Tuk.
It rained only at night, the days were balmy, paragliders wafted out over the lake, fishermen hauled massive catches up the beaches, and we ate nasi goreng fit to bust after jumping, laughing, into the refreshing, pure, lake waters. It really was idyllic.
One day, I rode into a village and nearly ran into a sizeable tent, full of dancers in brilliant costumes, in the middle of the road. A sweaty band was playing nuclear-volume music and a hundred or so more adults and kids were milling around eating chicken, mutton, rice, and the like, and shouting at each other over the music. I stopped and pulled out my camera. An elderly man came over.“ Can I take a photo?” I mimed, and he nodded yes. I asked him what was going on.“ Is this a wedding?”“ No,” he said.“ It’ s a funeral.” He pointed at another oldish man wearing a pointy hat.“ It’ s his grandmother’ s funeral.”
Puzzled, I asked how that was – the grandson looked at least seventy, so his grandmother, even given a flexible birth regime, must have been well over 110.
“ Oh no,” said the first man,“ she died over 15 years ago. We are digging her bones up today and polishing them.”
Not exactly what I was expecting, but it turns out that this is the way the local Batak( Christian) people venerate their ancestors. Once the oldies have karked it, they are mourned as per usual and given a regular burial. Then, anything up to twenty years later, they are dug up, the bones cleaned thoroughly of any residual‘ stuff’, rubbed with cinnamon and lime water and reburied. This time they are buried in a natty mini pyramid with little statues of the family perched on the top. Unusual, to say the least, but a great excuse for a party, obviously.