They change the clothes on these statues regularly and place offerings beside the coffins (food, drinks, cigarettes, etc.). One of the caves smelled a bit, and we could tell there was a fresher body in there. It was fascinating to see all of it! Unfortunately there are no funerals while we are here so we don't get to see that. It's a really great place though, and there are virtually no tourists.

Tomorrow we are leaving here and heading to the Togean Islands! They are pretty remote islands with fantastic diving and snorkeling; we've been looking forward to going there for a very long time! We will probably spend at least a week there and won't have internet access, so we'll be unavailable for awhile. We're going to definitely do a few dives (hopefully see some sharks!), some snorkeling and swimming, and lots of relaxing. It should be a great time, and we'll update again when we're back to civilization!

P.S. Actually the pictures might not get up, so if they don't check back in a couple of weeks if you want to see the pictures of the graves!