Last Saturday I went to a joint funeral at the church for a 75 year-old man (whose family I had visited earlier with Mahoi) and a 34 year-old woman from the support group who had died from complications of AIDS. I had never been to a joint funeral before, and the church was absolutely packed with more people than were at my brother's wedding. That comparison illustrates well the differences between American funerals and those in the townships. As Loomi (umfundisi's son) said, "Africans treat funerals the way Americans treat weddings. They are a huge event." The service lasted about an hour and a half, and like other church services involved more singing and dancing than you would find in European/American services. As umfundisi said, Africans allow music to minister to them in a way Europeans and Americans might not understand. It is a very important part of the culture, visible in any church service, visit to a sick person, protest march, informal gathering, etc. Otherwise, it wasn't much different from a funeral back home. Zethu (umfundisi's wife) told me after the service that the attendance was actually quite small. If it were not winter the crowds would have overflowed the church, spilling out the doors into the yard. Still, it took ten minutes to get out with all of the cars and hired buses filling the street. Most people can't afford a car, but there are bus companies that can be hired out for such occasions, and dozens of people will crowd into an old school bus. Because there is no real distinction between immediate and extended family, and because even relocated to the townships people often remain very connected to their clan in the Eastern Cape, the numbers who come to funeral expand quickly.
At the burial of the woman there was again a lot of singing, and I am always impressed by the way groups of people here will automatically sing in multi-part harmony spontaneously. One song that is often sung at church after the names of those who have died of AIDS are spoken, and a message is given, was sung at the burial. It goes "Never give up. Never give up. You must never, never, never, never, never, never give up!" The burial was several miles away in a much more rural area, and the cemetery was far nicer than the one in Guguletu, which is straight out of a Western film, with crosses sticking out of mounds of bare, dry dirt crowded together in a cemetery nearly filled to capacity with all the deaths from AIDS.
Back in Guguletu, we went to the home of the dead woman's family. Saturdays are the funeral day in the townships. When there is a death in a family (not an infrequent occurence, especially given the prevalence of HIV/AIDS) family will come in from far away for the funeral, which in this area mostly means the Eastern Cape, which was the Xhosa "homeland" during apartheid. It can sometimes take weeks from a person's death until her funeral since family and clan often need to wait for a paycheck before they can afford a bus ticket to Cape Town. Several days before the funeral, the family will put up a large canopy tent that overflows the front yard (if they have one) or else just goes out into the street. After the burial, a couple hundred people showed up at the house to pay their respects, and as is customary everyone was fed. And not just sandwiches, but a plate of hot dishes. The food is usually catered, I was told, but it is still a staggering number of mouths to feed. Dr. Xapile (umfundisi) told me that there is a real problem with people who have no connection to the family showing up at the house in the best clothes they have in hope that they will sneak in and get a meal. Outside there are basins to wash your hands, but it is considered very bad luck to wash your hands until the family has done so. Old traditions said anyone who did this would be cursed. After washing you grab your handful of mealies (cooked corn kernels) to munch on and go inside.
All of this must be terribly expensive, and put a tremendous burden on families who don't have much to begin with. Tony (the American pharmacist whose own blog is linked to the left) told me that people pay for these huge funeral events by buying into insurance plans where they pay a little each month to ensure that funds will be available when the time comes. Now American middle-class folks pay insurance for things like this too, but that looks very different in a community where most people otherwise don't take out insurance policies because they are too expensive. Not being able to pay for a loved one's funeral would be embarrassing, and those who don't have the money generally bury their loved ones on a weekday with little ceremony, and sometimes without even a casket.
Funerals and death are a much more commonly accepted part of life here than at home in the States. Umfundisi tells me that there is a funeral at the church nearly every Saturday, and on any Saturday you will see the big tents in front of several houses in the area as you drive around. Even without HIV, the mortality rate here would be much higher than at home. Here there is not the luxury of denying or ignoring death, because you are faced with it every day. Yet the sense of community, of people who will come to your side when you become ill is much more prevalent here than in the States, where we are often concerned with privacy to the extent that we keep out people who would want to support us if they knew what was going on. There are certainly people who die alone and forgotten here, but that is far less common than in the US. I still can't imagine 400 people at a funeral, however. Cultural differences are just that, and there is really no normative way to do a funeral, but that knowledge doesn't make some things any less strange. This was just the tip of the iceberg as far as cultural differences go, of course. I will report more later on, and try to add a picture to this post at some point.
All of this must be terribly expensive, and put a tremendous burden on families who don't have much to begin with. Tony (the American pharmacist whose own blog is linked to the left) told me that people pay for these huge funeral events by buying into insurance plans where they pay a little each month to ensure that funds will be available when the time comes. Now American middle-class folks pay insurance for things like this too, but that looks very different in a community where most people otherwise don't take out insurance policies because they are too expensive. Not being able to pay for a loved one's funeral would be embarrassing, and those who don't have the money generally bury their loved ones on a weekday with little ceremony, and sometimes without even a casket.
Funerals and death are a much more commonly accepted part of life here than at home in the States. Umfundisi tells me that there is a funeral at the church nearly every Saturday, and on any Saturday you will see the big tents in front of several houses in the area as you drive around. Even without HIV, the mortality rate here would be much higher than at home. Here there is not the luxury of denying or ignoring death, because you are faced with it every day. Yet the sense of community, of people who will come to your side when you become ill is much more prevalent here than in the States, where we are often concerned with privacy to the extent that we keep out people who would want to support us if they knew what was going on. There are certainly people who die alone and forgotten here, but that is far less common than in the US. I still can't imagine 400 people at a funeral, however. Cultural differences are just that, and there is really no normative way to do a funeral, but that knowledge doesn't make some things any less strange. This was just the tip of the iceberg as far as cultural differences go, of course. I will report more later on, and try to add a picture to this post at some point.
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