Tana Toraja Funeral Ceremony

Holy Cow! We arrived in Tana Toraja around 6 am this morning after a long bus ride. Tana Toraja is located in the Southern Highlands of Sulawesi and is home to a unique group of people. The scenery is stunning with the mountains and rice paddies in every direction you look. The people are unbelievably friendly and usually say hello to us without hysterical laughter that follows a hello in other areas.

Upon getting checked into the hotel, breakfasting and napping, we found ourselves a guide and arranged for a three day tour in the different areas of Tana Toraja.

Now, I mentioned that the people here are unique and that is because of the elaborate funeral ceremonies they hold for their deceased. We ended up at one such funeral today, got invited into a family section for the procession and lunch. As I was sitting there, surrounded by these happy, friendly people, I was trying to figure out how I was going to put the experience into words.

To do this, let me start by giving some background information on the Torajan beliefs. Torajans believe that without a proper funeral, the deceased's soul will not make it to the afterlife. As a result, Torajans spend their lives saving for their funeral and the ceremonies go on for days. Family members will wait for weeks or even months before having said ceremony and buring the deceased to plan the funeral and get relatives living elsewhere back to the area. In all, it is a huge amount of work and an incredible number of water buffalo and pig sacrifices are made during the ceremonies. Our guide informed us that this is because the animals escort the deceased to the afterlife.

Even with knowing all this ahead of time, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I'm not sure if Matt and Scott were prepared for any of it in the slightest. As we were walking up the hill to the funeral, I could hear a bunch of crazy noises and I kept giving Danna a look that was trying to ask if they were indeed sacrificing the animals on this particular day. On getting to the entrance, we were met with an incredibly unreal scene.There were dozens of structures, packed with people, surrounding an open field like area, dozens of pigs hogtied to bamboo poles in and around said field, men leading water buffalo around and a man on a microphone announcing who had donated what. I'm quite certain that my eyes were as big as saucers the entire time we were there. I did my best to tune out the noises the pigs were making.

As we made our way down one side of the field, we were invited into one of the huts for coffee and snacks and ended up being asked to join them for their procession and lunch. It was such an unreal experience, that we all gave each other a look like, "Why not? It's not, like we'll ever be at something like this again." As far as I could tell, the procession was to display your family and the animals you were handing over to be sacrificed in honor of the dead. Now, when I say family, I'm talking about every member of the extended family with well over a hundred people.

The procession we took part in, just involved the family walking down the middle of the field to a special building while the man with the mic announced the family donations to the deceased. After this finished, we went back to our first hut for a lunch of fish, pork satay, rice and veggies. The food was delicious and it still boggles my mind that all this occured today.

For me, the animal sacrifices are very hard to understand but I'm trying to look at it from the Torajan point of view as a culture and way of life. Who am I to judge them for their beliefs and practices? It was an eye opening experience and is still incredibly difficult for me to comprehend and I witnessed it!