Having the thought of physically hurting yourself, hurts! But not to the Women of Dani Tribe from the central highlands of western New Guinea (Indonesian Province of Papua).
A Dani woman with 6 of her fingers cut
Why do they do this? Because it's a part of their custom. While most of us mourn for the death of our family members, the women of the Dani Tribe suffer not only from the emotional pain brought by the death of their loved ones but as well as in physical pain. The women of the Dani tribe amputate one or two joints of their fingers when a close relative dies and burn it together with the body of the deceased.
Brave? Yes, they are. Because these women carries out the amputation themselves. So, aside from losing fingers, they are the ones responsible cutting them off (a woman ties the joint with a piece of rope, hits it with a stone to make it numb, then chops it off). They do this practice to satisfy ancestral ghost.
