Funeral

The transition was quick. One minute kids were racing past me on the street, trying to get a glance at the weirdo white person. I would pass them again, and they would zoom ahead for one more look, and few shouts while they were at it. My CYF (Christian Youth Fellowship) joked that they would start charging one kwatcha for people to see me. Then the mood changed. As my sister belted out a sorrowful tune, the choir joined in. Another man started chasing away the kids with a stick. We had reached a house visited by death.

A woman younger than fifty in our congregation had died the previous day. She was very active in the women’s guild and a very faithful woman. The mood at the house was somber. I immediately saw Rev. Tembo hugging and consoling a weeping woman. Men and woman sat around the sandy brown brick house. The community had gathered and would stay at their vigil for the next three days and nights until burial. We continued to sing as we approached until we reached the inside of the house. All the furniture had been removed from the inside of the house, and ladies in chitenges lined the empty walls. Traditionally all the men sit outside on the furniture and the ladies stay inside. We sang to the women and then a man read a bible verse and offered some words. We raised our voices again as we left, passing the women washing dishes and preparing food for all the people gathered.

The CYF went again the next day, and then many of them slept at the house for two nights. When they arrived at the church for the service, many had come straight from the house. When people started to arrive for the service at our church I was teaching 8^th and 9^th grade English. Our classroom is attached to the church sanctuary so we heard the hymns begin, the buses roll into the church yard, and the deep yet high cries of wailing women.

When I entered the church myself I saw that the women who I assumed were family and close friends sitting on a large reed mat on the front left side of the church. Many wore matching chitenges. The CYF choir was in a circle in the front singing song after song. The melodies of the women’s choir floated in from outside at the entrance of the church. One of the teacher’s desks from the school had been adorned with lace clothes, awaiting the coffin. After many, many minutes of waiting, the church men and women—elders and deacons—in their black bottoms and white tops carried the body of their dear friend into the hall. Rev. Tembo led them down the aisle until they laid her on the table. The church women surround her and sang, before sitting on the floor in the same circle of mourning love. Rev. Tembo offered prayers and a fiery sermon, which included the fiery pit from Revelation. He told the people that every action on this earth is weighed when our time has come. Is our name written in the Book of Life?

Then an elder announced how people would be transported to the cemetery. Everyone had a ride and was assigned their mini bus or in my case the back of a Zesco (Electrical Company) pickup. All the food at the home and transportation to the gravesite is all part of funeral expenses for the family. Expenses can get very high, and people even have to be aware of those who squat at the funeral house just looking for free food.

After the announcement, the casket was opened and people viewed the body as they left the church to head to their vehicles.  She looked very peaceful in her church uniform. I left the church but still heard the aching sobs of the women.

The back of the pickup truck was an interesting experience. Most sat on the edge of the sides of the pickup. My friend offered me a seat there but I turned him down to sit on the bottom. I often see these large groups in the back of trucks sailing down the streets of Lusaka and I always wonder how many end up falling off. I had just watched a television commercial the previous night with the statistic of 2,000 Zambians dying each year from road traffic accidents. Driving is dangerous here and I didn’t want to risk it. But ever since I’ve had this lump in my stomach from my decision. It was a moment I separated myself from my friends. Zambians do that, but I don’t I guess. I don’t regret my decision, but it was a realization of difference and of safety standards. That kind of travel wouldn’t fly in the US. The police wouldn’t allow it. But they do it here because cars and transportation are expensive and life is treated with less care. Not because the lives are worth less, but because the resources aren’t there to treat those lives with the care and respect they deserve.

At the gravesite another funeral was finishing as we arrived. My heel almost touched the mound of fresh dirt over the man I could here being talked about behind me. The grave was beautiful, covered with roses, but as that funeral goers left, women stooped around the grave and broke each flower. My friend leaned over to me to explain that people come around and take the flowers and sell them anew if you don’t break them.

We all stood around as the church ladies and men carried the coffin to the hole in the ground. Soon all the young men around me bumped past me to get to the coffin. No one had asked them, but they all volunteered to help lay the coffin in its place. We sang and prayed some more and then our friend was lowered into the ground. Rev. Tembo cast the first dirt into the pit, but then again all the young men around me made their way forward and took turns shoveling dirt. After a layer of dirt, a man started hitting the inside of the pit with his shovel. Then cement was put into the ground. The hitting was to break the coffin just a little and the cement was to protect the coffin, both precautions for thieves trying to resell coffins.

When the mound was left, the church women surround it, knelt down, and sang as they patted the dirt smooth and strong. Their voices and touches were a moving last goodbye. Next an elder started calling people’s names to come forward. Three men stood and handed these people roses to stick into the mound. Women of all ages were so distraught they needed to be carried to and from the grave. Were they the woman’s mother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece? I wasn’t sure, but they were in pain.

For a moment I looked into the sky and realized what a beautiful day it was. The sky was blue with billowing white clouds, perfect colors to offset the green that has cloaked Zambia since the rains have come.

Abusa and Amai Abusa—the pastor and his wife, Rev. and Mrs. Tembo, my Zambian mom and dad—laid the last rose.

As we drove back to Chawama we missed the street to my house and unbeknownst to me, we headed back to the woman’s house. The church people gathered and paraded into the house once more for song and prayer, this time lead by Abusa. The church escorted the family home again, this time without their loved one. Then people waiting in groups around the house, under the tent with all the living room furniture, and even up and down the street outside, waited for their communal plates of nsima and relish.

By this point I was mentally exhausted. Funerals always make me remember the people I lost in my own life and start to fear about others to follow.  I even feel a weird guilt about this woman’s death. Her funeral reminded me how unfair life can be, how death is a reality. Hearing of her final illness even made me wonder if poor health care, a reality of poverty, created by a system I participate in, lead to her death. Poverty cuts short the lives of so many good people.

I was struck by how much this funeral brought the church community together. They slept at the family’s house for days. They cooked and cleaned. They carried their friend. They physically buried her. They prayed and sang for her. The cried, they sweat, and their hands are left with dirt. The family was there in numbers, but the church held this woman’s body until the last moment. Until the very end.