100 Days of Mourning

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When Justin and I first found out that our Peace Corps service would be in Vanuatu, my Dad started e-mailing me random tidbits of information; like that the national anthem is titled "Yumi Yumi Yumi" (sorry Dad, that means "you-me you-me you-me" not "yummy yummy yummy"). He sent one stating that Vanuatu is considered to be the happiest country in the world. A central belief of mine is that to truly experience one extreme, you must also experience its opposite. To know love, you must also know hate; to appreciate joy, you must also appreciate pain. In Vanuatu, they earn the title of being the happiest country in the world probably because these people know how to mourn.

On the day we arrived on Maewo to move in, a man had died earlier that mourning. Just last weekend we reached the 100th day anniversary of his death, and during that same week, another woman died. Since the traditional morning period is 100 days, this past week has been a crash course on the Maewo customs of mourning the dead. And they are beautiful.

When the woman, who is in fact my "bumbu" or grandma, died, the school let out in the afternoon. All of the secondary students and staff went to the house of the woman and her family to cry. We walked about twenty minutes to the house in the rain. My sister Sophie explained that this was not "God's rain" but "man's rain," caused by the tears of man. We walked on, some kids pulling giant banana or taro leaves to hold over their heads as botanical umbrellas. Sophie also told me that she didn't want to go because she was afraid she wouldn't be able to cry. On the walk down, I stewed over what that meant and if I would be expected to conjure up some tears on cue.

We slipped and skidded up the muddy footpath, worn from the recent foot traffic of people coming to cry. We could hear wailing from a good 200 yards away from the house. Once at the house, we saw people gathered under tarps and huddled close to houses to hide from the rain. We clustered outside the door of the house and paused, letting the sincere gravity and mood transfer to us as well. The initial comparison I had while standing there was that it felt like standing in line to go through a haunted house and hearing the screams and cries from inside. The students only stayed for a short time before heading back to their dorms, but Justin and I found our host families and stayed behind with them. As the student cluster dispersed to go home, I scooted off to the edge to stand with a group of women and take in the scene. People had walked from all over the island to come cry with the family. The close family members, like the siblings and children of the woman who died, sat on mats on the floor of the house with her body. As a new person or group came, they would walk up to the door, or sometimes go inside, and cry for a few moments. Some who went inside stayed there. The crying is like nothing I have ever heard before. There is no hiding it, no shame in the tears nor the emotion, no distinction of age or gender, everyone just lets go and moans and wails and sobs.

Outside the house, people gather and wait. Some people came and presented bolts of fabric, huge 25kg bags of rice, and custom mats to the men of the family who were stationed outside. The mats are only woven about two feet wide and then the extra leaf that is left on either side (which for regular mats is usually woven all the way to the end) is split into fine strings like a coarse hair. These gifts are all very practical as the family will give food to everyone who comes to mourn for the next 100 days and the fabric and mats are used for the burial. As I stood outside, an older man came to give be a banana leaf of food. As soon as the woman died, a cow was killed and prepared to be served with rice to all who came to "share their sorry" with the family. I still marvel at the efficiency with which all the details came together in a short amount of time. In a matter of hours, the tarps were hung to shield us from the rain, a cow was killed and cooked, and a grave was dug; not to mention the news traveling by word of mouth all over the island and then those family members locating a mat or food or fabric to present and getting themselves to the house. Sometimes even those used to functioning on island time can get things doen when they truly need to be.

The crying inside the house continued in waves; picking up when a new comer joined the group and calming down in turn. A most powerful moment came when the son finally arrived at the house. The son is captain of a ship that was in route to another island when his mom died. He got word via mobile phone, got off the ship at the next island and caught a flight to Ambae, since the airport on Maewo was not functional at the time. From Ambae he got in a small motor boat and headed to Maewo. His uncle and cousin heard the boat coming and met him on the shore to walk him to the house. Now the wailing came like surround sound as the three men made their way towards the house. The three men made their way towards the house. The trio walked slowly through the clusters of people who were dissolving into tears with them as they passed. By this moment, any worry of mine about whether or not I would be able to cry was diminished. The scene was too universally powerful. The women all carry tea towels or handkerchiefs to cover their heads or mouths or dry their tears. These they held in one hand, many with a baby fastened to their opposite hip by a strip of fabric. The volume of the cries intensified as the son entered the house and joined his family to mourn.

With all the immediate family present, the men outside started preparations for the burial. The ripped the fabric into strips about 6 inches wide and the length of the bolt. They unrolled all the custom mats and brought green coconut palms all under the tarp. The rain continued to come and go. The cries inside had quieted down a little, but when the men headed inside to bring out the body, they picked back up again; this time to a shrill, almost frenzied state. The criers from inside escorted the men as they carried their loved one under the tarp; sisters and daughters moaning and crying out. I picked out a few of the words from the local language: "Gwao" - mom, "ningo" - you, "gongi" - night. One of the daughters stumbled through her tears to a shrub at the side of the house that is used for woman's custom. She yanked a handful of yellow and green leaves and headed under the tarp. The body was wrapped, along with the leaves, from end to end in layers of mats and fastened with strips of fabric. The strong middle of the coconut palms served as a structure for the woman's body to rest in as her brothers, cousins, and grandsons hoisted it off the ground to be wrapped. The wrapping process took a good 20 minutes; a time that seemed even longer as the wailing continued escalating. It became desperate now as the body was out of sight and about to be put into the ground. As the layers were added, on man kept walking back and forth with a long stick that he was using to measure the length and width of the grave in comparison with the mass of mats and coconut palms that would now accompany the body to it's final resting place.

All of these graphic details are usually spared to us in the US. But here, the family fills the roles of the morticians, ushers, and even gravediggers. One trip back with the measuring stick revealed that the grave was a little too short, so in the midst of the crying and all, one young fellow, no doubt a relative to some degree, jumped into the hole and started scraping the edges away with a shovel to make it bigger. With the body and grave finally ready, a priest from the village church led us in a few hymns and prayers. As is common in churches here, the service was conducted in English. In the back of my mind, I wonder how much of the message everyone could follow; or if the power and conviction behind the voices and music transcend the literal meaning of the words and are comforting regardless of the language.

The crowd now shifted to gather around the grave (yes, the dead here are buried close to where they die, often in what we would call the "front yard") and the "yungfala" men carried the body and laid it down in the grave. Everyone stayed to look on as the men proceeded with the burial. There were two who used shovels and the rest did they best they could with their bare hands. The tension and energy had been building since we got to the house, probably since that morning, but as the burial proceeded, a sense of finality, relief, closure was reached. As intense of an experience as it was, I must grant that the ceremony was grounding and real. There can be no denial, no desperate wishes that death isn't real and that someone else, if not an empty coffin, was buried instead. When you bury your own family member with your bare hands, I'd imagine the physical effort created a constructive outlet for your pain; as would the shameless wailing; as would being directly involved with any other of the details. As painful as it would be, at least there is a clear beginning and a gradual, but still finite, end and the end of the 100 days of mourning.

Justin and I left to walk home with my host mama, minds and emotions reeling from the last five hours of life. As we stepped off the muddy footpath and onto the white coral road, my mama said, "Finish nao" (finished now, or, it's over now) and she was right. We didn't walk away from an empty grave with a coffin beside it waiting to be buried and we didn't walk away with our tears locked inside to be cried later in private. We left with the physical proof and emotional closure and now we were moving on to the next thing. Brilliant. Truly.

For the next 100 days, the family will host extended friends and family who may come from other islands to mourn. Certain days have specific traditions attached to them, such as a special kind of food (usually a variation of laplap) or custom dances. The reason is that each day signi9fies a different part of the body dieing or "losing it's fire." The 100th day is when the last part of the person's "fire" is gone and, in Justin's papa's words, after that day you "forget" about that person. All close family do not swim or shower for the first five days and the immediate male family members do not shave or cut their hair for the entire 100 day period. Justin is actually hoping to help write down the names and details on the traditions for the cultural center in the capital as well as for the island to have. Some of the small details are lost already; either forgotten or not passed on by the older generations.

So, as I mentioned earlier, we went to the 100 day ceremonies of another man just a few days after seeing the first day ceremonies of this one. Justin had marked the calendar and we made arrangements at school to leave Thursday afternoon and sleep at his host family's house for a few nights. On the eve of the 100th day, the custom is for there to be dancing from dusk to dawn. We wanted to witness as well as be part of the dance. But, soon after we arrived that afternoon, we found out that the custom dance could not take place because it is the season of Lent and the dance would be a joyous time when things should be somber in commemoration of the Christian holiday. Talk about a culture clash. We heard that sometimes special permission is granted for exceptions to the no dancing during Lent rule, but the family had not asked permission of the church in advance, so the dance was canceled.

The next day, plans for food went on as was traditional. The men gathered at the village nakamol to grind kava and story while the women baked laplap in the kitchens; this day it was taro with a nut called nangai ground up and baked with the taro mush. In the afternoon, the laplaps are divied up and parceled out to individuals. As far as signs of mourning, things were pretty calm. The final day for food and closure actually falls on the day after the 100th day. That morning, we sat at Justin's family's house in a different village and kids kept coming to their store to buy razors for their dads. That afternoon, we went to teh last "kakae," or meal, which is held only for close family, and noticed lots of bald, freshly shaven men; many of whom we had learned to recognize with their hair and full beards. Every laplap made for that day had coconut cream on top. After baking, the women burned any ras-ras (the tool used for grating root crops for laplap) that had been used to prepare food for the past 100 days. A fresh start for both genders.

As the laplap was handed out and people were preparing to go home for the night, the wailing picked up again. There were men holding hands and shedding their last tears for the man who died standing around at the nakamol. The women gathered around the grave and sobbed. It is a sobering sound, but I'm growing to realize it as a rather necessary and healthy part of mourning.

We'll learn more details as we head into the 100 days of my bumbu who just died and probably realized even more of the intricacies of the traditions.

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Photos

Banana Leaf Bundle
aka Island Tupperware. This time we had rice and beef inside, but you can use it for laplap too.

Custom Mat
Special mats like these are used for burials and custom dances.