Funerals and Fun

July 1, 2008

On Saturday, I arrived home from class to find Bahati, Rasheedy and Iddy home alone. Now normally I would assume that I was baby-sitting to find a 2, 8 and 10 year old home alone, but not the case here, they were watching me. They got water and heated it for my bath, fed me and we had a great time. They let loose a bit with their parents gone and it was funny to me to see how groomed they already are to be a Mama and Baba themselves. I feel so childish in comparison. We did have some fun though, when a neighbor came to call, for some reason the kids didn't want to talk to this particular neighbor, so instead of answering the door we kept Iddy quiet and hid around the house. The neighbor was very persistent so the game went on for quite a while. The kids seemed unsure at first if I would play along, but they thought is was awesome when I did. It was our own silly version of hide- and -seek.
The next morning I woke up looking forward to my day off and reading a good book (I have already finished three since being here, which is a lot when you have homework, class and family everyday). However, I was quite disappointed when my Mama came into my room and told me to put on a gown. I was like really-- I don't have a "gown". So she got down one of hers- long sleeved and to my feet and said something about Babu, so I assumed we were going to visit my grandfather who must be really conservative. Then came the weird part: she got down some cloth and covered my head and wrapped it in front of my face so that my eyes were the only part showing. My Mama and Dada, Mwanne, were also dressed like this. I felt like I was in Afghanistan and part of "The Kite Runner", but I must say it was nice to not have people immediately know I was a foreigner. We walked to a shabby house where there was many women sitting on mats in the yard. I was trying to figure out why we were waiting when some language barrier broke and I understood that a man had died there the night prior- I was suddenly at a Muslim funeral!?! It was hard to describe, the men were inside cleaning the body and then they brought it out the backdoor of the house. The women then came into the front door, while the men sat outside. We sat in the hall and said a series of prayers accompanied by hand motions. There were some herbs burning, presumably a cleansing of the home. Then some platters of rice and veggies were brought in- women and men eat separately, women out of one dish men in another room out of another. So we all sat on the floor eating rice out of one dish with our hands. Then we said more prayers, paid our respects and went home. I felt really lucky to be included in this event, it is something I will always remember from Africa, a time when National Geographic was more than a magazine and I was able to jump into the picture.