When Death Comes Calling

One thing that strikes me as uniquely Javanese/Indonesian/my specific community (in comparison to my life in the US, that is), is that death is all around me.

I am fortunate to be a 24-year old American who has only known three distant acquaintances and one good high school friend who has died.

In Java, people are literally dying all the time.

	Indonesia	USA
Male Life Expectancy at birth	68	76
Female Life Expectancy at birth	71	81
Mortality rate, under-5, (per 1,000 live births)	32	8
Infant Mortality rate (per 1,000 live births)	25	6
Lifetime risk of maternal death (1 in: rate varies by country)	1:210 (2010 statistic)	1:2,400 (2010 statistic)
Source: http://data.worldbank.org/country/indonesia.  All statistics are from 2011 unless otherwise indicated.

Lives here are frequently shortened by: motorcycle crashes, crossing the very dangerous streets, diabetes (from excessive rice eating, literally), and inaccessible medical treatment for things that could relatively easily be treated in the US (such as infant diarrhea or malaria).   

I have never felt death so present as I have in Java. One teacher from my school died in a motorcycle crash. A student’s mother died. A student’s father died. A respected elder in the community died. A friend’s grandma died. A friend’s 7-month old baby died. Two more older parents died.

While death is so present, I have only attended a few prayer ceremonies for the people who have passed away. The families, neighbors and friends pray for their loved one who has died for the following 7 days, then the 40^th day, the 100^th day, the 1,000^th day, and after that an optional annual prayer day. These are called selamatan. This is a Javanese tradition, done by both my Muslim and Christian friends.

Fit's husband reciting from Al Qur'an at Riza's house.

Al Banjarian (which is only infrequently at these events)

One of the final prayers of the evening

(All the information here after is about Javanese Muslims). A selamatan involves cooking all day long. Then guests arrive either after maghrib or isha’, the last two shalat prayer times for Muslims. Usually it is the men who arrive. Women would head to the kitchen or back rooms and help with the final food preparations. 

The very sanitary practice of prepping the food on the dirty floor, pasti (definitely) without washing one's hands nearly frequently enough. 

The sweet treats that people will bring home (all 200 people!). Each box has 7-9 treats that were all homemade and hand-wrapped. I did the lumpur! 

The food that the 200 people who come will bring home (usually rice, tofu, maybe beef, a hard-boiled duck egg (always!), noodles, and a very small amount of veggies).

Table with food

Bu Ya is cooking up a storm!

Mega vat of carrots

Some innards which will most def be eaten...and most def not by me! 

The cooking starts the day before, into the night, and for the whole day of the selamatan. Nurul is exhausted after cooking for 2 days for 200 people. 

Burial process:

When someone dies, the immediate family is notified first. The people of the same sex as the deceased help to wash the body. They sit with the body on their laps and very, very carefully wash the body. There are special clothes to actually cover the private parts of the body when they are not being washed yet. After hand-washing the body and carefully patting it dry, cotton is inserted into all the orifices of the body (ears, nostrils, mouth, anus, vaginal opening for women). This is so that water or moisture does not enter the body later upon it’s burial in the ground so the body remains well-preserved. (However, Muslims do believe that the body decays and just the soul goes to God). After this, special white burial cloth (called a kafan) are wrapped around the body. Men are wrapped in three cloths and women in one.

This white figure is essentially what the body looks like after being wrapped. However, the face is covered, too. The cloth is gathered and tied at the top of the head like this. This photo was taken at a festival. Indonesians believe that ghosts look like this, more accurate to an actual dead body than the sheet-wearing, arm-flailing ghost Americans have. Because ghosts are covered in white, when Indonesian babies or little kids see white people, sometimes they are scared because they think that we are ghosts.

During the time in which the family is bathing and preparing the body, a graveyard worker has been informed that someone has died. They immediately dig a hole. Another person is sent to the nearby town to buy and engrave the gravestones. Muslims have two gravestones, one to mark the head and one for the feet. The one marking the place of burial of the person’s head includes his/her name, birth date and death date.

This is THE Indonesian graveyard. No matter where I go in my district, this is exactly what they look like, with the same trees in every graveyard!  

When the body is then ready, it is put on a slab of wood to be carried to the graveyard. Burial is done immediately for Muslims, so within a few hours of death the body will be at the graveyard. People walk through the town to the graveyard in a large procession.


Here's my handy guide-to-Javanese-Muslim-burial diagram!

At the graveyard, the body is put into the grave. A man from the person’s family then goes down into the grave and does the call to prayer (adzan) and iqomah (like a prayer that finishes adzan). This reminds the person that they are Muslim and what their beliefs are (I testify that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet). At birth, fathers also immediately whisper adzan into the baby’s right ear and then iqomah into the baby’s left ear, sometimes before the baby is even cleaned off. This is to insure that Satan does not enter into the baby’s ear.

After this, the hole is filled up. Finally, people may take a handful of dirt and sprinkle it on top of the completed grave.

A note on East Javanese mourning: PCVs have frequently commented that the Javanese way of mourning is unsettling. Often PCVs have seen people smiling or laughing at these funerals. I can't say that I have seen that. However, I have only been to one funeral. Bu Lastri, a teacher from our school, died in a horrible motorcycle crash. Many of the female teachers and students were openly crying. Other than this funeral, I have only been to the 40 day, 100 day, or 1,000 day selamatans. Because time has already passed since the death of the person, usually the people are a little less formal. Laugher and smiling is normal.