Our tent is placed, this time, between two of the large family shacks, and after a day or two we begin to feel quite at home. The natives do not interfere with us, and as we are careful not to impose upon them, all is well. The first night of our stay in the kampong is one of sadness for the natives, we find, for one of their very old men has passed away in its course. He has been ailing a long time, they tell us, and it has surprised them all that he should last so long. They are very much like civilized people in the affection they appear to feel for any sick or ailing member of their immediate family.
We stumble upon a Kia Kia mourning party quite unexpectedly. When one of these people dies the body is placed in a sitting posture in the spot where death overtook him, if that is in the house, and his nearest relatives decorate him with fresh paint and feathers. There is no wailing while the body is kept in the house. One or two members of his family hold a vigil beside him and fan the flies away, while others go to the burial ground to prepare the grave. This is usually about six feet deep, but as the body must be placed within it seated there is a shelf built two feet from the bottom on which the deceased rests. When the grave is ready—and its preparation may consume three or four days—the body is transferred to it with much solemnity. The grave is not filled with earth, but a framework covered with a heavy thatch of palm-leaves is placed over the dead and the earth is piled to a depth of two feet on that. As the body is lowered into the grave the relatives begin a quavering chant and all present seem to feel deeply the loss of their kinsman.
They surround their burial places with strong fences, for if any one were to walk across a grave he must inevitably break through its thin, ill-supported top, which would be disconcerting, to say the least. One of our neighbor’s pigs, an exceptionally large and heavy one, one day wanders into the cemetery and, judging from the howl of wrath that ensues, raises havoc in the graveyard. At any rate, when the noise has quieted down, the pig is dead, and for some reason it is buried in the grave it has just despoiled.
The death of the old man casts a gloom over the entire kampong and for a few days we leave the inhabitants to their own devices. The few kodak pictures we have snapped aroused their resentment to such an extent that we have decided discretion to be the better part of destitution. We fill diaries, these days, with notes of happenings observed from a discreet distance.