No one was around to go with me to the funeral, so I went by myself. It was good, having gone last night with bu & pak Rochmadi to give our respects, so many in the neighborhood had seen or met me by now.

It’s funny being the only western face in a crowd of 100+ people here. I felt like a Vin Diesel understudy,,, not quite famous. People couldn’t quite put a finger on who I was,,, like the Wizard of Oz house just fell out of the sky, and I skipped out the front door. You could feel people looking & thinking,, ‘huh! There’s a bule here!’ Well I’m a good foot taller than many of them, so I stuck out a little. As I said hello in bahasa Indonesia, everyone smiled broadly & looked happy that I was interested enough to come see their Javanese traditions.

There was a Muslim prayer at the house, where the biggest crowd assembled to pay their last respects, and then the casket was carried onto a cart, and wheeled about 1 km to the local gravesite. There were flower petals tossed before him the whole way.

This was interesting… at the gravesite, the body was taken out of the casket (all wrapped up in white), and passed by hand down into the grave. Then the casket itself was disassembled and laid in the grave.

Then the men filled the hole, his 5 year old daughter sprinkled flowers on the site, and two wooden grave markers were set in the dirt, then washed with coconut milk straight from a freshly cut coconut. Another Muslim prayer was said, and that was the end. It was nice.