We spent World AIDS Day thinking about funerals. We didn’t actually attend any funerals on Wednesday, December 1, but we were getting over one and planning for two others. I did not medically take care of any of these folks, didn’t see their death certificates, so I can’t say that any of the deceased had AIDS, but three funerals in one week? Malawi’s adult death rate is very high, much higher because of AIDS than it was 20 or 30 years ago precisely because of AIDS. If AIDS played no part in any of these deaths, it would be rather strange. It may have kissed them all.
The first funeral, on Tuesday, November 30, was for a man about 50. He wasn’t close to us, I don’t know that I’d ever met him, but a relative of his was an acquaintance and he lived very near. We’d not been to a funeral in our neighborhood yet, and I did personally know several of his neighbors (which I found out when I got there). We walked down the hill a bit and thankfully were met out on the highway by a person we knew. Every other funeral or like event which we’ve attended we’ve had the blessing of a friend to act as a social coach, and I was wondering how to handle some of the unknowns of this event when God provided the person we needed, a former guard at our complex whom we hadn’t seen for some months. We sat on the ground with our respective genders, Beth with a cluster of ladies on the periphery and I with our friend across the way.
I was on the front row of the front cluster of several groups of men, scattered and strung out among the mud-brick huts in that part of the neighborhood. After we’d squatted on the ground I realized we were right in front of the bier, consisting of several tree branches lashed together, that would carry the casket to the grave from the house where it lay for visitation. Neither of us went in. My coach asked if we wanted to see the body, but I didn’t know the man personally and felt no need. Funerals, in my mind, are for the living.We had asked our coach how long we needed to stay, and he said, “Whatever time you want.”
“Thirty minutes or an hour?”
“That’s fine. You’ve paid your respects.”
I wanted to give some money to my acquaintance who was related to the deceased, as is the custom here, but I hadn’t seen her. I asked coach how to find her, since men aren’t supposed to be in contact with the women at funerals. Before we left, coach led me behind the house in front of where we had sat and motioned for one of the women who were cooking there to come. I realized it was Florence, Beth’s helper around the house who had asked the day off for the funeral. We I asked Florence to get our friend, and she went into the back door of the house where the casket lay and brought the friend out to us. I expressed my condolences with the one appropriate Chichewa word I know, “Pepani” (“I’m sorry”). She shook my hand, accepting the money: “Zikomo kwambiri”. She returned to the mourners around the body in the little house. We slipped back around the house, sat for about 10 minutes more, then got up and went to the road where we met Beth who’d seen us leaving. “Coach” went back to the group, and Beth and I walked up the hill to the house.
The next morning, World AIDS Day, we were awakened by Florence who brought the news that the husband of another neighbor and closer acquaintance had died, a man who was maybe 30. I had met him, but did not know that he was that friend’s husband. He’d been sick for some time. In fact she’d been off work the week before to care for him, but he’d gotten better. Then he’d suddenly gotten very ill, having extreme difficulty breathing. A car had been hired and he’d been taken to a hospital about 6 miles north of us. By the time they got there his breathing had stopped. There was a need to move the body to his home village, and could I contribute? I gave Florence what seemed a reasonable donation. The funeral would be Thursday and she would be back to work on Friday. Would that be ok? “Of course,” I answered. “Tionana lachisanu,” (“We’ll see you Friday.”) We made a brief visit to this funeral, at a town 30 minutes north of us, on Thursday morning.
Before dark on Wednesday I got a call from one of my best friends in Malawi, my running partner. His sister, who’d been bothered for three months with severe stomach pain and intermittent headaches had taken a turn for the worse early that morning. She had gone to the nearest health center where she’d been sent to the nearest hospital which in turn had referred her to the regional medical center in town where she’d died shortly after arrival. He didn’t know what she had. Her husband was alive and well, and she left two children under five. She was 38. Women who are 38 do die in Malawi, but usually in childbirth. And this was a fairly prolonged illness. I asked if she had AIDS. He didn’t know. As many of our staff attended the funeral to our north, Beth and I carried several others the 2.5 hours south to this one, staying through the burial, getting back about 7:30 in the evening after stopping in town for supper. It was a day full of funeral.
AIDS is not something that is discussed over the dinner table in Malawi, or much at any other time, at least in a personal sense. People seem to think if they just don’t talk about it then it will leave them alone. And it keeps on killing people right and left, making its presence known in powerful and painful ways, at the most inconvenient times, even on World AIDS Day, 2010.
P.S.: The publication of this post was approved by the my friends and acquaintances who were kin to those mentioned as deceased and the reason for my attending the funeral.
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