Living with Death

Josh is good friends with a guy named Louis, who runs a fairly substantial woodshop in Balfate. Of the many types of furniture they turn out, caskets are always in demand. On any given day, you can walk by the shop and see a stack of them in various sizes and stages of completion.

Louis' daughter Debra is five, and the family lives in a house attached to the shop. Josh and Tanner and Katie went to see the shop and snapped this picture of Debra perched on a casket. To us it seems rather morbid, but in this culture death is so much more a part of everyday life than in the States. Out here in the campo, nobody can afford an undertaker, so families simply hold a funeral and bury their dead within 24 hours, as required by law. I think the irony of a healthy, vibrant 5-year-old playing on a casket is perhaps less ironic when viewed through the cultural lens of the area.