Funeral.
More people go to funerals here than they do weddings. Strangers come
and pay their respects to the dead. Death is an intimate part of life with these people. Everyone has lost someone close to them, most from things that could have been prevented. Still, no matter how common and occurance, it is a big deal. Shops close and no one goes to
meetings or work. People, even strangers travel all day to attend a funeral.
I went to my first funeral a few months ago...I still have not gone to another.
It was a funeral for a little girl.
I wanted to pay my respects and leave, i'm ashamed to admit that to me, to remain prolonged around such grief would have been too much for me, but Johnathan and Adam convinced me to go.
Johnathan biked to my house and together we began the journy to the house of the family. Adam and Johnathan have insisted I come and see, leave while the dead body is in evidence, then come back for the eulogy/village announcments (strange practice I know). I agree. Peer Pressure
The house is not too far. You can always tell when you approach a funeral because the road is crossed with a line of green leafy branches. Out of respect for the dead you dismount and walk to the house or across the line further down the road.
We walk up this long dirt drive, the closer you get to the house the more somber the people. My face is occasionally twitching cause I dont not know if it is terribly innapropriate to smile at someone.
There is an order to these things. Men are normally digging the grave. Women are normally cooking, fetching
water and wood and grieving.
Both Johnathan (my counterpart) and Adam insist I should go to funerals. I consented only to pay my condolences and integrate more with my community. I felt a duty to at least try once.
It is different for them to go to a funeral, than it is for me to go. They dig a grave, some drink beer, some tell jokes to lighten the mood.
The women grieve. I am a woman.
What I have to do when I go to a funeral is what Adam avoids at all costs and what most men dont do...go into the room of the mother, female relatives and close female friends to pay condolences and grieve.
As we approach the house, small groups of people are huddle around, standing or sitting, some working on things, some fetching things, some eating. A group of men and women, dressed in their matching church attire are marching in a small circle singing. The drums are beating. Johnathan props our bikes under
a tree with countless others.
We duck into a cramped, dark room, filled with silence, sniffling, and supressed tears. It is all the females in their griveing room. The depression is palpative.
We crawl on our knees through the dark room, shaking hands with all the women, hand in the crock of the opposite elbow, conveying respect. No one is speaking, the bamboo matts crackle beneath us and dig into our knees. At the back of the room we inquire softly who is the mother of the little girl? She is pointed out as one of the women we have already shook hands with. We turn around to give her our offering. As we shuffle closer a relative or friend comes in and begins to wail. The mother wails too. They embrace, their keening filling the dark room with the anguish of life left behind. Its all so personal and here I am, a white stranger, following around Johnanthin this intimate situation, he being the only male brave enough to do such things. We are both oddities, but he always manages to belong.
As the two women part we move forward. Johnathan shakes her hand again and gives her his offering. I do the same.
In her grief, in the dark, im sure she doesnt even recognize that Im an Mzungu, a white person, just the stranger living in their village trying desperatly to do right and offer condolence while feeling distinctly out of place. Funerals are personal in
America, in
Africa it is a village event...everyone knows such loss.
Others funeral attenders in the room however, take note of who I am. They take note that I pressed money into the hands of a griveing mother. They take note that I cared enough to come. Some shift up to their knees and shake my hand again, small sad smiles on their faces, as they show me with a heartfel shake of the hand and a nod of the head that they saw my gift and appreciated it.
Most people give their offering after the service and burial. We left the room of grieving women and I go to collect my bike. Johnathan is a speaker for the burial...everyone knows how much Johnathan loves children. He set up many nursery schools in the village. Jealousy shut them down. But in their moment of greif, this family knew who had cared enough about their child to speak for their soul.
Johnathan asks if I can remeber how to come back. I told him yes, that I would come back after the body had been brought out and buried.
I didnt.
I paid my condolences, I shuffled on my knees amongst the giref of the women. I did all I could.
Im ashamed to say I left.
No one likes to be that close to suffering, to something so personal. I compromised with myself saying it was a sharing of culture. But that was all I wanted to see. I did not need to see the body of the dead little girl, who probably died of a preventable cause...something I could have taught them about...
I did not need to sit around for a ceremony in a foreign language. I felt like I wanted to weep. But in this culture, there is no weeping, there is wailing.
I gave what comfort I could and as gracefully as possible withdrew.
