I remember my first funeral well. Some older person in our church had died, but I didn’t know him or her, and the funeral was to be held in Grand Saline, about 50 miles away. My Daddy was the song leader in our little congregation, and he needed a tenor. I was taken out of school, it was about the 7th grade, and carried to help form the quartet that would comfort family and friends with songs of heaven. It was a good, hands-off, impersonal preparation for my second funeral.
A few weeks later a boy in our small town (about 95 in my graduating class) was killed. He was one grade ahead or behind me; I think his name was George. He had lived, just around a corner or two, but we were not good friends. His single mom tried, but he ended up being one of the boys my mom didn’t want me to play with. That’s why he died. The square dance club met in the City Auditorium, an old frame building out by the rodeo arena. I was in that Auditorium only once or twice in my life. It was just the other side of the railroad tracks from down-town and our houses, mine and George’s, and about a mile down the tracks the other side of Main Street. Drinking was strictly prohibited in the Auditorium by the Baptist members who’d broken into square dancing, but not alcohol. The Methodists conceded, but some folks kept a flask under their front seat to loosen up their turns between dances. And in a small town, nobody locked their car.
The County was dry, and booze hard to get, but George had figured this one out. While the fiddle scrawled and the gentleman called, George was helping himself outside. He was pretty drunk when the dancing ended for the evening, but he made it to the tracks without being discovered. He didn’t make it home. He just laid down on the ties and gravel between the rails to rest a bit. He was drunk enough to sleep in that unlikely bed, but not enough to sleep through the 2:30 train that came through town. He was too low on the track to be seen until he raised his head just before the train reached him. I remember a few things about the funeral: almost everyone from school came; they didn’t open the casket; and it was generally very quiet but for his mother sniffling up front, fighting back the pain.
Malawian funerals are not quiet. No one is fighting back the pain. Men and women who are close to the deceased wail almost continuously, even through the hymns, except when a preacher calls for quiet for prayer or an exhortation. Most of the rest of the time, during visitation (12-36 hours) and the trek to the grave a host of mourners including the close family wail, and contort the body, some walking around outside the house where the body lies and calling on the deceased “mkazi wanga, mkazi wanga” (“my wife, my wife”) or “mlongo anga, mlonga anga” (“my sister, my sister”). My friend Steve Kay, who out of his own profound experience speaks and writes well about grief, especially male grief and its expression, would admire the Malawian men I think, bent at the waist, arms wrapped around their bent heads, weeping and crying, wailing and calling of their loss and for the departed. I am also reminded of the Biblical stories of funerals, where Jesus quieted the mourners before challenging death itself.
The body lies in state in the front room of a small hut, usually for less than 24 hours, but occasionally longer if some family must come from afar. Wailing women fill the small room, surrounding the body, covering the floor, spilling down the hall toward the bedrooms. A thin path through the legs from the door to the head of the deceased, and sometimes out the back door allows others to view the body, or at least the face, where only a small portion is visible, the rest, including the mouth and nose, wrapped in cloth. The closest female members of the family are literally and bodily supported by other family members, propped up where they are sitting on the floor.
Male family members visit the body periodically, joining the wailing on entering the door, and sometimes continuing in the courtyard as they walk off their grief outside. Clusters of men and women sit in their respective, quite separate areas all around the house, sometimes stretching throughout the neighborhood, but in these circles quiet respect reigns. Stores in the close neighborhood are “closed” though discrete sales through a cracked door allow life to continue in this world of many funerals. Some women bring in food (meaning nsima, the boiled corn meal which is the staple of diets throughout this part of Africa), while others stir the flour into pots of boiling water and prepare greens, beans or meat to add “relish” to the center of the meal. I’ve never seen a small funeral or memorial service. Honoring the dead is a core part of African life, and everyone shows up who knew the deceased and knows of the death. All the neighbors are there, and friends and relatives from near and far. Everyone is fed. Contributions are made, and a list of civic leaders who contributed, and how much they gave, is announced at the formal service before the shift to the graveyard. The village chief speaks of the deceased. An obituary is read. Singers sing. A preacher preaches.
When the grave is ready, or some other social marker unknown to me is reached, the body is witnessed by as many as possible as it is being transferred into the coffin. The tapping sound that followed puzzled me until I remembered the two hammer-bearers entering the house. The wailing, which had grown with the transfer of the body, swelled even more as the lid to the simple casket was nailed shut. The casket was moved to the bier, and the trek to the grove of trees marking the graveyard began, women leading if the deceased is female, men if male, but never mixing. Sometimes the grave is near, sometimes far.
At the graveyard there is more singing. More preaching. And more wailing, but now by isolated family members overcome by the grief of the moment. Some are comforted by others. One by one family members may be removed from the scene by friends or other relatives, perhaps because their display of grief is too much for that moment of the service, or perhaps for fear that the depth of their grief might become harmful to them on witnessing the burial. One wailing young man fell flat on the ground and was carried out, apparently unconscious. Later another followed suit but was left to lie. At one point a young woman near the grave stood, turned, gasped deeply, and let out a short but forceful cry which ended with her swoon to the ground, arms and legs flailing. Four women lifted her by her four limbs and carried her out despite the jerking of the appendages. Most sat quietly as the casket was lowered, the dirt returned, and the preacher preached on. A choir sang a few songs.
When thunder and lightning neared, women began to slip away. “Mvula! Rain!” One said to Beth. “You’re going to get wet! Tiyeni. Come with us.” The preacher continued. Men soon followed. The preacher himself soon gave up and the feeding began: nsima and goat. The rain mercifully held off another 30 minutes. Then we were on our way home, hurrying against the approaching darkness to get to the highway and then the city before the multitude of bicyclists and pedestrians scurrying home fade into the obscurity and danger of nightfall on the busy road.
Funerals in southeastern Africa have a major effect on business productivity, not only through the loss of skilled employees in their prime years (Malawi lost 6,500 teachers to death in the last three years) but also due to the massive social participation that is required of the living. Funerals take at least one day, often two, and not uncommonly three days away from work, and each worker attends multiple funerals a year. We attended three last week. Employers are expected to be major benefactors toward the costs of funerals in their role as the primary sustenance of the family. Funeral support is in the budget of every major business as a line item, but in one recent year a major civic unit drained that item long before the year was over. Some control of HIV (50% of those needing treatment in Malawi are getting it) and an increase in the line item budget for funerals have avoided the problem of running out of help in subsequent years, but deaths continue in large numbers.
The west has a short attention span, and the current waning attention to the African HIV problem is evidence of that. The US and Europe are moving on (actually around in a cycle) to attack once again Maternal-Child Health. While some shifts in AIDS budgeting may need to occur, the need for western government to support availability of the expensive medications needed to treat HIV still exists. Write your senators or representatives today. Western Christians need to support widow and orphan care by local agencies and churches in Africa. Just as the effects of previous efforts are beginning to be observed, the West is backing out. This is not the time to back out, but rather the time to press forward, to make treatment available for everyone lest the wailing never stop.
