Outsiders’ Funeral

Our guard's 40-something mother.

We had our first up-close look at a funeral here in the Sahel. It included so many things that were unexpected from our point of view that I want to share about it. Our guard’s mother suddenly came to our city to go to the government hospital after needing to stay lying down for almost 2 months at her house. She was very weak and coughing when she arrived and needed blood transfusions. Unfortunately, she died about a week later, after the family had drawn on a lot of it’s possible resources for her hospital stay. It happened to be Saturday night, so early Sunday morning our guard and his father went to the hospital to retrieve her things. I offered to drive them over to cut down on their trouble. I didn’t realize that they were actually going to pick-up the body. After I discovered that and hung around a little, I heard they were going to take her directly to the cemetery for burial. We just had to wait for some other family members to arrive. At first it seemed like they would need my car to take the body in, but then as more and more of her side of the family showed up, it became apparent that the husband and son were very much on the outside of this affair, looking in. As far as we know the guard’s mother was still Muslim so her non-Christian family took charge. After about two hours of waiting at the hospital, a pick-up truck of men from the village arrived and with some religious leaders they took the body, which was wrapped in a blanket resting on a metal stretcher. We drove to the cemetery on the edge of town, which was full of trees planted in neat rows. Under the trees were small, evenly spaced mounds with a stick marking the top of each. The men crowded around a freshly dug grave and when I came closer with my Christian companions, I saw the large hole was shallow and then had a thin hole cut deeper in it. The body was placed in the thin hole sideways (facing Mecca I’m told) and then thick sticks were placed horizontally over the thin hole. Finally the blanket was removed when the hole was almost completely covered, and leafy branches were placed over. Once dirt was shoveled over everything, then there was a final prayer. 

A quick snap from inside the cemetery, showing some mounds
with sticks in them under the shade trees.

During this whole day, our guard had shown no emotion, and his father was quite stoic as well. But as the dirt was being placed on the grave his father did leave the back of the crowd and stand 20 ft. away, in what seemed like an effort to not get emotional around others. Then everyone left together and proceeded to a relative's house, where we all sat outside by the street and they did another set of prayers. The truck of men went back to the village and our guard went with them for until they would have another prayer on the third day. That night we heard that it was important for us to go visit our guard while he was still out in the village with family. So the next afternoon we made the trek. I hadn’t been able to bring the guard’s two younger siblings that live with him to the funeral, which I’m not sure whether that was cultural or more that he didn’t want them to be involved in the Muslim rites. But we did get to bring them back to their village for the afternoon and it seemed like the gesture was very meaningful for the family. After already having their resources taxed with sickness, now they had three more days of hosting lots of relatives and neighbors coming to spend time in solidarity and eat food at every meal!

-- El Padre