It’s a long one… Hopefully something to read over your lunch break at your desk?
“Jen? Jen, are you there?” In typical Botswana fashion there is a poor connection and a slight delay even between a town and a village less than a 45 minute bush flight apart. In typical Jen fashion, I have of course been sleeping with my cell phone in my very bed with me, and after wrestling it from the covers, have answered it before even completely waking up.
She took my thinly disguised grunt that was masquerading as the proper polite response as enough confirmation that I was indeed there. By the tone of her voice I could tell something was terribly wrong, and the next words out of her mouth confirmed it for me.
“Jen, we have a problem,” Debbie’s voice broke. At the sound of this my mind attempted to spring to full attention, and the voice in my head that I would next be attempting to project out of my mouth took on the tone of someone who is completely ready to move heaven and Earth to fix whichever problem we may be finding ourselves up against. Somewhere in the catacombs of my sleeping mind it occurred to me that whatever time it currently was in the morning was pretty early to already facing a problem, but this is Botswana, so in some ways, nothing surprises me. Except the fact that Debbie is crying.
In the short time I’ve known her; I’ve come to think of Debbie as remarkably strong. Not that remarkably strong people cannot cry, but it’s just something I haven’t yet experienced from her. She’s been through a great deal during her time on this planet, and always seems to react with Herculean grace, so for her to be calling me in tears at half six in the morning means the worst has happened. Before she could say anything more I sharply gasped in an attempt to take in the breath that seemed to be alluding me after having answered the phone in what was likely mid-snore. My muddled mind was able to deduce, through the hazy struggle of waking that despite being on my way out of dream world I was actually experiencing one of my worst nightmares. It seems I was the recipient of a phone call before the Minnesota Lutheran prescribed “civil hour” of 8 am, which could only mean one thing. Someone had died.
My brain went from zero to sixty in a nanosecond. My poor body struggled to keep up and in following the incoherent mumblings of my waking brain fumbled around in what I would imagine I thought was “make a plan mode” but really was a lot of getting tangled in my mosquito net and bedding. I attempted to as spring from my cocoon in what I imagined was an impersonation of a heroic leap. I immediately began pacing the one square inch of floor that was cleared enough for pacing (and by cleared I certainly don’t mean that it was free of the inevitable sand or thorns, a particularly sharp specimen of the latter which I immediately found with my left foot like a blinking heat seeking missile) and began to flounder around for the best tools with which to make a plan for the news I hadn’t yet received.
My first thought was Simon. Cold terror griped me. The logical part of my brain slowly and stubbornly sauntered after this idea despite the emotional part galloping off at a full sprint. In the quick flashes of multitasking my increasingly coherent mind was beginning to be able to accomplish I was able to identify the error in this idea. I live in Seronga with Simon, Debbie lives in Maun, and she had just gone home and wasn’t due back for a week or two. The village generally considers me to be what would effectively be Simon’s next of kin, and he would certainly be the first person they would call should something happen to me. It wouldn’t make sense for her to be calling me with this news.
“Jen, Willy Phillips has died. Anne is with him at the clinic. Is there any way you can go there?”
I feel the need break into the story at this point to give a disclaimer for the narrative that follows by admitting that the deceased was not one of my favorite people. We’ve got a few moral, ethical and political differences. In an attempt to not speak ill of the dead, I will make every attempt to not let that fact color my story unduly. We’ll see how it goes.
Willy Phillips is the councilor (Sort of like a mini-senator? Or sort of Governor? A Mayor? But then what would the Kgosi (chief) be? Well it’s tough to say, but he is a man with political power) of Seronga. His father was white and his mother was black, and his white third wife Anne is from Britain (I hate that I point these racial aspects of people out, but in my life here color is very relevant, and it’s also a part of the story. My life certainly is changing… Moving on). He is in many ways a man in between cultures, not quite white and not quite black, and in that way I can sort of relate to him, myself being not quite a villager and not quite an ex pat.
Debbie has known Willy for the better part of probably 30 years, and he is Godfather to her two sons, with whom I have also come to be friends. As she has become a great friend to me has so often been there for me in times of trial, I was desperate to return the favor to her in any way that I could. Willy has on occasion given me lifts back from Maun where he ends up spending a great deal of time in meetings for the district. In Seronga his campaign strategy has always been to give out free vegetables to his constituents, as well as to occasionally help people with lifts to funerals or to Shakawe to get their ARV’s.
In Seronga, it is a very patriarchic culture, and the people here come to think of the figures of government as their fathers or caretakers. There is a lot of dependence on the government and due to diamonds, and income from tourism, the fact is that the government does have money, they can and do provide. Willy is another example of this. I say this to give background to the type of figure Willy was amongst the community, and to illustrate the sort of figure he became immediately upon his death, and the way that the people reacted, and the string of small town controversies that ensued.
But back to that morning. I told Debbie of course I would go to the clinic and in fact I was on my way. Debbie laid out a plan (which of course ended up changing several times over the course of the next hour) and said she and her sons would be chartering a plane from Maun to Seronga. I quickly threw on the first clothes I could find from the pile of items which I have come to think of as clothing purgatory, clothes worn maybe once or twice, not clean enough to be hung back in the wardrobe, but also not dirty enough to go in the completely foul smelling wash pile. It usually consists of mostly pants and jeans, so from my wardrobe I found a freshly clean tank top and threw a do-rag (bandana or a Duk, depending on your cultural preference) on my ever expanding pile of unruly hair.
I called Simon as I brushed my teeth and gave him the news, as Patricia from the clinic called on the other line. The ambiance amongst the white people in Seronga is a strange thing, while we are all quite interdependent in terms of transport out and getting food and supplies in, Simon in particular has an interesting way of getting along with and relating to people. Most of the villagers think that we are all automatically friends because we are white (and generally think we are from the same place, -although the lot of us come from no less than three different countries- and despite the fact that I am the third Peace Corps to come through Seronga, many of the people say that Simon is my uncle or some other form of relation. I can’t completely figure out if this is due to the different ways in which the Batswana determine family relationships, or due to the fact that our cultures are more similar to each other-a point Simon would ardently disagree with- than to theirs or what). But despite this common belief among the villagers that we’re all one big happy white family, Simon and Willy haven’t gotten along for years. They “fell out” as Simon recounts it, a long time ago, although over what is a question with an answer as elusive as the one that accompanies the question “what does Simon DO in Seronga?” In the end it all becomes legend. As I seem to have become friends with Simon first this meant that by default I wasn’t very close with Anne and Willy. We weren’t unfriendly; we just didn’t ever hang out, or really communicate past the requisite greetings in the village. This was about to change.
Patricia continued to call back looking for me as Ma Willy (the other name for Anne, when a couple is married the wife becomes Ma whomever the husband’s first or last name is- they are interchangeable) is at the clinic and I guess at this point it has been decided that I, as a white person will know best what to do with this situation. I have to say, I have been lucky enough in my life to not have had to deal with a lot of death personally, and haven’t seen altogether too many dead bodies. That too was about to change.
I arrived at the clinic and was ushered into the room with all the beds, my authority regarding what to do about something finally being respected by my colleagues, of course at just the moment in which I have less of an idea of what to do than I ever had in my life. I had just seen Willy in Maun two days before, and had almost caught a ride back to Seronga with him (I had ended up hitching with the police instead). Now I enveloped his grieving widow in a sort of awkward hug as my colleagues faded back into the other rooms of the clinic. I searched my mind for comforting words for a virtual stranger, whom the world was treating as my sister. We awkwardly embraced and she quickly went back to cleaning and dressing her husband, a task which I did my best to help her with. I didn’t really have time to process the fact that I was now heaving the weight of one of the first deceased bodies I’ve ever had this much contact with around as his wife struggled to dress him. I was busy thinking of how hot it was already getting at the clinic.
After this task was thankfully finished we walked out to the front of the clinic, where I was immediately saved by Benson. Ben is my good friend who comes into town for a month once every three months as he works as a mechanic for one of the luxury camps in the delta. He is the Kgosi’s (chief’s) son, which makes him my cousin, a fact I had quickly informed him of the first time we met, and has served to keep him in generally gentlemanly like behavior ever since. He has been pretty good friends with Anne and Willy for a while, and had heard the news and had come to be of whatever service he could be to Anne. He also ended up being a huge help to me.
The first problem he solved was the driving. Now I’m not allowed, under any circumstances, to drive as a Peace Corps Volunteer. This is the type of stuff over which they will immediately send you home, so I wasn’t about to do it here, grieving widow or not. In addition, the car Anne had driven to the clinic in was Willy’s and was loaded down completely with stock for the shop he runs in town, as well as being a manual, on the wrong side of the car (for me). Ben came to the rescue to drive us around to search for the girl who ran the shop and thus had the keys. Being Seronga, and the time of day being morning meant that the Mascom cell signal was down, and so we thus had to drive around searching for her. We had to unload the stock into the shop (which is essentially a semi truck container with shelves inside) in order to free up the pick-up for whatever arrangements would lie ahead of us.
It was when we found Kay that I had the first opportunity to do the unsavory task which would become my main job of the day, which was to inform people of Willy’s passing. I quickly found there was no easy or pleasant way to do this so I sort of just went against everything that is generally a part of my nature and tip-toed into the news as gently as I could. Kay was upset, but I maintain that the nerves and framework of African women’s emotions are made of steel, and so she helped unload the contents of the truck into the shop, even directing us what needed to be reloaded to be brought back to the house as the tears slowly slid down her face.
I have to admit that I found a bit of comfort in unloading the truck, as it felt like a tangible thing I could DO to be helpful. My Midwestern roots demand that during a crisis I be USEFUL, and DOING something in order to be effective in any situation, in this case comforting the grieving. I then worked on arranging for Benson to meet Debbie at the airstrip and finding tea and such for the mourners that had slowly begun to arrive at the house. Debbie stepping in was a big help, as she’s a very take charge kind of woman, and this being my first funeral to help coordinate, I was very glad to have some guidance. My main job for the day ended up being to answer Willy’s phone, which lead me to perform my uncomfortable task many, many times, to perfect strangers whom I generally had no idea how they had known Willy or why they were calling. It could have been the garage in Maun or one of his oldest friends and I had nothing but the number on the caller ID (it seems Willy hadn’t really believed in storing numbers to the phone’s memory) and the voice on the line to guide me.
At Willy and Anne’s house the mourners kept coming, and soon nearly all the village elder men and women were there, and as the day went on, most of the village had come. Throughout the day the “plan” which is of course what always needs to be made in absolutely any case in Botswana had changed several times. The first and most pressing issue was getting the death to be certified by a doctor, which took a better part of the day under the hot African sun to complete. It was a horrifying circus of phone calls, pleas, threats, demands, planes, boats, trucks, interventions by councilors from other districts and a menagerie of various other government officials as well as the rescheduling of doctors scheduled to be administering ARV’s at several villages in the area to get a doctor here to confirm that our beloved councilor was indeed deceased.
There were enough different stories going around as to if and when a doctor was coming or whether we would have to drive with the body the one to three hours over the long dirt road the ferry at Mohembo to thoroughly confuse everyone involved, and as the mascom signal was still down, it was between my cell phone and Willy’s cell phone to get it all sorted. (Anne and Willy had a land line in the house, but no one but Anne and two of their house servants could go through their gate as they have three extremely vicious dogs who have been known to attack people and have been rumored to have put people in the hospital. So the planning was executed from the guest house. Just to add another element of fun to the day.) It was finally confirmed that the body was indeed deceased and more importantly that the generator was working and had been turned on at the mortuary. The corpse was finally transported from the clinic to the mortuary in the afternoon, setting off the first of many controversies that would occur in the next week.
The culture of the several tribes in the area demands that, amongst other traditions, the body be viewed by all of the mourners before it is buried. This means there should be witnesses through every step of the process. The staff at the clinic was rather insistent that someone watch as the doctor certified the body, although Debbie and Anne refused this. Again, I haven’t had much intimacy with the process of death in my own life and culture, so I didn’t know if this is common in my country or not. My understanding of this tradition here is to prove to everyone with their own eyes that the person has indeed died, rather than as in the Western tradition, to convey a last sense of goodbye. Anne of course, being English, felt that this was all a bit inappropriate, as having died of what was believed to be a heart attack, Willy’s coloring was not very good at this point, especially after having been in the heat for the better part of the day. Many of the villagers were sort of following what had become a regular convoy of vehicles around the village, arriving after us having walked, and sitting down in the sandy roadside whenever the ambulance with the corpse passed.
In a land of extremely strong traditional beliefs mixed in with that special brand of missionary Christianity fanatically popular in this part of Botswana, the basis for people’s beliefs can be rather difficult to describe to an outsider, as it tends to be much more complex than “because the bible tells me so.” I’ve often asked about details of traditional beliefs in relation to religious beliefs but have yet to get many profoundly satisfying answers. Much of what is “traditional” contradicts what I understand to be the teachings of the bible, or Christianity, but again I have to respect the villagers for being able to hold so many contradictory beliefs close to their hearts and not experience much confusion or fugue or angst about it. I can’t decide if it is the complexity or the simplicity of the whole situation that eludes me, but I’m often left with a sort of confused respect.
The one thing I do find quite amusing in regard to the religious diversity in Seronga is that despite nearly everyone in the village actively identifying with one sect or another of what they name as Christianity, we still also have our own family of Christian missionaries in Seronga. It sometimes strikes me as shades of The Poisonwood Bible, but then they and I don’t interact much past the transport and supplies issues either. I’ve gathered that their general outlook is that despite all being Christians, the villagers still have a lot of work to do on being properly saved. So in essence if you throw some traditional beliefs about spirits and witchcraft into the Christianity mixture this village is a regular holy rolling jamboree. It is, in a word, interesting. And soon came to be even more so.
Throughout the day there was great discussion of what the plans for burial would be. Debbie and the boys flew back to Maun in the afternoon, leaving me as one of the last voices of “Western reason”. I soon found that part of my job was to be the ambassador between the African and Western (I’ve always thought it weird that one of the terms for white people around these parts was Westerners, or Europeans. How can Europeans be called Westerners when we are only one time zone east of Paris? And how can Australians be called Westerners? They are so East, or even kind of Asian in some ways but we never call them that. How can I be called European when I come from the States? I’m at least as far removed from my European roots as most white Africans are, but they seldom refer to themselves as Africans. It’s always confused me, and I’ve never known the rules of this particular game, what people are usually referring to is someone’s classification as just white, but it seems we can’t just say it. Hmmm.) camps of opinion regarding what would be done next.
At some point during the day Anne decided it would be most appropriate to cremate her husband, and most of the Westerners agreed that as he is her husband (although they were, in some senses estranged, which added a whole additional element of things to be a bit sensitive about on many, many levels that I won’t get into) she had every right to do. I suggested that if this was indeed her decision she would have to somehow allow the villagers to have their ceremonies with the ashes as well. The logistics of getting the corpse down to Mahalapye (a two day journey unless planes were involved, and even then might be more than a day with transfers and what) and then back to Maun, where it was determined there must also be another memorial as Willy had spent most of his life there and had many friends who would not be able to make it on the long journey to Seronga, coupled with the Batswana tradition of burying on Saturday, (and this being Wednesday, and there was already another funeral that most of the village was meant to attend this weekend-who knew the scheduling of funerals in a rural Botswana village could be so difficult) put us out almost two weeks.
But it was more than timing that became a matata (problem). The villagers, represented by the elder men, felt that as their councilor and thus their father, they had just as much say as she did in Willy’s final resting arrangements. And burning was blasphemy. Anne tried to quote the bible with the idea of ashes to ashes, but methinks there may have been something lost in translation. During the heated discussion that ensued someone remembered speaking to Willy within the past 20 years and him saying that he wanted to be buried out back in his yard (under a big tree that of course ended up being in the flood plain- and incidentally under water at this exact moment). Another villager concurred that he had also heard Willy say this and soon nearly the whole village remembered having an intimate conversation at some point in their life with dear departed Willy about what to do when he passed. It became a virtual chorus. Anne was totally outnumbered. She conceded.
The next bit of drama involved an attempt to get permission to bury Willy under another tree in his yard, which was thwarted by a letter from the Land Board, arriving after the grave had basically already been dug and no less than 6 planes had been chartered to fly into Seronga for the funeral the next day. In a huge display of dramatics Anne got the village to support her in disregarding the Land Board’s decision, amongst them several members of the Land Board. And thus is the beauty of politics in Botswana. Everyone agreed Willy would have wanted it that way.
Sidenote: Let me just take this opportunity to let everyone know that my mom knows what I want done should I croak any time soon. I kind of talk about it all the time. But just in case there’s any confusion…. Burn me. Put my ashes in a bench at the Rose Garden overlooking Lake Superior. Don’t go crazy with some dumb flowers (sorry to every florist I’ve ever worked for- Karly you can go wild if you really must, but I’d really rather you throw some money at a charity or spend some time doing volunteer work while you think of me (humming the tune from “Phantom of the Opera” in my head… did I mention that some chick sang that at Willy’s funeral- acapella, accompanied by her ipod-which only she could hear? I live through the looking glass for Sheezy. Anyhoo.)) I want Shakespeare and show tunes at the funeral. Make it a party. Please serve pizza. The end. Peace Out.
It is standard mourning procedure that the entire village shows up at the home of the bereft to say prayers every day at 6 in the morning and 5 or six in the evening until the body is “at rest” read: buried. Anne initially tried to limit the prayer services to one day, with a break until the funeral but people just kept coming. I felt for her that in her husband’s death she was forced to play hostess. Willy’s position as the councilor of Seronga (and an official figure of authority, and thus most of the villagers “father”) meant that most of the village felt entitled to have the mourning process and funeral proceed in the traditional manner that they expected. Many of them stayed all day, and some even camped in tents on Anne’s lawn. In short, some never left. It is tradition to always be with those who are grieving in Batswana culture, but as a “Westerner” I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed.
After all, how can one properly fall apart with all these people around? From my strange new position of relevance at Anne’s side during these prayer services I was stunned to see how many women essentially threw themselves on Anne’s lap in grief as they came to pay their respects by greeting her. Sobbing and carrying on to his widow, and forcing her to comfort them. Sitting right next to her I caught more than a few of them, and spotted a few more as they swooned during the actual prayers. It felt a little over the top to my ethnically Lutheran sensibilities, and even the Catholic floating around in me kind of wanted to slap them.
Being from a Midwestern “casserole/hotdish” culture I found it quite rude (again, by my own standards) that so many people were going to show up and sit around, and not bring any food. By the first night I realized that no one was really making much effort to make sure that Anne had something to eat, and decided my duty would be to cook (which I don’t know if I’ve made it clear that I hate cooking?) some things that Anne could eat and have at least some leftovers to nibble on so she wouldn’t have to be bothered. This brilliant idea was quickly thwarted when I realized the next day that I had forgotten to factor in several elements of Seronga life that meant that most people here didn’t have a concept of leftovers.
In a world of communal eating, no refrigeration, little concept of budgeting leading to days toward month end with no food, an affinity for extremely carb heavy meals resulting in very full bellies, many mouths to feed and plenty of dogs around to take care of whatever scraps weren’t consumed, the idea of leftovers was completely foreign.
The first day I had brought a pasta dish which should have been enough for Anne and a few people to eat for at least two meals. As we couldn’t go into her house there was no other real place to eat than right there amongst the mourners. It felt incredibly rude to eat in front of people, but I reasoned that there was also an element of rudeness of so many people just showing up and moving onto someone’s lawn because of their beliefs, which were different than hers, and she was supposed to be mourning. One might wonder if perhaps Anne hadn’t thought about some of the finer points of difference between her and her husband’s backgrounds prior to their marriage (and indeed I did wonder, a great deal in fact) but at this late stage in the game it was all a bit irrelevant. So my hopeful little leftovers were soon consumed by the village elder men, who also had the nerve to make faces as they ate (hey I never claimed to be Martha Freaking Stewart but cut a girl a break, it wasn’t nasty face worthy!).
Three more days of this cooking and schlepping food across the village in the rain followed. The chaos at Anne’s guest house continued.
Mourning Management became my new job description during this week. I was rarely at the clinic and when I was there most of my coworkers were asking why I had left Anne. Back at the ranch, most of villagers spent their days sitting around, (which came to be quite a problem as it seemed that we were in the Serongan Monsoon Season- the few days out of the year that it rained or was at least misty for four days straight.) blowing the circuitry with their ever increasing number of cell phone chargers being plugged into too many adaptors in one outlet (I don’t blame them-free electricity!) and demanding hot water for tea. The old men seemed to sit (or place their walking sticks- I was constantly tripping like it was my job) directly in any pathway, chatting loudly in various languages (chatting loudly sounds like yelling and arguing to the untrained ear, and made finding a place to have a delicate phone conversation informing someone of a friend or family member’s death additionally challenging) while Anne and I and various other “Westerners” struggled to make lists of people who had called, who needed to be called back, details about tents and planes and transport and food and arrangements. Eventually, as is custom, Anne had to purchase a couple cows and goats to be slaughtered and get many bags of various starches brought over from her store to be prepared in an improvised kitchen of huge cauldrons over open fires which sprung up under corrugated iron roofs tied between trees and poles which appeared out of nowhere. The place was beginning to look like a refugee camp.
Eventually (FINALLY!) we laid Willy to rest. The funeral ended up being a big production of political grandstanding, advertising plugs for the funeral home, and eulogies galore. My personal send off ended up being that I threw together an impromptu choir to sing Amazing Grace (God bless the amazing harmonizing abilities of the Batswana. I was able to get the words for 4 verses –several via text message thanks to a certain missionary kid- I owe ya a beer, buddy- and main melody and they immediately harmonized with it, learning it in the span of an afternoon.) which is a bit more recognizable for the “Westerners” in the crowd than the Setswana hymns, which are pretty impossible to follow. I cut out during hour 3, as I reasoned that I had properly said my goodbyes.
The whole experience for me was a huge lesson in the pervasiveness of culture, and reiterated for me exactly how deep my own culture runs through my veins. It is in times of what would universally be considered trial that we most readily fall back into our own norms and values, and in which we become most quick to be irritated with and judge the beliefs of others. It’s the rituals and standards and expectations which we hold sacred that, when challenged, bring us most quickly to defend our own as right regarding issues that are so ingrained in us that we may have never questioned them before ourselves. These are the situations that may lead us to deem others as most wrong, strange, or in some way bankrupt when in reality they are just different, born out of the same sense of the respect for the sacred (although not observing it in the same ways) as our own. It has been one of my most valuable learning experiences in Seronga to date.
Let me be clear that I don’t mean to make complete light of the situation surrounding Willy’s death. I've observed that the Batswana tend to have what I would consider a more healthy viewpoint surrounding death, most specifically that it is indeed a natural part of the living process. Willy's passing is unfortunate, although he lived a long, productive life (he was 73) and did some positive things for the people of Seronga. I found the circumstances surrounding the whole process of the funeral rather than the death itself to be humorous, and as with most things in this village, if one does not laugh (at least a little) one may never stop crying.
So now, with the realization that I’ve wordily recounted the details of one funeral in a rural African village, and the contributing social and cultural factors that make it so interesting as a foreigner, as well as my own reactions in as many pages as I wrote my paper on Japanese policing techniques for my international criminology class which counted for 50% of my grade when I was schooling in London I shall sign off. With one of the longest run on sentences of my life. Cheers.
Willy Phillips, RIP
Died 28 January 2009, buried 1 February 2009
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