Mourn the Dead

How we mourn the dead has ritual and when we remember the dead still with a lot of respect. One of the things I encountered at my class here in America tells a different story.        

            Our teacher, as she told us once, enjoyed a “dark humor”. My classmates has fully understood this and also engaged with her. Our teacher was recalling the death of her grandpa in relation to topic of the day, and she was saying, “he was a drunk and also patient of cancer” She goes on telling us how he never stopped drinking even after diagnosed with cancer. All of us were listening with attention. Ironically, “he died of car accident on his way to a library to return his books, and of all days on that particular day he never had drink.”

            Our teacher looking to the ceiling, “I really miss him guys”. Partly when she told us the story, she told it with tone of exaggeration and excitement but not like any one grieving from the past. I think one of the student notices this and said, “at least he managed to finish his books.” I was shrinking with embarrassment. The teacher was smiling and some of the students too.

            We start remembering our deceased relatives saying, “GOD blesses his soul-nefsun yemarewena”. The listener would be listening with intent and using that moment to show that he is sharing the loss, as if it happened recently than years ago. I recall the third day after funeral that is seleste, the day which relatives mourn the loss afresh with tears and loud cries. That is cultural difference. I value that community groups-edir that we form in cases of such loss so that person would find comfort with presence of them. I am not saying the whole idea is crystal pure but I like the sense of unity and togetherness in the community it brings though we mourn a lot. What do you think?

Prophet of Change

           At times like this my tears are like a river to wash up all the sorrows I had. Sometimes my tears would not subsidize my sorrows. Instead my sorrow will run through my veins and began to bleed my internal organ giving me a terrible pain. I do have no strength to fight but I know that “a voiceless man is as good as dead.”
I don’t know when things began to change, but at first it all looks firm as a marriage bound with the will of GOD.
          I remember how I could forget those pictures, vividly. Besides, every year at our “libration day”, that is how they tell us to remember it, the liberators. The liberation from tyranny of an evil regime but as far as I know we never been colonized. Shall I hold a rifle and join some “liberators” at war front? To kill my own brothers and sisters so I could save my country. What makes my country a place to live? We, who inhabits it, who have a different opinion, culture, religion, and so on.
         We have gone fighting among ourselves from what I remember and what I read in history class. Back then and now like curse blood shading is a reality.
I was telling you about the “pictures” from the “liberation day”. Yes, each year this similar scene will be aired on television, which was captured almost seventeen years ago.
        A parade of military men and vehicles; a first footstep in to the capital-a tank covered with green leaves, a camouflage. Ironically the children running along both sides of the tank with a raptures joy, some holding small part of a leaf branch, symbolizing peace and elder men and women at a distant were welcoming them.

“we had gone on marches of victory and I do not think there was anyone mean enough in spirit to ask whether we knew the thing we were celebrating. Whose victory? Ours? It didn’t matter. We marched, and only a dishonest fool will look back on his boyhood and say he knew even then that there was no meaning in any of it is so funny now, to remember that we all thought we were welcoming victory. Or perhaps there is nothing funny here at all, and it is only that victory itself happens to be the identical twin of defeat” (Armah, The beautiful ones are not yetborn).
         It is no surprise that our so called “librators” turned out to be worse. This trend has gone for a more than half a century. African writer Okey Ndibe in his book “Arrow of rain: “ I shudder at the behavior of our so called leaders. It’s hard to believe these were the same leaders who asked us to drop the dirt and fight the whiteman. Peasants and workers alike answered the call. Then, when the white man left, what did these leaders do? They took the owner’s corner in the pleasure cars abandoned by Whiteman. They ran in to the mansions the British left behind and barricade themselves there. Then they began to remind us that we were not one people, afterall; that we are Husa or Yoruba or Igbo or Kanuri or Nupe or Edo or Efik or Fulfulde or Tiv, lik the British they discovered they could rule if they divided the ruled…….”
         Is this how we think? Is this how to lead a country? When each year people are dying from famine, disease, malnutrition…you keep feeding us with words that are distractive to say the least.
         I go outside going to school, along my way on a mini bus or going on foot in a short distance, I found our big family and my big house roof blown away.
The sullen heat of the day seems not only talking the morning fog also most of its inhabitant. For the unlucky ones who took the roofless, big house, as their home. You will find them on the streets begging. With drugs and alcohol I see their youth fading away.
          Okey Ndibe on the same book, he said “you hear all these stories about ministers using public funds to buy cars for their mistresses or acquiring European Castles for themselves. How can you think it? You go to any village and you are shocked by the squalid life there. The dust roads. Hospitals that have neither drugs nor doctors. The polluted stream water the people drinks the lack of electricity. Then, as you were trying to come to grips with a reality that seems to belong in the Middle Ages, up comes a Rolls Royce carrying some minister to remind you that you are not in the sixteenth century after all but in the twentieth. Then you are faced with pathetic irony of the villagers lining up to hail the nabob in the Royce-the very man who has plundered their country…”
         Aren't these the reality in almost all African countries, today? When are we going to see our prophet of change?

N.B the whole idea comes from the two books mentioned

1. Okey Ndibe, Arrows of Rain http://www.amazon.com/Arrows-Rain-Okey-Ndibe/dp/0435906577

2. Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

http://www.amazon.com/Beautyful-Ones-Born-African-Writers/dp/0435905406

 

Take Me Back!

Have you gone to public chat rooms? A person would ask you “asl”? Anyways, I would reply to him/her. The problem is most of them would ignore you the minute you told them you are from Africa. This is true for most part in chat rooms. They see Africa as a continent riddled with famine and hunger and never changing and backward people. I think this people are stuck on time. There are facts but perverted.

The irony is that, unbalanced trade, lack of good governance and growing civil wars has made African people to seek refuge to the same people who has took their ancestors life and plundered their wealth. I am not taking the failures of our government on the west, but they were and are still part of the reason.

          As a result, family of three has started their journey along with other villagers out from the famine struck villages of north western Ethiopia. This was the late 80’s, with already dead livestock and dried stream of water; and promised but undelivered food aid. It was time to make a long journey to neighboring country Sudan. During the wet season, with the harvest, it would have been short journey to reach the border.
           A father means the head of the family working in the field. Now during this famine season he would curse the day he started building family. Since his wife is very tired to walk on her own and his child still trying to suck milk out the mother’s breast. And each second the child would try to make sound, muffled. There is nothing in his power, to change what is happening from happening. At last gesture of defiance of his weakness, he take the child, half way from their destination, from the mother already loose grasp. My child for give me….he whispered to himself than to his child..forgive me… please…his words keep fading and coming up… for I have brought you to this harsh world, but no one seems to hear or care.

           Two, three, four seconds gone and the child seemed to sooth under the sobbing sound of his father; but he was gone, and not returning back.  His wife stopped and squatted as if the death of her child struck her; Seconds later, she lay on her side, on the dry barrel land. She seems to shrink bending every part of her finally resting her head on her knees. Now, she has gone too; forever, and it seems she has opted to be in fetal position; going back to her maternal bosom.

         No tears and only humming sound began to come out from the father. Seconds ago, father and husband, and year ago an elder of the village with cattle and goats.
There is no ceremony to follow the loss of family member; the wife of the village elder and child has died. But, two priests began to assist facing towards East making the final words to now dead mother and child. ..now lord receive the soul of your humble servants ……………….
           How many times have we heard people from Africa dying on their journey to Europe or even to go within their own continent? How many lives has travelled with one of the refuge-child, wife, brother and sisters or parents waiting to be feed…hope has faded in some far land or deep in the sea where the gods of the village has no reach.
*** In the memory of those perished and including the unknown mother and child in the picture