Hubert SACKSTEDER
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French
Cemetery: an area set apart for containing graves and tombs.
Yet, in the Philippines, in Manila and Cebu especially, families have made cemeteries their home. The North Cemetery in Manila, Philippines, established in 1904, covers an area of 54 hectares. The graves range from mausoleum to tombs, appartments and niches. The cemetery is a real labyrinth: a burial place for the dead with a population of 2000, it is also a living space. Each day, some twenty burials take place in the cemetery. And death brings jobs: men build and maintain graves, carry caskets during funerals, perform exhumations, cut headstones, drive tricycles taking visitors to the graves of their departed loved ones. Women take care of children, do housekeeping chores, cook, raise chicken, grow flowers, manufacture and sell candles. Children, like anywhere else, run around and play.
Hubert Sacksteder
