funerals

when someone dies here in your community...you MUST go and pay respects. this means dressing up in long sleeves and nice pants and shoes and going and sitting at the home of the family for about 10-15 minutes. you take an envelope with a little money in it and drop it in the rice at the doorway. we have had 2 deaths here since we arrived. it doesn't matter that we do not know the people, it matters that we show that we care someone is mourning... because we are apart of this community. on wednesday Pak Den died here. he was an elderly man and lived just around the corner with many of his relatives in the same house. we got home from language school and went to give our respects. we turned the corner and there was no turning back! we happened to walk right into the beginning of the funeral. everyone was facing us! we did not know. so we were a little more than uncomfortable walking into the situation as they scrambled for chairs for us to come sit in front and be apart of this. as we shook hands and said our "maafs" i couldn't help but notice the daughter of the man who had died. she was the only one who showed emotion the whole time. she was having a hard time with this and is probably about my age. i felt so much for her as i can still feel the loss of my own dad. the funeral went on and on and it was interesting to sit and experience a "cousin" service like this. a man gave a long prayer, another man gave a sermon or testimony, another man read some verses and another man said a few words of which i don't know...but we waited until the end when they carry the body off to leave. everyone stood up. some girls started to lay flowers on the street and everyone followed the flowers to the burial sight. i would say there were over 200 people. so many little things are similar and so many things are completely different about this culture.