A relevant case study: Toraja

Toraja or the city of the uplands, a lost city located on the depths of Indonesia, more certainly on a mountainous region called South Sulawesi.

They keep being untouched by the outside word, always living up to their beliefs, traditions and most important, their rites. They are the creators of one of the weirdest and elaborated funeral rituals, one of the main reasons why nowadays it is known as the “zenit” or, the beginning, of dark tourism.  

 

ph: National Geographic 

  Death is considered is seen on a daily basis, but, they are used to treat their beloved relatives as if they are sick, so they are never gone, death doesn’t mean goodbye. In Toraja is customary to feed the deceased family members every day and to keep the corpses cozily bedded in a special, the separated room of the family house, until de family can afford a proper funeral. Torajans, are really humble, this is one of the main reasons why de funerals are held during the dry season (from June to November), so poorer families got the possibility of raise enough money, which would be later used for the acquiring of porks and buffalos, in order to feed the entire city population.  The ceremony of killing all this animals is really disgusting and morbid, the animals got killed in front of the entire town, which stays painting with blood until the funeral ends.

 This funerals may last three days and depending on how wealthy the family of the death person is, it may actually last ten more days.  Bodies are exhumed to be cleaned and dressed in new clothes every three years in August or Ma´nene, the month of the ceremony of cleaning corpses. Death for many Torajans is not a brick wall but a veil, a new type of connection with their loved ones.

 It´s quite curious the fact that, considering their peculiar beliefs, being so far from the outsiders, and so technologically undeveloped, the citizens still find their way in order to get mobile phones and, in a way, connect with the world in their own way.  Pictures of Toraja are quite a few, some of them have started to show after the Netflix documentary “The other Tourism”. This show got attention of important platforms such as The Guardian or National Geographic.  Due to the increasing number of visitors, even tough their just a few, citizens get motivated and find more reasons on keeping their traditions alive. According to UNESCO, heritage in this city has an “indispensable scientific value as a source of analogy to study the past” and “the cultural landscape created based on local wisdoms may bring awareness on the nature-culture relation”.

Toraja won my attention at first sight, even tough I find this ritual quite disturbing and shocking, I also believe is really amazing how different cultures can be, we are talking of traditions from 700 years ago who are still being developed nowadays.