BACK TO THE VILLAGE LIFE - JOLENE

Tuesday February 17th

I got back yesterday after spending the weekend in a village about 5 hours north of here. I went with Tina Kort, who is a long term missionary here –she’s been here 30 years. We knew her from before. Anyway, she had lived in this village a long time ago and the sister of a friend of hers there was killed in a car accident so she wanted to go to the funeral. She asked me to go along because we are trying to find a place for Nicole to stay when she comes this summer for SST from Goshen. (SST didn’t work out for her with Goshen’s normal placements, so she’s doing it independently- a whole other story!) So, we went and stayed in the village with her ‘mom’ here – Mma Oreeditse. It was a super experience – I forgot how much I like the village! There are numerous things I could write about, but I thought I’d write about the funeral.

We arrived at the house of the parents of the woman that was killed (Annie) at about 6 am Saturday morning, and it was already packed with people and the service had started. There were two tents outside, and people kept coming and many were standing. We got a seat – Tina isn’t afraid to walk to the front!! Women all wear skirts/dresses, with something on their head – a hat or scarf, and something around their shoulders – a shawl or jacket. All the men wore jackets. It was cool at 6 am, but by 10:30 when it was finished, it was HOT!

There was about an hour or so of various people talking about Annie – a sister, uncle, friend, someone from where she worked, etc. (I only knew who they were because Tina told me) Then the preacher preached but it was only about 20 minutes which surprised me – I figured it would be another hour. A lot of flowers had been given (mostly plastic) and the cards with those were read. And then it was time to go to the gravesite. EVERYONE went, either walking or piling on the backs of trucks or in cars, since many people had walked to the service. We stood in the hot sun for at least an hour, while they put the casket in the ground and filled the hole, singing all the while. This was an expensive casket so they actually cemented it into the ground. Apparently sometimes the funeral home folks will come back and dig the casket out of the ground and sell it to another person, especially if it was an expensive casket. So that took quite awhile. The men took turns shoveling the dirt in the hole, and piling it way high. Then on top of that they put the flowers, and then a canopy thing, which is how all the graves look here.

The singing is quite interesting. Someone will just lead out with the first line of the song and then everyone joins in, but the person keeps doing that with every line – singing it first and the people singing it after them. A lot of the songs were hymns that were familiar to me, just in Setswana. (missionary influence)

Then everyone again goes back to the house for the meal. Tina and I originally sat on the ground with some of her friends, but it wasn’t long until chairs were brought for us. We said we were fine, but they insisted. It’s amazing how they can sit on the ground – legs straight out in front of them and backs straight. They can do that for hours, or else squatting down when there aren’t chairs. It was a big meal – samp (corn – don’t know how they fix it actually), seswa (meat cooked and then they pound it), cooked pumpkin and some gravy over it. They also had palache and goat, but I didn’t get that. I’m thinking they gave the ‘better’ stuff to us. Quite good. They fed probably about 500 people, and it was very organized. Young guys filled the plates and carried them to the people, men mostly got fed first, but I’m not sure how that all worked. As soon as we were finished our plates were washed to be used again for the next people.

The next day (Sunday) we went to visit Tina’s friend (Annie’s sister) at her parents house. We went in the house and all the furniture had been moved out of the living space and there were blankets on the floor, and there were probably 8 or 9 women sitting on the floor – aunts or other women relatives, there to grieve with the mother of Annie. They had come at the beginning of the week and stayed there with her (her husband died before). It was amazing to see these old women sitting/lying on the floor, but that’s what they’re used to.

They know how to grieve here. We had gone to the gravesite in the car and two men went along that knew Tina. They asked how different it was from where I’m from. I said only the family or close friends would go to the gravesite, and not everyone stays for the meal either, and it’s usually just sandwiches, not a big meal. They couldn’t believe not everyone would go to the grave and eat together – you need a lot of people with you to grieve, and that just wouldn’t be right. Like Tina said – relationships here are everything.

It was great to be in a village again and it brought back lots of memories of when we lived in Maun. Although then we had running cold water but not electricity, and this woman had electricity but not running water! The stars were just as beautiful now as then too!