After Spanish class today, I paid a visit to the market to buy some fruit. Fresh papaya and mango are SO delicious!
Later in the afternoon, I visited Sucre's cemetery. The cemetery is a wonderfully green and tranquil place, with lots of benches inviting to stay.
As you can see in the following picture, the cemetery has a mixture of different burial places.
The most common form are the walls in the back of the picture. In these walls, four graves are stacked on top of each other - to save space, basically. Although the niches look rather small, they are big enough to hold a regular sarcophagus - the majority of people are not cremated in Bolivia (like in most catholic countries, I guess).
Richer families can buy family mausoleums, like the one in the front of the picture. Similar mausoleums exist for various professions. A bus driver, for example, who pays fees to the bus drivers' association, thereby earns the right to be buried in the bus drivers' mausoleum.
This is another burial wall, including a view of Sucre:
The amount of care and attention to detail people spend decorating the niches is amazing. Many niches are adorned with small items that the person enjoyed in life - like this lady, who seemed to have enjoyed a drink:
There is also an entire section reserved for children. Most of these niches are decorated abundantly with toys - like this one that is done up to look like a child's bedroom:
My teacher explained the next day that many people are very devoted and come every other day to replace the flowers.
She also explained about the expiry of graves, which is pretty similar to Germany: the family pays the place for a number of years, after which it is free to be used by another person. The difference is that the contents of a grave don't decay very fast here because there is a lot less humidity and insect life in the niches. After expiration of a grave, the contents therefore have to be burned, whereas in Germany they would simply have vanished magically ;-)
In a manner very similar to German cemeteries, the surrounding streets are full of shops supplying everything necessary: flowers, more flowers, small figurines for adornment, and the niches themselves:
Later in the afternoon, I visited Sucre's cemetery. The cemetery is a wonderfully green and tranquil place, with lots of benches inviting to stay.
As you can see in the following picture, the cemetery has a mixture of different burial places.
The most common form are the walls in the back of the picture. In these walls, four graves are stacked on top of each other - to save space, basically. Although the niches look rather small, they are big enough to hold a regular sarcophagus - the majority of people are not cremated in Bolivia (like in most catholic countries, I guess).
Richer families can buy family mausoleums, like the one in the front of the picture. Similar mausoleums exist for various professions. A bus driver, for example, who pays fees to the bus drivers' association, thereby earns the right to be buried in the bus drivers' mausoleum.
This is another burial wall, including a view of Sucre:
The amount of care and attention to detail people spend decorating the niches is amazing. Many niches are adorned with small items that the person enjoyed in life - like this lady, who seemed to have enjoyed a drink:
There is also an entire section reserved for children. Most of these niches are decorated abundantly with toys - like this one that is done up to look like a child's bedroom:
My teacher explained the next day that many people are very devoted and come every other day to replace the flowers.
She also explained about the expiry of graves, which is pretty similar to Germany: the family pays the place for a number of years, after which it is free to be used by another person. The difference is that the contents of a grave don't decay very fast here because there is a lot less humidity and insect life in the niches. After expiration of a grave, the contents therefore have to be burned, whereas in Germany they would simply have vanished magically ;-)
In a manner very similar to German cemeteries, the surrounding streets are full of shops supplying everything necessary: flowers, more flowers, small figurines for adornment, and the niches themselves:
