Breakfast on the grave

Graves are in the middle of Sumbanese traditional villages, the entrance of the houses facing them. Besides providing a house for the dead reflecting their status in life and ensuring that their happiness in the after world will benefit their descendants, graves have multiple functions. They provide a perfect surface for clothes to dry, for coffee to ripen, for dogs to sleep, for children to play, for old people to chew betel and exchange information, or for tourists sleeping on the veranda of a traditional house to have their breakfast. We enjoyed ours a lot!!

Wuntalaka, Patiyala, West-Sumba, February 2010.