A Sad New Experience (Part 2)

On Friday and Saturday I experienced a new cultural event that I wish I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to experience. One of my fellow colleague’s first-born sons died last Friday. He was shot in Nyahururu while coming back from Nairobi to be at home. He was only a 2^nd year University student-21 years old. He died a week ago but because he was farther away from home the arrangements took a bit longer which is why he wasn’t buried until a week later. Usually the church service and burial are on the same day but the priest wasn’t able to be there on Saturday and the body couldn’t be brought to Sipili until Saturday morning and so it was 2-day event.

Friday morning around 11am one of the staff asked me if I would like to go to the ceremony at 12. I was unsure of the unknown but I wanted to be supportive and so we headed off at noon for their house. He came from a Catholic family-as most families are in Sipili-and so they had a Catholic Mass on Friday. We all went to my colleague’s house, only a 10 minute walk from the school, and waited for the priest to arrive. The teacher I walked with over with had said the priest was coming at 2 or earlier…that was the first time I’d heard a time that was followed by ‘or earlier’. Though strangely enough, the priest showed up later than expected but early by most Kenyan standards. At 2:30 he arrived and at 2:45 the service began. We all sat under a medium sized tent (you could probably fit 8 of our market tents underneath) and then they also had benches lined in the back.

This was all set up in their front yard. Their compound has 2 parts-the gate opens and to the right you have their garden with maybe 5 rows perpendicular to the gate at about 20 feet each. Then the garden and the house have a hedge between them.

The service was 2 hours long and all in Kikuyu/Kiswahili. The tent was full of people and maybe 1-2 out of the 6-7 benches in the back were full. There were no hymnbooks or service handouts but plenty of words were spoken and songs were sung. It was neat to listen to the songs and some of the long phrases that were said I felt like I knew from the rhythm and hearing the same sort of rhythm every Sunday at church. I may not be Catholic but Lutherans are close in some ways. The other cool thing was how many teachers were at the service. I mean in some ways it wasn’t cool because that meant all of those classes had no teacher in the afternoon-like the one I was supposed to be teaching. However, the fact that there is such a strong community in general and between all of the teachers is awesome.

Saturday morning I was uneasy again about going to the burial because the teachers said it would start between 10 and 11 and so I had no idea when to head over because I didn’t want to miss it. They said it would just be a few short prayers and then the body would be buried since the mass was done the day before. I don’t know why I believed any of that. I was very happy when I walked out of my house at 10:30 and saw all of the older kids (Class 5 and up) waiting together. I found out they were waiting for the gate key so they could all go to the burial-I don’t know how all of the teachers forgot to mention the students were going-but either way I had the gate key and company to go with and with that we were off. We arrived and there were people waiting inside but the family hadn’t come from Nyahururu yet. They had had a caravan of people leave Sipili at 6am for Nyahururu to pick up the body and drive it back. After only 10 minutes, 4 matatus rolled up followed by a hearse then a regular car that had the family inside. The hearse looked like a matatu (a 14 passenger van) but with a higher top, lights on top, HEARSE written on the back and inside there were only the 1^st two rows and then empty space for the coffin.

A lot more people came on Saturday and it was hot. The service lasted 2 hours –all in Kikuyu so once again I don’t know what was said. Six people stood up to talk, hymns were sung and then someone gave a sermon to end the service. At the end everyone stood up and moved to the garden. In the far back corner of their garden, their son was being buried. I was told that some people without the land are buried in cemeteries but most everyone in Sipili, a land of farming, was buried at their home. Up until then it didn’t really feel like a funeral. No more people than usual were wearing fancy or dark clothing, no one was weeping that I could see, I couldn’t understand what they were saying and on Saturday when the coffin was there, I seated on bench further back so I couldn’t really see it either.

The heart wrenching part came at the end. Everyone moved to the garden where a hole had been dug. I was standing near the back and couldn’t see the actual burial happen but I saw the boy’s mother, my fellow teacher, at the end. The whole burial process was very speedy; it was over in about 7 minutes. Everyone walked over, a song was sung and the casket was placed in the ground and covered. Then all of a sudden we all heard his mother crying. Eight women were carrying her out horizontally as she sobbed and wept for her boy. It made it all very real, very fast.