26 Mar Sulawesi – Crashing the Funeral of an Ordinary Woman

The southern peninsula of Sulawesi has got to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

 

 

Peggy and I wound up there because I’d been imprinted with the shape of the island back in second grade. It was all Miss Satterfield’s fault.

 

 

She had a thing about homework, and not in a good way. She wanted me to turn it in. On the first day of class she handed out the first assignment and I did the obvious thing. I forgot about it. She didn’t forget and, the next morning while the other kids were enjoying recess, I got invited to sit at my desk and complete the work. I passed the time staring at islands on the big world map next to the blackboard.

On the third day I owed two homeworks, both of which would have to be turned in before I could head out to recess. Come April, I owed a hundred-and-some and all possibility of recess had forever receded below the horizon. If my family hadn’t moved to another city, I’d still be in second grade puzzling over the Rorschach shapes of faraway islands, of which Sulawesi is by far the Rorschachiest. The place is all peninsula and no island.

Peggy and I landed at the southern tip, then headed north through fields of ripening rice,

 

 

the rice barns

 

 

it would be gathered into

 

 

and what looked like ancient shrines along the edge of the trees.

 

 

Partway up the peninsula our driver pulled into a little village and came to a stop beside a two-story house. Someone’s grandmother had died and we’d arrived for the funeral.

Funerals in this part of Sulawesi are announced months in advance, and all are welcome. At least that’s what we told ourselves.

On the way into the house we passed through the courtyard which, for the occasion, had taken on some of the aspects of a stockyard

 

 

with half-a-dozen water buffalo milling around.

Nobody except our driver had a clue who we were but that didn’t seem to make any difference. The host ushered us upstairs to a pleasant shaded area

 

 

where we could sit and watch the proceedings. Then fetched a couple of elegant porcelain cups, poured for us and, smiling, left to offer tea to other mourners. We felt like honored guests at some kind of royal fete in upper-crust England.

In America there would have been questions and, undoubtedly, public health ordinances around what to do with deceased grandmothers. But not so in South Sulawesi. In South Sulawesi being dead doesn’t exclude anybody from participating in family life, and they just kept her in a coffin at the back of the house . . .

 

 

for the ten months or so it took to organize the funeral. 

The reason they’re announced so far in advance is because families are extended, relatives are spread all over Indonesia, and it takes planning to arrange for everyone to be there. Also, it takes buffalo, which explained what was going on in the courtyard. It’s traditional to show respect to the bereaved by contributing a buffalo.

There was some talking and some reminiscencing among relatives, but it wasn’t all that emotional. The family had already had the better part of a year to make their goodbyes. Even the buffalo seemed to understand the dignity of the occasion and were more understanding than you’d guess

 

 

about having their throats cut.

But not all of them were killed. Buffalo are valuable and there was no point in wasting the whole herd. Other grandmothers would die, the family was going to need buffalo to send over, and some of the animals were led away to the buffalo bank to be withdrawn as needed. Besides, how much meat could one set of mourners reasonably be expected to purchase? As we filed out, a young man began slicing chunks from the carcasses and raising them into the air and calling for bids.

Sharing your home with a deceased grandmother didn’t seem one bit out of place, not in that village, not anywhere in that part of Sulawesi because, in that part of Sulawesi the dead never really leave. They just move into rock tombs,

 

 

or niches in cliffs,

 

 

or holes in trees.

 

 

Some wind up in coffins.

 

 

Or pilled in caves, their bones organized like dead Frenchmen

 

 

in the Catacombs beneath Paris, and it’s easy to see why. South Sulawesi is so startlingly beautiful

 

 

nobody would want to leave,

 

 

even when they’re too dead to enjoy the beauty.

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