With a Heavy Heart

This week, I attended the funeral of a five-year-old boy.  Yes, five years old.  It was very sad to say the least.  This young boy did not attend our school, but worshipped in the church right next door, so many of our children knew him.  

It seems like an odd thing to say that I was interested in attending the funeral.  However, having the opportunity to experience how a culture honors and buries their dead is a privilege.  I attended a funeral outside of the United States for the first time in Ghana.  A Ghanaian funeral is more like a party: a road shuts down, a car carrying or representing the deceased drives down the road with lively music blaring louder than you think possible through a crowd of people.  Let’s not forget the people gyrating atop the car for what seems like the entire time.   And naturally, after a while, everyone sits down under a tent and drinks a Fanta (soda).  My Ghanaian funeral experience could not have been more different than the Roman Catholic, American funerals I have attended all my life, and I would be willing to bet I attended more funerals by the age of 20 than the average person attends in a lifetime, as my family feels it is our Christian duty to grieve with the grieving. 

If you haven’t had the experience yourself, I don’t think there is a way to adequately explain what it is like to enter an environment that completely defies your culture’s tradition.  I suppose it could be daunting or uncomfortable, but I actually love it.  I love learning that the ‘whatever’ that you have just always assumed every being on the planet naturally did precisely as you do is actually false.  It really allows you to grasp the concept that there are several, several ways to do the same thing, with none of which being better than the other, may I add.  I love being exposed to new, foreign and refreshing moments where you realize how small you are and how awesome God is for diversifying people, experiences and the world in general.  God is far more creative than me, let me tell you.

Nevertheless, funerals are never fun, with the exception of the Ghanaian funeral, and yesterday's was no exception.  I saw the smallest coffin I have ever seen in my life.  This poor little boy lost his life trying to cross the main road into town and was killed by an automobile. He actually was on his way home from church, the same church I attend every Sunday.  I think the saddest part was watching the boy’s brother carry the cross that was placed at the head of his grave.  Or maybe it was the boy’s two brother sand eight, tiny classmates carrying his coffin to its burial site. 

Tanzanian funerals are much more somber than those in Ghana, and resemble an American structure.  We first went to the church for an abridged mass.  Following the mass, everyone piled, and I mean piled, into dala dalas to travel from the church to the home of the family where the boy would be buried.  Let me try and paint this picture for you: imagine one of those 15 passenger vans, as my friends and I have always called them: drug bust vans.  Strip it of most of the interior decorative fabric and cram as many people as you can in there.  Like 25.  More if there are children.  That's a dala dala for you.  After a very bumpy and cozy ride to the home of the family, everyone piled out of the vehicles to walk the remaining way to the burial site next to the family’s home.  The outdoor, burial portion takes about two hours in the midday African heat. Heat aside, there is something about standing in the dirt, amidst God’s unaltered landscape of greens and blues, unable to see anyone or anything for as far as you can look that makes such a ceremony much more intimate than one in a cemetery.   No one complains about being hot or tired from standing.  People simply pay their respects. 

Respecfully, attending an American funeral is no skin off anyone’s chin.  It may be sad, possibly emotionally uncomfortable, but not physically draining.  In Tanzania, and from my experiences, most African countries, attending a funeral is a much more involved and taxing. You choose to bear the heat, the sun, the dirt, the wind and whatever else Mother Nature feels like sending your way for a lengthy period of time.  After many prayers, tears and remarks, the coffin is closed for the last time and carried to where it will rest, this time by a team of tiny children.  The grave is literally dug before your eyes, the coffin is placed in the ground, and the same men that dug the grave, cover it with the dirt of the earth.  Technically the same result happens in America: a body enters the ground. But, to watch a hole be dug, men place the coffin into the ground with their bare hands and then shovel dirt to cover the coffin elicits a much deeper emotional response than watching a machine lower a body into an already-dug-and-nicely-covered-with-some-sort-of-grass-looking-carpet-hole. 

Stones were placed around the mound of dirt covering the coffin, and a simple yet beautiful cross with the boy’s name and life span was powerfully shoved into the ground by the hands of the priest.  All of the children in attendance lined up to place a flower in the mound of dirt covering the dead little boy, so that the top of the grave became a bed of yellow, red and white roses.  Finally, some strands of lilacs were placed around the other flowers and a candle was lit at the end of the grave opposite the cross.  The last 45 minutes were more reflections and prayers from family and loved ones.  And then, in African fashion, the children took a Fanta, read: drank a soda, before climbing back into the dala dalas for the ride back home. 

A day of emotions.  I cannot stop thinking about the brothers of that little boy.  Or the size of that coffin.  But intertwined in that sadness are the moments from today that I will cherish. Cramming into a car with several of my students, holding two sweet, little girls in my lap. Catherine telling me to stand at the right time to show my respect because my Swhaili is still a work in progress.  Marietha holding my hand the entire time we were at the burial portion of the funeral. Even in despair, joy can be found if only we take the time to look for it.