Today was supposed to be the third and final of a Poultry Production Workshop we're facilitating for a Women's Group (at Road's Camp just outside Mwense boma). Sadly, tragedy has struck so we've postponed today's meeting until after the Independence Day holiday (24 October). We learned this morning that the mother of one of the women in the group had passed away sometime in the night. So, the family and community is grieving today. They will hold the funeral today and bury the woman's body this afternoon. I don't know what caused the woman's death, but perhaps solace can be found in that she was a mature woman who'd lived a full life, able to watch her children grow into adults and have families and children of their own.
Today is Friday, and since the week began we've learned each day of the death of a loved one of folks we know here. Perhaps most startling have been those deaths of a baby and a young girl here in Chebele.
On Monday, a friend ba Sally^, who lives in Mwense Central, stopped to greet us on her way to visit her granddaughter, who lives on the other side of our community. The girl was about 13 years old and attended Grade 5 at Chebele Basic School. She had been suffering for 7 years from tapeworm. Her symptoms started with pain in her stomach and grew pain throughout her body and she was now unable to eat or drink.
For most of those 7 years, the girl's parents refused to go to the Mwense Stage II Clinic just 5 km away. They preferred to use traditional medicine and practices to help their daughter. Unfortunately, these did not cure her. Finally, after years, the family took their daughter to the Mwense Stage II Clinic, only to find that at that point the tapeworm had grown so strong there was nothing the clinic could do. The clinic staff scolded the family for not bringing the girl in much sooner. The girl's condition and prognosis were so poor that the clinic staff refused to refer the girl to Mansa General Hospital, saying there was nothing that could be done there for the girl either.
On Monday when our friend visited her granddaughter, the girl was still alive. On Tuesday, we returned home from our programs in the evening to a grieving community because the girl had passed away.
On Thursday, we returned home in the afternoon to learn that a funeral was in progress for a year-old boy who'd died early that morning. We asked what had caused the death, but our neighbor said he didn't know. Just then, the funeral procession passed by our house. The procession looked to have been 40-50 men, and at the head of the group were three men carrying a small coffin, about a meter long and covered in a blue and orange chitenge. They were singing in Cibemba as they walked to the cemetery in Chebele to bury the coffin. As they passed, we all sorrowfully sat down, following Zambian custom, to show our respect for the dead and for the grieving family.
Typically, it is the role of the men to build, carry and bury the coffin during a funeral ceremony. It is the women's role is to gather with the bereaved family around the dead body, either inside the family's home or in a church, crying and wailing together. Unfortunately, Shaun and I have attended several funerals in our village, and I can tell you from experience it is a sad, sad thing. It's also a bit jarring for a westerner because the Zambian customs surrounding funerals and grieving are so different from ours. It seems the grief that we westerners internalize or process quietly over a period of time, Zambians externalize and process loudly, together, for just the day of the funeral and then life seems to go “back to normal.”
^ ba Sally is not our friend’s true name. I have changed it here to preserve her anonymity.
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