Cultural moments

An Overcast day Africa
Yesterday was quite the experience for me. I woke up early to find that I was very happy. I was leaving in about a week for a tropical beach get away and I was going to see my friends for the first time in months. I decided to finish some work at the high school and whistled all the way to the school. I then came home to find out I had inadvertently put A Charlie Brown Christmas on my Ipod, which to my delight rang out proud and clear in my little house as I decorated it for Christmas. I found a huge leaf shaped like a tree and taped it up and then took silver rapping from the awesome cookies my mom sent me and made little Christmas decorations. I then scavenged for the right greenery to make a Christmas wreath. I even colored some pages in my Candyland coloring book and put up the peppermint man and the gingerbread man. I was feeling really good, even though a mist of rain kept disturbing the drying of my sheets outside. I knew in the afternoon I would be going to a funeral, but I had heard funerals in Africa were really like parties so I was thinking of it like a cultural observer and not really a person. The funeral was for my post mate’s counterpart whom she worked with everyday and who was an incredible man, he died suddenly and because there wasn’t the right medicine or medical care in the East and he was on his way to Yaounde when it was too late. He left behind two young kids, I teach the daughter at the Lycee and she is an incredible girl, one of the good ones. He also worked at the Catholic Misison so you can just tell this guy was good stuff.
Well I arrive to the house of the family and it seems that all of Ndelele was there. They had created a little courtyard with a trellis decorated by local plants and flowers and they had the white casket set underneath that. A large picture of the gentleman was set out and a sign that read in French: You will be able to go to the sky, after you are on the earth. (that’s the exact translation but I’m sure its more poetic). I recognized groups of my students from the Lycee, the mayor, the principal, all of the important people in town, and then the family sitting on the stoop of their house. Hundreds of people were standing including Rachel and I and they had marimbas playing and awkwardly jolly calypso type tune.
First they had a Catholic mass and then they had speakers. The son spoke in Kako so I didn’t understand but he was pretty composed and for being about 16 or 17 he seemed to be taking on the man of the family responsibility pretty seriously. Then the sister went up and in the fashion of Cameroon she recounted his last days. She told about how he kept telling everyone he would be back to work in a few days and it was just a passing sickness. Then about how he went to Bertoua and they told him they didn’t have the medication that he needed so he would have to go to Yaounde. At this time he was so weak he could barely travel, and the conditions here for travel are horrendous. He was in the car on the way to Yaounde when he died. As the sister was telling this story she was very animated and clear spoken, but as she got to the end she became very emotional. She knelt by the casket and started to talk to her brother asking where he had gone and why God would do this. She then became hysterical and had to be walked away from the casket. The principal then gave a short speech that sounded like a well known poem and everyone was invited to walk around the casket and say goodbye. I followed the crowd and was very surprised to see that it was an open casket. They have these little door type things on the top of the casket, like a Christmas advent calendar, and you could look in and see him. It was very disturbing and Rachel got very upset because we were not prepared to see that. At this point his daughter, whom I teach became very hysterical and her sobs were horrible. They seemed to go out over the crowd and touched everyone. The wife was too weak to help her daughter so her friends and the other English teacher from the Lycee tried to calm her down. You always read about people wailing and knashing their teeth, its one thing to read about it and another to see it. But in a way, I think it really said something about the quality of this man, that he could inspire such sadness.
Next they buried him in their family’s compound about 20 feet from the service. It wasn’t the choreographed burial that Americans have, there was a huge pile of dirt and they had to try and put the casket evenly into the ground with ropes. Then they put long cement slabs on top, I’m not sure why, and finally the dirt. Then we were invited to go to the Bar to eat and drink. The family stayed at their home completely numb. The night before everyone was invited to the Catholic Church for the wake, which consists of everyone singing and sleeping in the same room as the deceased. Overall, it was an intense experience and I can’t help feeling helpless and very worried for the family. He had a really good job and was the sole provider for the family so you have to worry about what they do next, especially with so much grief. As an American it is hard ot imagine someone dying so quickly from something that can be cured. This man grew up in the East, went to school in the east, spoke the padua and was proud of this province, but ultimately it was the lack of development in this province that killed him. It’s just sad and needless for a good man to die when the world had come so far in medicine. Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to read about let me know what you think.

elyse