Living With The Dead Our World

It's the great unspoken.

A taboo.

Something that I've had to face

up to recently myself.

Most of us don't know how

to think or talk about

death.

But there are some people

who do think they know.

On the Indonesian island of Toraja,

centuries-old customs make the dead

a constant part of day-to-day life.

I have come here to learn more

about these remarkable practices,

which blur the line

between this world and the next.

A morbid obsession?

Or a healthier way to deal

with the grief of losing a

loved one?

Tana Toraja in Indonesia

is an extraordinary place.

Here, ancient aminist beliefs

intertwine with new religions,

resulting in unique rituals.

At this traditional

Torajan funeral

friends and family

gather to celebrate the

life of a local wealthy man called

Dengan, who died over two years ago.

But here is the strange thing.

As far as his family

and everybody else

here are concerned,

Dengan is still alive.

Torajans have a strong desire

to stay connected to

their dead loved ones.

In spirit and in body.

To see what this means in practice,

I went to visit a Torajan family.

Hello.

Nice to meet you.

This man is 86 and his

family take care of him.

He died more than two years ago.

Here, it takes months

and sometimes years,

until a funeral

actually takes place.

In the meantime, families keep

the deceased in the house and

care for them on a daily basis.

They treat them

as if they were sick.

Torajans traditionally rub special

leaves and herbs over a body

to preserve it.

Nowadays, a chemical called

formalin is often injected

into the body to embalm it.

There is a powerful

odour of musk and the

chemical.

When my father died,

we buried him in two days.

It was all very sudden,

it was all very

bam, bam.

And to be honest with you,

a few years on, I still feel I

haven't adjusted.

It was just too sudden.

I am still in a bit of a shock.

Does this help you?

What's really incredible,

none of these

kids seem to be fazed by the fact

that there is a dead person lying

here.

Everybody is so calm.

He will remain here

until his family have

saved enough money

for a lavish funeral.

During their lives, Torajans

work hard to accumulate

wealth.

But rather than saving for

a luxurious life, they save for a

grand departure from this earth.

The wealthier they are,

the larger and

more elaborate the funerals.

Some last for days.

Dengan was a rich man.

And his funeral lasted seven days.

Animal sacrifice is

a fundamental part of

this tradition.

Buffaloes are a very important

element to the Torajan

funerals, because they are believed

to be the carriers of the deceased's

soul into the afterlife.

The meat is eaten at the funeral

feast, and the buffalo horns

create create homes

and tombs of the deceased.

A symbol of wealth and status.

The sacrifice, it's one part

of helping your soul to

reincarnation.

Does it depend on your wealth?

$50,000 was spent

on Dengan's funeral.

Roughly ten times more

than the average annual income here.

They sacrificed 24

buffaloes, more than

40 pigs, as well as feeding and

accommodating hundreds of guests.

The funeral is one way to make your

soul get to reincarnation.

Soon, the soul of the

poor people will be

getting a little bit longer.

Even at this point, Dengan's

funeral is not complete.

Only when his coffin is carried to

the top

of this special platform,

is he finally considered dead.

According to ancient animist

beliefs here, this is the

point where the soul finally

ascends to the cosmos.

From there, it watches

over living relatives,

bringing them good fortune, as long

as the families take proper care of

their dead.

For centuries, the Torajans

have been laying

their dead to rest

in caves like this.

Yet another place where the

afterlife connects with this one.

This cave winds for two kilometres.

And it's pretty full.

Even here, friends

and families bring

necessities for their

dead relatives.

In a tradition predating

photography, statues of dead

noblemen and women are carefully

carved out of wood.

Most people here are

farmers, and their average

income is around $5,000 a year.

It's clear that for Torajans, the

process of dying and being

reincarnated is far smoother if you

are rich.

These sculptures are dressed

in the clothes, jewellery

and even the hair of the deceased.

Silent sentinels looking out over

this one from another.

Here, the physical

relationship between the

dead and the living

continues long after death.

Even after burials.

People are coming out of the church

now, and they are all shaking hands

in their traditional manner.

They do this and then

they touch their

chest.

And they're getting ready

for a less usual ceremony.

The village leader explains

that the ritual is called manene,

also known as the cleansing

of the corpses.

Once every couple of years,

families bring the coffins of long

departed relatives out

of their graves and

open them up for a big

family reunion.

These are the close relatives

of a woman called Maria,

and they are here for the cleansing.

One of the guests is a Torajan

professor of sociology.

The family will bring

Maria out of this

tomb for the first time today.

CHANTING.

They're bringing Maria out now.

We're just waiting for them

to open her coffin.

I'm feeling a bit

nervous, to be honest.

I had to come out to get

some distance from it.

There really was no escaping death.

I watched as they slaughtered pigs.

And the final sacrifice.

A buffalo.

The coffin is finally opened.

Once again, that

strong odour of musk

and formalin filled the air.

Thank you.

They want me to show what she looked

like before and what she

looks like now.

She died three years ago and got

buried two years ago.

They kept in the house for one year.

Maria is covered in her most

treasured possessions.

Relatives touch her as a greeting.

I'm going to try to

touch her hair, just as

everybody else does,

as a sign of respect.

She feels...

She feels very hard.

The hair feels like normal.

Still very soft.

I couldn't help but wonder how

children feel seeing

their mother this.

Her eldest son seemed very calm.

I don't see any more sign of grief.

It's just normal.

It's just the body is

here and it's normal.

When you couldn't see the body,

when it was inside the

coffin, even I was shaking.

I was a lot more nervous.

And everybody seemed more upset.

Well, the relatives.

But now everybody is content.

Another guest particularly close

to Maria is Esther, her

daughter-in-law.

How do you think this helps

you deal with the grief?

But for me, I want to remember my

relatives, my dad, I want to

remember him when he was alive.

I'm worried that

if I see him dead, I

will - his identity

will change in my mind.

Many of these practices

are slowly disappearing.

The majority of them

converted from the old

animist religion to Christianity,

after Dutch missionaries arrived

less than a century ago.

But as here, the two

can and do coexist.

They're wrapping Maria

in this white sheet.

This is a symbol of

changing her clothes.

In some villages they

literally change the

outfit into a new fashionable one.

But here, because they are

Christians, they don't want to mess

around too much with the corpse.

All this is so different to how I've

dealt with my father's death.

Or so I thought.

What did you do to your father?

We buried him.

Buried him, yeah.

And then until now?

I visit his grave sometimes.

You visit his grave sometimes.

You did it in a different way.

How?

Yeah.

Because you visit the grave

of your father, because you

still remember him as your father.

And you still have an emotional

relationship with him.

You love your father.

Right?

And that is the principle of manene.

So perhaps the principles

behind rituals here are

not very different from

most other cultures.

Remembering our dead is something

most of us try to do.

Torajans don't leave that to chance.

And for them, there certainly

appears to be great

comfort from their unique

rituals around death.