Putu (Tongan Funeral)

            I was standing in a stranger’s home, surrounded by people I didn’t know, looking down at a dead body. How I found myself in that situation in the beginning of just my second week in ‘Eua is beyond me.

            The lined features of the middle-aged man, expressionless in death, looked waxen, fake, as if his brown skin had been sculpted out of clay and carefully shaped to resemble the living.

            But, that’s not what I was thinking about as I stood over him. It was more like, what the hell am I doing, kissing a dead man?

I didn’t even know the guy, and yet there I was getting ready to pucker up. (Like, at least buy me dinner first, amirite?)

At my neighbor’s encouragement, I’d stood up to join the line of people filing over to the shroud. I thought that it might reflect poorly on me if I shunned someone who had been a well-known and respected member of my community, after living here for just one week.

I hadn’t thought paying my respects would mean I’d have to kiss him though.

Shuffling behind the other women in front of me, I hadn’t been paying attention to what they were doing. I was too distracted by the piles of painted tapa cloth and woven mats donated by all the guests; by the clean, soft, snow-white blankets that made up the man’s shroud, festooned with purple ribbons and multi-colored needlework; by the fact that there was no coffin in sight.

Next thing I knew, the woman in front of me was bending over him and just laying one on him. For a drawn-out moment, I panicked internally, but it was too late for me to back out without offending everyone and their dogs’ fleas, so I just mimicked what she did.

I bent over him and leaned to plant a kiss on his forehead, but at the last second I balked and noncommittally reared my head back so that my lips hardly even grazed flesh.

I probably looked something like a chicken does when it’s searching for crumbs of food in the grass, pulling it’s head backward and thrusting it forward in that weird, tense, jerky motion.

When the deed was done, I turned quickly and restrained myself from bolting through the door. I walked casually, with measured steps outside and across the lawn to an area that had been prepared for the morning feast.

At 7 a.m. all the guests that had attended the morning prayer service and wake, sat down on wooden benches to feast on hot dogs in oversized buns, plain white cake smothered in yellow custard, flattened corned beef sandwiches on white bread, and roasted pig, washed down with hot coffee or black tea and lukewarm glasses of Tang. Each person left with a stack of plastic take-away boxes to bring home to their families.

Much like with anything of importance here, two major things accompany funerals in Tonga: lots of praying and lots of eating. And, out of respect for the suffering family, most activities throughout the community that would make much noise—for example, rugby games or other sporting events—are either canceled or moved to another village.

With the burial scheduled for Friday afternoon in Petani—one of the villages bordering my home—prayer services began on Tuesday and were held once every evening leading up to the actual day of the funeral, and then for three days after.

People from all over the community dressed in black with various-sized ta’ovala wrapped around their hips. The size of each person’s ta’ovala depends on their rank in relation to the deceased. So, for example, someone who ranks lower than the deceased might wear a ta’ovala that covered most of their body—the lowest ranking even wearing some that hooded their heads. The higher-ranking family members wear smaller ta’ovala and kiekie to also show their rank.

On Friday, there were three services: the morning prayers and wake, the afternoon formal church service and burial, and the evening prayers at the mourning family’s home.  Guests provide gifts and donations (typically of the kind mentioned above) to show their love and support for the mourners, but it’s the family of the deceased’s role to provide food for all of the people—close and distant—who attend the different services.

At the afternoon burial services, all of the guests first attended a formal religious service at the Free Wesleyan (Methodist) church in Petani. Everyone stood, turned toward the aisle, and watched as two rows of men carried the man’s lifeless body over their shoulders—wrapped only in a mat woven from pandanus leaves—and laid it at the foot of the alter in the front of the church. Singing, prayers and the readings of hymns contributed to the blessing of the body before burial.

When the service was finished, everyone filed out of the doors and made their way to the cemetery, about 200 yards down a dirt and gravel path leading from the church. The men followed in the rear, hoisting the body over their shoulders, and heaving it onto the open flatbed of a waiting truck. The truck then followed the procession of people to the cemetery.

People sat anywhere and everywhere. Some people watched the proceedings from the shaded front yards of families living adjacent to the cemetery. Some sat on the walls making up its perimeter, while others sat at their base or on the grassy lawn in between stone-covered graves. They shielded themselves with shawls, umbrellas or wide-faced leaves—anything they could get their hands on to fend off the hot sun beating down on us.

 More prayers were said, then the same men who carried him before, lowered the man’s body into the plot. Again, everyone took to the path heading back toward the main road. In the crowds of people, two columns started to form. We were sorted into lines: children on the left, adults on the right. At first I couldn’t see anything over the heads of the men and women in front of me, but as the cluster of people flowed steadily forward, I could see two trucks parked on either side of the dirt road. A couple of men had climbed onto each truck-bed to distribute plastic bags to each person who passed. When it was my turn, I reached up to accept and to investigate the contents of whatever it was they were handing out to everybody.

The plastic bags were filled with raw chicken breasts and legs, and flanks of beef. They dripped on the outside with the blood from the uncooked meat.

I held the bag in both hands and made eye contact with Teisa and Linili (two of the women who I work with at the high school, Hofangahau). The look on my face must have been absurd—a mix of surprise, confusion and amusement at the ridiculousness of what had just happened—because they burst out laughing at me.

“What? This isn’t how you do funerals in ‘Amelika?” they said to me.



Below is the link to a short video compilation from a different funeral I went to earlier this year in a village called Houma. It highlights some of the spiritual and food-related aspects of the putu that I mentioned in the post above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGDWd7TNVHY&feature=youtu.be