Bali

The next day we met everyone for breakfast and started our day.  Two boats were going to see more temples, and we, along with Franz and Lucia were going to be part of a Cremation Ceremony.  Our taxi driver had a paper to allow us to be part of the ceremony; we had to wear sarongs to cover our legs out of respect for their religious ceremony.  When we arrived there were lots of people on the sidewalks and street, some musicians, many of the women were wearing the Bali Lace and there were many, many offerings.  We did find out that this was a very prominent lady and she had been buried for two months.  The poorer Balinese will join in with a richer person’s ceremony.  The body is put into a tower and walked down to the temple.  This lady also had a cow, they are made out of metal for the frame of the cow and heavy cardboard, the tower is made out of bamboo.

Here are the musicians that play music on her journey to the temple.

Oh, I forgot to mention this is a happy time for the family and friends, she is now going to a better place and her spirit is being respected and the most important part of this ceremony, her body is just a vessel that held her spirit, so the people were smiling, talking on the phone and generally enjoying the day.

This lady had a tower and a cow.

The cow and the tower had to be moved around in a serpentine line to avoid the bad spirits.  The fellows who were moving these two structures worked very hard in the heat, plus they had to push the cow sometimes so you  would see the marks the bamboo made on the road and if you wanted to see if it was hard work, their faces were very red and the sweat was just dripping off them.

We think this was part of the family, the woman were dressed differently from the other guests.

Here is the tower going down the street, there were sons and grandsons sitting and standing on the tower as well as the holy man.

This tower was beautiful; the detail work was very impressive,  they have their traditional motifs, I’m not sure if the colours had any significance,  if you have never done any kind of artwork you can miss the hours of work it took to paint the detailed motifs on the tower.  The Cow took four days and she was mostly black!

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