Indonesia’s Toraja

Most of us do not like to think or talk about death, but there are people who do. In the Toraja region of Sulawesi, Indonesia, the dead are a constant part of everyday life.

After someone dies, it may be months, sometimes years, before a funeral takes place. In the meantime, the families keep their bodies in the house and care for them as if they were sick. They are brought food, drink and cigarettes twice a day. They are washed and have their clothes changed regularly. The dead even have a bowl in the corner of the room as their “toilet”. Furthermore, the deceased are never left on their own and the lights are always left on for them when it gets dark. The families worry that if they do not take care of the corpses properly, the spirits of their departed loved ones will give them trouble.

 Manila’s cemetery slums

Slums have developed inside public cemeteries in Manila, Philippines. Here, people sleep in haphazard shanties built on top of graves or inside mausoleums. It is free, but there are no basic services such as sanitation, electricity and clean water, let alone adequate shelter.

Cemetery slums have existed here since the 1950s and generations of families now live in Manila North, the oldest and largest cemetery in the city. An expansive 54 hectares — it is home to an estimated 6 000 slum-dwellers from 800 families, as well as one million dead people.

Egypt’s El’Arafa

In south-eastern Cairo, a city that is home to nearly 18 million people, lies El’Arafa cemetery. It is estimated that anywhere between 500 000 and one million Egyptians live in the four-mile-long cemetery, which has led it to be dubbed the City of the Dead.

In the cemetery, families, power lines, multi-story buildings, and a post office mingle with the graves, tombs and mausoleums.

There are often three generations of Egyptians living in the necropolis, many of whom have been there since the 1950s.

The settlement is far from legal, but the Egyptian government has long since given up on evicting residents. Doing so would require the unattractive proposition of moving the inhabitants to state-built apartments or forcing the creation of alternate slums. — Online