The Toraja's Funeral Rituals

A lot of people say the ones who have left them still live in their minds and hearts. In one particular place in Indonesia called Tana Toraja, specifically in a regency in South Sulawesi the dead still continues to walk on earth. It is known that they have the most complex death ceremonies/ritual in the world. The population of the Toraja is approximately 650,000, or 450,000 still live in Tana Toraja. Over there, everyone has different religions such as, the majority Christian, some are Muslim, and a few still believes in a local belief called ‘Aluk Todolo’, also known as “Way of the Ancestors”. Death ceremonies are very important to them that most of them spends their lifetime working very hard to gain wealth/money so when he/she dies the family have enough money to have a death ceremony/ritual which can take up to days, weeks, months or even year.
If one of them passes away they will be placed in in the same house in a traditional house the spesifically in the same roof. This common tradition is known as “Rambu Soloq”. The ceremony begins when the funeral visitors start a buffalo-slaughtering field, they believe that the spirit of the person will live peacefully ever after and the buffaloes and pigs will accompany him/her. Afterwards, the meat are distributed to the funeral visitors according to their position in the community. The more the pigs and buffaloes are killed the better because the parts of the body means a lot to them and the more there are the higher the status of the dead. The body is still not allowed to be buried until the eleventh day. Even though it is not technically buried because the dead is placed inside a wooden