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WOW! - Macau Report 4 March 5, 1998         "IMATOMB": The Telling of His Story By Yi-Lay Zahn  "I am a tomb and this is my ground.  All around me are tombs and coffins.  I am lucky to be about six feet long and about three feet wide.  I do not have a lot of space because I am located in a crowded Catholic graveyard somewhere in the middle of Macau.  If I were in the Protestant graveyard I would have TONS of space.  But I'm not.  The person laying next to me on the right is Antonio de Mellon.  He is talked about every year when some HKIS kids make their annual study trip to Macau.  It's unfair.  Why don't they talk about me?  About every six years I get new people buried in my spot in this cemetery.  Because of limited space in the cemetery the policy is to take away the remains of the person that was buried in my area and put a new deceased person in its place.  Then they cover the "new" person with MY ground.  I do my best to cover the person with my soil.  I have been told that they take the remains of the previous "occupant" somewhere else. ********************************* "Hey, Michael, slow down!  Did you know anything about where they put the bones after they take them out of the ground?  "Yeah Sean, about every five to six years they remove the old bones and put new ones in?"  Then they put the old bones in a tub and scrub them.  After that they put the bones carefully in a jar or small metal coffin.  They put the jar or metal coffin in a small, small tomb-locker in the wall that surrounds the Catholic cemetery and seal it shut.  Many times on the outside of the tomb there is a picture of the person and some facts about them." ************************************************************************ "Gee I guess that both of the rumors are correct!  Any way I would still want to be in the Protestant area.  There are thousands of tombs in this place!  I noticed that the Protestant cemetery has a lot more room and there are only a fraction of the tombs that we have here.  It is unfair.  OK this is IMATOMB saying bye!" Written by:  Yi-Lay Zahn   Thanks to: ? Antonio de Mellon who is buried in the cemetery in Macau and for being in my story.  I wish I knew more about him, now. ? Michael and Sean, my classmates, for allowing me to use their names.