Mourning From Africa . . .

Bon soir,

A cool east wind has chilled me to the bone. I've just finished praying with Sarah and for the first time in a long time settle down to sleep without earplugs. As I snuggle next to the warmth of my wife I drift off to the chirping of the myriad Béré night insects. All things slowly fade off into dreamland. But, just before starting the night visions, I am reluctantly tugged back to reality by a soft tap, tap, tap on the door.

"Médecin?"

I groggily reply "Oui?"

"C'est David, one of the patients just died. The family traded a bicycle in to get their ox cart out of hawk so they can take the body back to their village but I can't get the combination lock on the gate to open. I called Boniface and he can't get it open either."

As I zoom back out of the tunnel of the subconscious I hear fading in the wails, groans and shrieks of a Nangjere mourning ritual. I pull up the mosquito net and grab my flashlight.

"J'arrive," I mumble as I search for some pants and a ragged t-shirt. I pull my clothes on, punch open the metal door, slip on some flip flops by the slim light of my torch and pad reluctantly after David towards the hospital.

Aaaaaaaahhhhhh! Ohhh, ohhhh, ohhhhhhh! Aye yi yi yi yi yi yi! The ghoulish sounds of the dead man's family waft across the campus as if straight out of nightmare. Am I really awake? I follow David to the gate where the eerie, flickering glow of a kerosene lamp dimly lights up the shadows of peoples arms waving and dim forms moving back and forth and rocking up and down.

I shine the flashlight on the lock. Three turns to the right, stop at 30. Turn back left past 30 and stop at 20. Back to the right till 02 and tug! The padlock falls open. I remove the chain as David and Boniface both click their approval in the background followed by a few "ça, ça, ça's" and "kai, kai, kai's". David opens the gate and two shadowy forms silently slip in past us.

I look outside to where the dancing orange flame lights up a series of rolled up mats, three bicycles tightly in a row, a couple of bundles wrapped up in cloth and tied at the top, and a group of what appears to by women as judged by the shadows from their head and body wraps. One woman with a bundle, probably a baby, strapped to her back is waving back and forth with arms flailing the air as she marches five steps forward, turns and five steps back in a never ending dance of death.

The others are kneeling or sitting in a tight bunch with various head bobs and arm movements rhythmically accompanying the chants, wails, moans and groans in a macabre symphony of fear.

A man walks up with an agonizing yell tearing from his throat as he beats his breast. Dogs bark in chorus in the background as a cat yelps in a discordant cacophony straight from hell.

I find anger and pity and sorrow welling within me. It's so unnecessary and disheartening. The sorrow is not real. These same people left their relative sick for a week without treatment followed by three days in a coma before coming to the hospital. To pay $20 for his treatment is all but impossible. Yet, now, they will spend hundreds of dollars on entertaining and feeding the relatives and friends who will come to pay their condolences. Everyone will gather and make a lot of noise to "prove" how sorrowful they are and to make sure that his spirit doesn't come back to haunt them because they weren't sad enough at his passing.

It makes me sick to sense all the fear of death and spirits and hauntings that I hear in their crys. To see and know the ignorance that keeps them captive breaks my heart. I know the one who has promised to "free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" (Heb 2:15). But it seems so overwhelming to fight against so much superstition and tradition and fear.

I show Boniface and David how to work the lock as the two men who'd entered re-emerge out of the darkness pulling the ox cart past us and out the gate. We put the chain back around as the two watchmen click and mutter their excitement at learning how the combination works. I walk back through the tall grass towards my bed as the chilling sounds of the Nangjere fade again into the background soon to be lost to the darkness of the African bush as it swallows up it's children once again in its bottomless pit of despair.

James