Day 1

Well, I had a very eventful first day. It started with a funeral, woot woot.haha.
It was very very interesting. I don't think I can describe it all now, there's too much to tell. But basically, this woman had almost no family, and the family she had was estranged because of her having AIDS. Because there was no one with her in her apartment when she died, her body had to be investigated to insure there was no foulplay. Apparently that took a while, so she'd already been deceased for a couple of months before the funeral. We met Nichole (Harmony Home's founder and director) and several other harmony home workers at a mortuary this morning. Nichole had to identify the body before she was allowed to claim it. Harmony Home (I'm just gonna call it HH) provided the funeral because of the women's family situation, but it doesn't have the funds for anything fancy, so they literally just put the body, covered by no more than a body bag, in the back of an HH van to take it to the funeral. Funerals are a huge, interestingly public event here. Buddhists worship their ancestors, and burn fake money and food for them every year, besides cremating them with clothing, food, money, and gifts. There are entire mountains here covered with what I mistook for small houses, but which are actually tombs. However, people's bodies are rarely buried anymore, because they're literally running out of space. So almost everyone is cremated now. So the place we took the woman's body to is a full time funeral home/crematorium complex with many many different sized facilities for funerals, ranging from small rooms to small temples. HH rented a small room with a simple coffin to hold a funeral for the woman, and people dressed in black robes came and sang funeral chants for around 15-20 minutes, bowing to the floor in front of a picture of the deceased and lighting little incense stick thingies at intervals throughout. Then the body was lined up in next to a row of others waiting to be burned, and the picture of the woman and the flowers from the funeral were placed among many other on a table that ran along the wall of a big hall outside the furnace room. Some people held what I guess was a second ceremony in the hall, lined up front of the picture of the deceased, singing the funeral songs with a buddhist monk leading the chant usually. But there was a beautiful moment as we stood waiting for the cremation, when we heard words we didn't understand, but knew what they meant all the same, because all of the sudden, many voices began to sing the tune of "What a friend we have in Jesus." It was a Christian funeral being held a little ways across the room. It was nice. :) There were a few Christians there, marked by crosses covered in lilies set in front of their pictures. But most of the people there were buddhist I think. In spite of the cultural richness of the experience... as a Christian, it was a very sad morning.
After the body was cremated, the ashes were put in a box, and the box was taken to the wharf. about 25 of the HH children and a few nannies met us there, and everyone sat in a circle around the box while friends said a few kind words about the woman, then everyone watched as the box was thrown into the ocean along with the flowers, and a couple of stuffed animals, "So she won't be lonely" Nichole said.
We spent the rest of the day at the wharf with the kids, playing, videoing, and talking to the nannies. And now, I'm pretty much shot to pieces.haha. A lot more happened than I just told you about. Especially conversations with people I met. But nothing too important, and this message is already pretty long.