Social organization and color representation

 Villagers are only permitted to decorate their house with the symbols and motifs appropriate to their social station. The gables and the wooden wall panels are incised with geometric, spiralling designs and motifs such as buffalo heads and cockerels painted in red, white, yellow and black, the colors that represent the various festivals of Aluk To Dolo (‘the Way of the Ancestors’), the indigenous Torala religion. Black symbolizes death and darkness; yellow, God’s blessing and power; white, the colour of flesh and bone, means purity; and red, the color of blood, symbolizes human life.