April 27, 2013
It seems like every time I attend a Tongan funeral I get more and more of the “experience.” After this time however I feel like I have been able to witness all a funeral has to offer. I know I have already explained the funeral process here but just a quick recap. A funeral starts with evening prayers at the hospital waiting for the body to be released at the time all the extended family has been able to come to Tongan from all corners of the globe (usually this takes about 4 days). Once all the family has arrived, there is the actual funeral service in the village which lasts all day and has many phases. The first phase was the one I experienced for the first time this time around. The first phase is a prayer service at the house of the deceased. Each church shows up respectfully and sings and prays while the mourners morn in the corner whaling and crying in between services. After a service is done you go and kiss the body. Now I have never seen a dead person before let alone kiss one but I guess there is a first time for everything. I was sitting down in the small house on the Tongan mats that had been laid out. I went with the first church to do their service (the biggest group because he was a member of that church) the Weslayans. The mourners (possibly the man’s wife and daughters) had their heads buried in their body engrossing tau’avalas. The room with the deceased man was small and connected to the main room where we were sitting but from my angle I could not see the body, just the ornate white draping all around the room. As the service ended I had a feeling we might have to go and give our blessings to the body. There was simply no way out, if I left out the door all of the waiting people would see me and I would be standing there in the pouring rain feeling guilty for not showing respect to the dead. So I made sure I would not be first and I got in line. Slowly I made my way to the front where there it was laying lifeless on the table covered in white cloths and looking pale but peaceful- my first sight of death. I saw that the people at the front where not simply saying a prayer and waving their hand over the man but they were bening down to kiss him. How awesome. My first time seeing a dead man and I also have to kiss him. When my moment came I gathered together all my courage and bent down to sniff the man’s lifeless cheek and give him an awkward hug thing. I followed the line to the mourners and gave them kisss sniffs as well and then exited the house feeling as if I had grown up a little. After the different church services everyone gets a bag of food and eats awaiting the big church service (I sort of skipped this interim church stop to help the men prepare the raw meat bags and bring fill two pick-up trucks with bags to bring to the burial ground) and then the final walk with the body to the burial plot. The funeral officially ends with the burial of the body and the passing out of the bags of raw meat.
After the official funeral, the following 3 evenings there are also prayer and singing services at the house at the end of which more bags of raw meat are given out. Tongan funerals over all are very interesting, if not for the cultural interactions and views of death for the simple fact that they tend to bankrupt families on account of having to give hundreds of people parting favors of meat.
some of the men in my village the night before the funeral preparing some of the food- it is a whole night process
just one of the giant piles of chicken that will be cooked or separated into little baggies for the people to take home after the service
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