Dying in A Different Way

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Death is hard to ignore in Uganda. It is everywhere. Differences in the way people view death first became apparent to me as I watched people testing for HIV/AIDS. How could people, who had a good chance of being told that they had a terminal disease, breeze through like they were going for a regular check-up? Having tested, I could feel the sweat on my palms as I awaited the results, despite being almost certain that I was negative. “I don’t know how they do it.” I observed to my friend Junior. “Ah for us it is not important; if it is not AIDS then something else will get you.”

…and ‘something else’ usually does. When you ask where someone is, a common response is “they have to go to the village, they have lost someone.” In Luganda, there is a special way to say sorry that someone has died,Ngo Kitalo. There are two main reasons for this. The first is simply people die more regularly here. As Junior pointed out there are numerous ways to die here – AIDS, malaria, TB, road accidents, ‘nodding disease’, pneumonia, the list is endless.

The second is that dying is a more sociable activity. No one dies alone. During Lauren and I’s first few weeks in Uganda, there seemed to be an endless stream of funeral invitations from people that had ‘lost someone’. We refused them all; it seemed wrong to us to go to the funeral of someone we didn’t know, gatecrash someone else’s grief.

A question from Ronald first opened my eyes to our private way of dealing with death. “I heard in the UK that you have to have a card to attend a funeral?” After initial confusion, we established that you normally have to be invited to funerals. He looked shocked. “If you did that here, no one would come…and the community wouldn’t speak to you again.” To him, and many Ugandans our way of organising our mourning was horribly exclusive, ‘if you don’t have a ticket then you are not coming in’. To me, having a lot of people turn up to a funeral that never knew the person seemed horribly intrusive.

My only first hand experience of a burial in Uganda came when Suzan, a work colleague of mine, lost her father. I didn’t know him but I felt sufficiently close to her and sensitised to the culture that I felt comfortable going. I arrived at the end of the speeches by the priests, outside their family home. It was not a problem coming in late; people were coming and going constantly. There were around 300 people there; I was told that this was very small as we were in Kampala; in rural areas 1,000 people is not unusual.

We moved to the burial site to see people struggling with the coffin. These were not professionals, just local men; they nearly dropped the coffin. The priest said blessings over the grave, men started shovelling dirt onto the coffin. A woman walked away from the grave, got down on her knees and started wailing hysterically. Every time she seemed to be quietening down, she would erupt into a fresh round of screaming. I looked at Suzan, she had broken down, sobbing silently; her mum stood solemnly tears rolling down her cheeks. I could feel my whole body at this un-English outpuring of emotion.

“Who was that woman?” I asked on the way home. “Just someone from the community.” A friend from work replied. “Do they know her well?” “I don’t think so.” I thought back to a time I had been watching a news story about a man who had been killed with my host family. I had asked who the three women sobbing relentlessly by the side of the road were, my host sister laughed “those ones are professional mourners.”

I felt indignant for Suzan, this woman had performed her amateur dramatics at her father’s funeral just for some attention, but her behaviour was acceptable. Grief is communal is here and shared amongst the community.

In Bugandan culture, mourning the dead is done in two stages. The first is ‘okusula ku mufu’. The translation, sleeping on the dead person, caused me some alarm when I was asked early on if we slept on the dead person in England. A few days after death the body will be buried and friends and family descend on the house and stay there for a few days (sleeping on the dead person) to comfort those closest to the deceased and grieve collectively.

The second stage 'okwabya olumbe' (bursting the disease) comes a few months after the burial. It is linked to Walumbe, (the jealous brother of Nambi who followed the first man and woman down from heaven and took their children as slaves) who is believed to be the cause of disease and death. His spirit lingers around the dead person after death and a ceremony is needed to drive this spirit away. This ceremony is a celebration and, these days at least, deals with practical matters such as who will take responsibility for the deceased’s children, land etc.

Whilst I may not believe in the theory behind the Bugandan cultural tradition, it is an aspect of the culture that I admire. There is a mourning period, where grief is openly displayed but there is also celebration, long enough after death for it not to feel forced. The absence of fear about death is also refreshing, though terrifying when transporting yourself anywhere!

Practically these death rituals are coming under pressure. More modern/Western thinkers are starting to question whether the economy can afford people spending so long burying the dead. At work we have a limited list of next of kin who we are allowed time off to attend their funeral. When I returned to Kazo recently, they were digging up graves and moving bodies to cheaper rural land. Traditionally this is unthinkable but the value of land on the outskirts of Kampala is rocketing and no one will buy it with the spirit of the dead on it. There are things, it seems, that can transform even the strictest cultural norms.

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Comments

[Dougal]

death
Hi David, another thoughtful and moving piece from you. I really enjoy your blog and can see how much you have thought about the events and behaviour you observe. Thanks for sharing it all.