Tongan Burial Customs.
May. 5th, 2004 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robbyI just got an account of a recent Tongan funeral in Hawaii. The women go to church and wail for a long time, the men retire to a special house, start drinking a stimulant called kava, change into rice mat things they tie around their middle, and take the body out of the coffin.
The men take turns holding, and rocking the body, and talk to the body, for days, while under the constant influence of kava. In this particular funeral three people had died together in a car accident, and one of the bodies was too torn up, and was kept in a closed coffin. No one rocked or talked to that body at all.
The men take turns holding, and rocking the body, and talk to the body, for days, while under the constant influence of kava. In this particular funeral three people had died together in a car accident, and one of the bodies was too torn up, and was kept in a closed coffin. No one rocked or talked to that body at all.
