Funeral

My life has been surprisingly blessed. In this particular blogpost, I’m referring to the fact that death has never been a major character in my life. There have been very few people that I have loved and lost. Before this summer, that number was 2, my paternal grandmother, who died right after teaching me how to read, and my great aunt, who passed away a few winters ago. There have been other people to come and go in my life, but these are the two that I really associated with my idea of death.

Then I worked as EMT, and my idea changed a little bit. The first time you perform CPR on someone who is pronounced dead as soon as you arrive at the hospital, you feel like you’re wearing death on your gloves. Or when you arrive on scene to a patient that had no pulse when you arrived but a little bit of nar-can had him up and running. But after every call, at the end of every day, you throw out those gloves, take off your uniform and go back to your relatively death-less life.

This past month though, I’ve felt like I’ve had a grim reaper riding on my shoulder. Friends (both in America and in Cameroonian) have passed away and really close friends of mine have been touched by loss. I watched a man get hit by a bus and there was nothing I could do for him. For a few weeks there, I was convinced I was cursed. Scratch that, I’m still not totally convinced I’m not. But the point is, I was experiencing it from all sides.

This Sunday, my landlord passed away. He had been sick for a long time and I had grown really close to his wife. I was literally on my way over to his house when my neighbor caught me and told me that he had passed away while she was in church. I was caught completely off guard and went silently with her to go pay my respects.

Although I’ve had two other Cameroonian friends pass away while I was here, I was not physically there when they passed and wasn’t able to be a part of their funerals. So this was my first Cameroonian funeral.

I was scared. I had no idea what the traditions were. Was I supposed to bring something or say something? I was clueless. So I walked into that room blind. I found my friend, on the floor, crying silently. She was surrounded by three other women that I didn’t know who were also crying.  I sat down close to her, with a whispered condolence as the three other women started wailing. And I mean, they were wailing. Not like crying. Wailing. It sounded worse than a three-year old having a tantrum. They screamed and sobbed and screamed some more. I was scared shitless. Personally, I was tearless. I was way more frightened than sad. I looked over at my friend who had come with me and she had silently buried her face in her shawl.

We sat there in that room for hours, watching as the room filled up with mourners. I began to realize that instead of speaking condolences, the women would try to just out-do each other by crying. One women ran into the room, her top completely undone screaming at the top of her lungs. She grabbed Raissa (the wife) and just started throwing her around the room in a bear hug while screaming, sobbing, and yelling. It was absolutely terrifying. And as soon as one person started crying, the rest of the room would start up again with sniffles and wails. I don’t know how close these women were with my landlord, but after about the 30^th time this sobbing wailing happened, I began to realize that it’s not necessarily the strength of their pain that they’re sobbing, but their condolence. I don’t feel like I’m explaining this well. In a way, it was a drama-queen thing. Crying and screaming louder than that other people in the room was “winning”. But in another way, it was your way of showing that you were supporting Raissa and there for her and feeling her pain.

But Raissa wasn’t into it. She would avoid the sobs and wails as much as politely possible, stuck a veil over her face and didn’t say a word. I stayed in that room for hours, watching this spectacle and feeling their pain, listening to their cries. It was absolutely horrifying.

Today though, I went back. In their Muslim tradition, for the first three days, the house is open to everyone to come, eat, sleep, reminisce and grieve. Easily 50 women spent those days with Raissa. Then everyone but the family leaves and they mourn for 7 days. Then everyone but the immediate family leaves and they mourn on their own, except for the 40^th day, in which you celebrate the 40^th day of mourning.

So I went there this morning, still completely clueless. A friend had told me to bring some food, so I arrived with a bagful of beignets, expecting the horrible scene that I had left. But it was so different. 30 different women were sitting outside Raissa’s bedroom, talking laughing and sleeping on mats. There are 10 women who were making buckets of food. And when I say buckets, I mean buckets. There were huge washing basins filled with dough for “gateau” (it means cake, but it’s not really cake). Women were sitting around drinking bouille (kind of like a porridge). Raissa I found sitting in a corner in a hot stuffy room alone, not partaking, just mourning. I sat with her for a bit and then joined the women outside.

They welcomed me with smile and plied me with bouille. They tested my Fuldulde and my Kapsiki vocabularly. Some women were explaining funeral traditions to me (take down pictures and cover all mirrors). All of the sudden, all the women on the mats got up. Where they went, I can’t be sure. But suddenly, this hall of laughing women turned into a bustling fast food kitchen. Rocks were brought over to balance trays on. Fires were started and “gateau” was prepared. It was amazing. Every fire had 2-3 women tending it. There were all laughing and working together. Women of all ages. Some were speaking Fulfulde and some were speaking Kapsiki, but they were definitely all on the same page. It was a completely different feeling, almost like a party: a family BBQ with no one fighting.

I had never seen so many women working together like this. Women, young and old, tended fires, flipped cakes and broke wood with their bare feet. It was amazing to just be a part of it. Granted I couldn’t understand most of what was said, and I wasn’t helping a whole lot. It was still pleasant to be a part of.

I’ve only ever been to one funeral in my life. But that funeral was morose and tragic. I liked this a lot better. Women coming together and just being and working together for days at a time, remembering and honoring. I think they’re doing something right here. Who says less developed is worse off?

I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I did feel a need to just put some of this into words and share this experience with you. It’s not a happy or a funny one. But life isn’t just the happy and funny moments. And that’s what I’m here to do: live. Live life as these women live. And I got a view of the worst part of their lives this week.