I stood in the yard in front of the church while the crowd began to gather. Sirens blared in the distance. For once in my life I felt tall next to the young Indonesian women who surrounded me. I could see the tops of their heads without straining.

People came from every direction as the procession approached. A red carpet lined the path to the church door. Police stood by as news cameras rolled and people snapped photos from their cell phones. Life in Balige, a rural town in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, rarely reached this level of excitement.

“Sister, is the market in your country like this?” said Apriliza as she tugged at my arm.

We were walking together along the crowded street in the mid-afternoon heat. Ahead of us men loaded large bags of produce on top of a bus as a car and motorcycle squeezed through the narrow space between the bus and a row of women selling piles of dried fish, books, and plastic containers.

The elderly woman’s body lies inside the house in a coffin covered only by a thin white veil. Aside from the coffin, the room is void of furniture. A dozen members of the family and surrounding village sit cross-legged on the multi-colored plastic woven mat spread across the tile floor. I add my sandals to the pairs already stacked in front of the open door and step inside.