Saturday, January 6, 2018
Are all cultures equal?
Members of the Indonesian Tarajan tribe take part in a "Cleaning of the Corpses" ritual where they take photos with rotting bodies and dress them in fashionable clothes.
But fears are growing that the ritual could have deadly consequences.
Recently a deadly Black Death epidemic in Madagascar was blamed on an ancient ritual called "famadihanaf," or turning of the bones.
Willy Randriamarotia, Madagascar's health ministry chief of staff, said at the time: "If a person dies of pneumonic plague and is then interred in a tomb that is subsequently opened for the ritual, the bacteria can still be transmitted and contaminate whoever handles the body."
He then ordered that plague victims must be buried in anonymous, tightly sealed containers to minimise the chances of relatives digging the bodies up.
But locals refused to listen to health warnings, and there are fears that a similar plague outbreak in Indonesia would also be spread quickly by the digging up of dead bodies.
Torajans rarely bury their dead. Instead they inter them in family tombs or placed inside or outside mountain caves.
Friends and family often visit the corpses and bring them necessities such as money and cigarettes.
Speaking to the BBC, Mamak Lisa said that she has kept her father's corpse in her house for 12 years, and that "relatives often visit him or call on the phone to see how Dad's doing, because we believe that he can hear us and is still around."
Labels:
disease,
Human Progress
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