Death, History and Tradition

April 18th, 2007 Old Bulawayo-Ko Bulawayo-“Place of Slaughter”

This day I learned about Death, History and Tradition

Godwill, Sihle, their very cute fat 3 month old boy, Jenni, Kotah and I went out to the historic site of Old Bulawayo rather than attending the Zimbabwe Independence Day Ceremony. Apparently the only people who attend that nowadays are those who go for the free food and beer.

On the way to Old Bulawayo, we had some discussions going in the car. The car is always a great place for talking. Godwill was telling us that his aunt had passed away two days ago and as one of the oldest brothers in the family he had to help arrange the funeral processes. Godwill told us that the cost for a hearse to pick up a deceased person from the place that they died and transport them to the morgue then to the burial site was $4.5 million dollars. And a simple casket is $3 million. All of the family is supposed to pitch in to help pay for the funeral expenses, all those who are working anyways. Traditionally, the person has to be buried in their tribal burial ground near their ancestor’s rural home where their grandfather is buried. Godwill was explaining that economies are now getting in the way of tradition. They had had a cousin pass away as well so Godwill and the other family members took a step away from tradition and transported the two bodies together; they were going to the same burial ground. That saved the relatives nearly $4 million dollars. On top of all these extra expenses the family must travel out to the rural home where the burial will take place and stay there with the hosts for a week. The host has to provide food for all of these extra people for a week. It doesn’t matter where the person lived their life, they have to be buried at the ancestor’s rural home and a wife is always buried at her husband’s tribal burial ground. One week after the person has been buried the family has a wake. It’s a feast, they kill a beast, normally a goat, and the men all sit around and divide up the deceased’s belongings amongst themselves. The widow has no say in what happens to her husband’s belongings. Her and her children quite often end up with nothing, but his family is supposed to take care of them. People are starting to write wills now to avoid leaving the wife with nothing but that often results in legal battles so the widow and children still suffer. Its funny that this happens when the tradition focuses so much on taking care of extended family. For example, for a long time Godwill was the only man of his family who was working and his wife was working. He and his wife were paying for the whole family to live. That’s the brothers, sister in laws, unmarried sisters, parents and uncles and their children. I wondered why they lived in a tiny apartment when they have two incomes. Two of his brothers are now working so it is not as much of a crunch as they support the family now too. This seems to be tradition that several African tribes share.

In Ndebele and Shona tribes specifically, and I suspect others too, cremation of loved ones is out of the question. It goes against their belief that the ancestors are the living dead who rise out of the grave to protect the descendents. And those ancestors are the mediators between the living and God. These peoples believe that you have to ask your good dead ancestor spirits to talk to God for you. There are also the bad dead ancestor spirits who work against the good ones. After the funeral they have ceremonies to summon the spirit of the person. The headstone is not placed until a year after so that it allows time for the spirit to get out of the body before the grave is sealed.

These traditions date back to before the 1850s when the Ndebele tribes was located in South Africa area of the continent. The Old Bulawayo site history talks mostly about the Ndebele tribe’s history, since they were the ones to settle in this area. I learned at Old Bulawayo that the Ndebele tribes did just what those European settlers did when they colonized parts of the earth except I think Ndebele were worse. Prior to the 1850’s the area was occupied by Bushman Tribes. These were nomadic, purely hunter gatherer peoples. They did not build structures or cultivate land as they moved around in vast areas following herds. When the Ndebele people moved North into these lands they decided to stay. The red soils were known to be very productive. The Ndebele mostly killed off the bushman tribe in the Bulawayo area and the rest were forced away from these lands. The belief was that you had to cleanse the land of all of the other occupiers. The Bushmen were not fighters. Ndebele put a lot of emphasis on fighting. They had soldiers, weapons and would practice their skills. Apparently the short men of the tribe were who the soldiers practiced their killing techniques on. You may notice that the Ndebele men are mostly very tall. A funny thing - the president today is a Short man. No wonder there is paranoia within him.

The Ndebele set up their village at the site of Old Bulawayo. The village has been partly reconstructed and an interpretive center built displaying various artifacts, old photos and signs with lots of words on them. If you go there be prepared to read lots. There is really good information there and nobody to talk to you about it. The structures were reconstructed on the original foundations. There is a guardhouse, the king’s preferred sleeping hut, three wife’s huts, two auntie’s huts, and a brick structure that was called the king’s house. The king’s house was described in early trader’s diaries having two store rooms, a throne room and living quarters behind the throne room. All of these structures are surrounded by a circular enclosure that they call a kraal. This is constructed of sharpened timber poles. Within this kraal is the cattle pen too. These cattle were very important as the number of cattle you have indicates your status. This belief carries on today with some families which is to their detriment. With the hard economic times of today you’d expect that those with big herds are eating well. They could slaughter or sell a cow to have food on their plates but they don’t because that would mean they are one less cow in status. These traditional people would rather watch the cattle have babies, grow old and die than to kill one of them. The cattle enclosure is also made of poles. The huts are a beehive shape; they call them Zulu type huts. The Ndebele apparently branched off from Zulu tribes many many years ago. The huts are framed with wood ribs placed about a foot apart and bent perpendicular to each other and tied with grass rope until the beehive frame is created. Then there are layers of grass/thatch mats laid over top of the frame. A braded grass net is draped over top of all of the matting to keep everything in place. I was surprised that they were able to have fires inside of these huts without the whole thing burning up. I was amazed at the history of the Ndebele culture and now how history is repeating itself with the current president being Shona and trying to “clean up” Zimbabwe.

April 19, 2007 Not to Hope Fountain

We were looking forward to going out to Fountain of Hope again to follow up with what we taught the teen group two weeks ago. Unfortunately Elizabeth was involved in a fender bender and had to deal with it through the police. That took the majority of the morning so we were not able to go. I’ll have to ask Elizabeth to tell them we are sorry we couldn’t come. In the afternoon Jenni had a counseling session at her home so she thought it would be good to take us somewhere instead of hiding out in the house for two hours. Jenni took us out to River Café and gift shops. Dakotah and I had a great time looking around and buying little things. They have some great art work there at reasonable prices but most of the stuff I liked was too big or too fragile to buy. We picked out a few things though. Shelley - I got you some paper…. And I got a drum for me. I like it, I like it a lot…Bang Bang… Kotah and I had fun playing cards in the garden while we waited for Jenni to come back and get us. This week has been a little less fruitfull with the national holiday in the middle there. Tomorrow we head to Khayelihle, a children’s home for orphans and kids taken off the streets. I’ll bring balloons…

---

---