The last dance

Madagascar. Some tribes have the habit of re-emerging their dear dead 5-10 years earlier.

During the cerimony the whole village participates with great emphasis contributing with money, food and alcohol to the organization.

I spent the whole day together with the family and all the people who had been reunited there to remember Tiana Rose, the woman died while giving birth 8 year before. She was 33.

I walked with them as they carried the very heavy concrete grave on the shoulders, through meadows and woods, while the rest of the people were singind and dancing joyously.

We walked to a cave at the highest point, as close to the spirit. There, there was such a small cemetery. And there was the grave of Tiana Rose.

A small group of women, composed by her mother, her sisters and some close relatives, gathered around the grave singing and praying for her. I could shoot until they took out the wooden lid. Then they cleaned, with great honor, what was left. It was a too much private moment even for a hiden shoot.

Her bones were then wrapped in various layers of cloth and then closed, forming a small bundle.

Her mother and one of her sisters hold this pink and white bundle in their arms and started dancing together with her in such a beautiful and passionate moment.

Then, wrapped in another green and white cloth, they robbed Tiana Roses forever in his final tomb. From now on, begins the real separation between her and her loved ones.

At the end, only alcohol and drunk people around.