Anne promised a description of her experience of an animist funeral, so here it is.

Back in December, "God damn" took me to my first ever Animist funeral. The best description I have heard for animists is that they worship both the mountains and the souls of their ancestors. As the funeral was taking place in Godam's "quartier", he led the way to the home of the dead man. We heard the mourners from quite some distance away before catching sight of a huge crowd of women dancing and shrieking round a huge drum which was being played by a very old, toothless man.
Meanwhile the deceased was sitting upright on a stone outside his home. His body had been sewn into goatskins dyed black - only his hands, feet and bottom half of his face were uncovered. The top half of his head, including his eyes, was covered in a kind of skull cap. The dead man had then been dressed in a blue tunic with white bandaging forming a perfect Saltire! Normally cadavers are dressed totally in black, but on this occasion the deceased had been a twin and there are all sorts of superstitions about twins here. As the shrieking and dancing went on, women darted out of the crowd to give the man a final embrace, while his wife and daughters kept the flies away.
Blacksmiths (forgerons) are the undertakers for animist funerals and when I first saw them that day, they were being plied with alcohol to give them strength for the job ahead. When enough "bil bil" had been consumed, the cadaver was hoisted, still in an upright seated position, on to the shoulders of each of the forgerons in turn to dance round the drum. When both forgerons had done this, with the dye from the dead man's tunic running on to their tee shirts, the whole funeral party of men and women headed up into the mountains where a hole had been dug at dawn. Apparently thirty men had taken part in that and had even roasted a chicken for the blacksmiths, again to keep their strength up. The grave is, in fact, an upright cylindrical shape, widened at the bottom so that the body can be lowered in then flattened out. Before burial, the body was stripped of its tunic and the cloth given to the forgerons.
There was much discussion about the size of the hole, with one of the blacksmiths climbing in to try it out! Eventually the deceased was squeezed in none too gently and a forgeron climbed in on top of him to straighten him out. The hole was not filled in as is our custom - it was carefully covered with large flat stones. The sand from the hole was then piled on top and water poured over as a symbol of food and drink in the hereafter. The blacksmith then recited some words in Mofu which were translated to me as, "If somebody killed you, we'll get him for it! If your death was the will of God, so be it" (odd to mention God). The plot, surrounded by huge boulders was finally marked by a branch and then everyone filed back down the mountain for the party. I might stay for that next time!