Teacher Mekelina

I got to tell Teacher Mekelina what I thought of her the first time we met when I visited her last week. I remembered her beautiful smile, with her gapped teeth. To me her smile communicated, “YES, I’m enjoying life! Want to join?” To a foreigner trying to gain footing in a new place, it was an invitation to let down my hair and live a little –Zambian style. Her warmth came from her eyes which told you instantly you were cared for. This was a woman of life, I thought.

After she passed away early in the morning this past Tuesday, I realized I can’t quite say that anymore. But my sentiments about my friend haven’t changed. Now I can say she was a woman of spirit. A joyful, loving, spirit of goodness.

Her death was a complete shock, despite my worries for her poor health. Her father had passed by the school the previous day and told me her health had improved greatly. She was walking! She was eating! “THANK GOD!” I thought. “I can stop worrying about her.” And so I did. For about thirty six hours, until the next morning when my sister stopped me in our hallway and told me she had some bad news.

“Teacher Mekelina is dead.”

First there was disbelief. No, she was doing better. No this was what I feared…it can’t be coming true. No, not dear, dear Teacher Mekelina.

Leaving my sister in the hallway, tea cup still in hand, I sobbed into the family’s workroom and kneeled by the window, looking up into the light as if praying.

There is so much injustice in my friend’s death. Teacher Mekelina just lost her mother a little over a month ago. All the family members at today’s funeral were all together burying someone else what feels just like yesterday. Teacher Mekelina is a mother of five. All of the pictures I have of her show her pregnant because her baby girl was just born this year. A woman should not be buried the same year she gives birth. A fiver year old, eight year old, twelve year old, and eighteen year old should not have to lose their mother. A husband shouldn’t have to bury his wife when she is only thirty-nine. A father shouldn’t have to bury his daughter mere months after burying his wife.

I wonder if Teacher Mekelina would have lived if she had gotten better health care. I wonder if we all relied on prayer too much in the end to recover her. I wonder what will become of her beautiful, beautiful children.

Life is precious and fragile all over the world. But you usually don’t realize it until tragedy strikes your own life. Americans can escape this privilege most of the time. That’s just not the case for Zambians. Poverty, poor health care, water and sanitation problems, HIV/AIDS and so much more result in a life marked by tragedy for Zambian’s. For me it’s resulted in a YAV year full of funerals.

My friend died this week and I am shaken and sad. I’m scared for what tragedy might be around the corner next. I’m scared to lose those I love. I’m scared.

But last night I arrived at the funeral house for the first time without a church or school entourage. It was just a grade nine student and myself. I was surprised to find Teacher Mekelina’s children walking around, no tears in their eyes, going about their business. I was surprised to find the woman seated on reed mats and mattresses inside calmly chatting and even bursting into occasional laughter.

The other times I visited a funeral house with big groups there was always a formal program of songs, speakers, and bible readings for the women seated inside. In turn the woman weep loud and forlorn. The scene quickly cuts to your heart. Honestly, it’s quite awful to experience. The tragedy of death is thick in the air and thick in your heart.

It makes sense, though, that the grieving family can’t live in that thickness for the three days the funeral lasts at the house. After the groups pay their respects, they dry their tears and visit with family and friends. They keep on. I finally got to see that part of the funeral house when I visited last night.

This week I saw my community confront death. They stared it in the face, wailing and weeping, feeling its sting. But then they dry their tears and take care of the five-month-old baby that still needs tending, to. They pick themselves up and call out a song as we drive home on the bus. They finish shoveling a mounded grave and then  get back to the market to make sure there is food on the table for their children. They go on.

I stuck a flower in my friend’s grave today. The dirt stained my hands. No matter how many times I tried brushing it off, my skin was a more Zambian shade after Teacher Mekelina touched my life. I wept with my teachers and students. I will miss Teacher Mekelina so much. But I too must go on.