FUNERAL IN CHEMBE
August 2003
Nobody went fishing that night. Emmanuel’s father had died. I was one of the last to see him. He was laying outside the door no 3 - just two doors from mine - when I was waiting to be taken to a briquette demonstration. It was easy to see that this man was in pain. I asked Stonald to find out whether it was malaria, thinking that my extra Malarone tablets might help. But we were told he had a skin cancer, no tablets for that.
We went to our briquette demonstration, but were soon told that Emmanuel’s father had died. It was very windy night, as it often is at Cape Maclear this time of the year, but louder than the wind was the singing and wailing of the mourning women.
On the following day people started gathering for the funeral.. First came the elderly men, seated on chairs under a large tree; then masses of people arriving, men grouping on one side and women, all wearing chitenzes, on the other. I was sitting on sandy ground among the other women, also wearing a chitenze, but unlike most of them I was also wearing shoes. Suddenly loud wailing hit the air like a bullet: A daughter of the deceased was arriving. Now the ceremony could start. A green plastic bowl was circulating among the mourners and filled up with Kwacha notes. Long speeches followed and after several of them, people stood up; the coffin was lifted on a truck, surrounded by close relatives and started slowly moving towards a wooded hill. Chembe is a large village and although there are graves scattered around the village, the truck and nearly a thousand people following it, walked for an hour to a burial place at the far end of the village, almost to the point where the hill is starting to rise and turning into woodland.
All the way to the graveyard white sand was flying on the air, but when the shovelling started, the cloud of dust was so thick that it was difficult to see the people sitting beside the grave. Later that day, somebody would come to place thorny branches on this new mound, fence it round with sticks and Emmanuel’s father would be safe in his new resting place. After a year, on the second Sadaka - remembrance - concrete would be laid to cover the site.
A long line of people walked back to the house to continue mourning, but I returned to the Emmanuel’s Camp, behind the door no 5, wondering about the fragility of human life.
There was no singing or wailing that night, only a row of fisherman’s lights on the quiet lake.