Rambu Solo — funeral season

Rambu Solo is the great Torajan funeral, and its scale is a measure of status and of love. The body may have rested in the family house for months or years while relatives save and assemble; when the rite finally comes it can run for days and draw hundreds of guests. Buffalo are central — a Torajan's wealth is counted in them, and the animals sacrificed at a funeral are understood to carry the soul to Puya, the land of the dead, and to be redistributed as meat through the community. The most prized are the tedong bonga, pied buffalo worth more than a house. There are processions, chanting, ma'badong dance circles, and the carving of tau-tau, wooden effigies that stand for the deceased at the cliff tombs. The whole event is also a vast act of reciprocity: families incur and repay debts of livestock across generations through who gives what at whose funeral. To outsiders the buffalo sacrifice can be hard to watch; within Aluk To Dolo it is the hinge on which the soul's journey turns, neither casual nor cruel. A funeral is the single largest thing most Torajan families will ever stage, and it binds the living to each other as much as to the dead.