After only 6 weeks of being here, I have already attended my first funeral. I wonder how many of these I will see in my two years here. The 64-year-old woman who died yesterday was a grandmother to two girls that I play soccer with. That was the only reason I decided to go, that, and community integration.
We got to the funeral kinda late (story of my life), so we stood at the door just listening. The whole little Catholic church was packed full. She had 6 children and no telling how many grandchildren. I counted about 11 at first glance, but I’m sure there were more. Small families don’t exist here on my little mountain. They sang a little and said some prayers, but they didn’t really say much about her life. I don’t know if this is normal or not, but it felt pretty impersonal. After that, a group of about 8 men carried out the atud (coffin) on their shoulders. It was merely a grey box. The family followed, wrapped in each other’s arms, sobbing, and holding candles and flowers. We followed the coffin down the hill to the cemetery, through the mud left behind from the previous 4 days of rain from hurricane Ida. (Today was the first time we’ve seen the sun since last Wednesday.)
Areli, my friend from the soccer team, turned and saw me with tears running down her face. I immediately teared up too and had to hold back a sudden flood of emotions and I’m not really sure why. I forced a smile and continued in file with the rest of the community. The woman’s name was Maria. She was an active member of the community, the church, a midwife--delivering lots of the children of S.A.--and also a member of the women’s group with whom I bake bread, which I didn’t know about until today. She also was Lenca (the indigenous group here).
As I have mentioned before, Lenca are a very tiny people. So with Maria’s whole Lenca family and then the mostly Lenca community, I felt pretty out of place. Picture about 200+ tiny, dark-skinned, black hair to their butts people following a coffin down the hill with a seemingly tall, fair-skinned, redhead, blue-eyed girl walking right in the middle of them. Sometimes I just feel so out of my own skin here, and today was no exception. I’m sure I looked ridiculous, but probably not as ridiculous as I felt as I tried hopelessly to blend in--a lost cause.
When we got to where she was to be buried, the men tried to lower the coffin by hand into the shallow hole that had been dug this morning without much avail. The had to find some rope and awkwardly lowered the box into the grave between two mango trees. There was a small band with a guitar and a violin that sang our way there and many hail Mary’s were said as the men struggled with the atud. They finally got it in place and then all the sudden, they started mixing cement, threw in some rebar, and began putting the cement over the grave right then and there. It was awkward and strange, but someone told me as we were leaving that’s how it’s done when the family doesn’t have very much money. The cement is even a step up in a cemetery where most graves are dirt and a wooden cross. To have a service do all that stuff for your family, complete with grave-side chairs costs and is rare.
I guess that’s what community integration is all about. I think I’d rather go to a wedding next time though.
Sorry for the gloomy post, but I just wanted to share with you what I experienced today.
No comments:
Post a Comment