(Good??) Grief

Written on June 29th, 2011

Today I went to my first funeral. Up until now I have avoided them because I don't like to go to funerals in America, let alone the Gambia, and Yaay Amie and Yaay Sarjo told me that it was ok that I don't go. Yesterday though when I heard that Bai Jassey(my counterpart and close friend)'s father had died I knew that I needed to overcome my fear/dislike and go to my first Gambian funeral. Usually they bury people here as soon as possible but since Baay Matar died in Kombo yesterday afternoon they had to transport the body back to Kerr Jarga so the funeral wasn't until this morning.

After breakfast Yaay Sarjo and I went over to the Jassey compound. The men were sitting outside the compound under the mango tree and all of the women were sitting inside the compound. Most of the guests from other villages were sitting outside in the middle of the compound while the women from my side of the village were all in one house/behind the house cooking. Like any Gambian program food was necessary so many women had been over in the compound since early in the morning cooking. Usually I am eager to be helpful but today since I really didn't know what to expect I just sat and observed. I spent a lot of time sitting in the house with the older women from my village just reflecting and observing. We were all waiting for the body to arrive so it was definitely a tense space with people making minimal small talk etc. When people did chat it was interesting that the main thing they talked about was who was crying, how they were crying and how much they were crying. Crying is very much frowned upon here especially for adults, when an adult crys in public they are chastised and yelled at/told to stop. In America I am a bit of a crier but here I don't cry at all, I've cried in front of my host dad once and he freaked out, told me to stop and forced me to drink water. He promptly told everyone that I had cried so this public declaration of who was grieving with tears wasn't totally surprising. I was most surprised by how many different ways they had in Wolof to describe crying and how each of the descriptions were so accurate of the type of crying that I knew exactly what they were talking about even though I had never heard the vocabulary before. All this crying talk also sobered me and helped me fight the urge to cry when it arose a couple times.

When the food was ready we all ate very soberly and not with any great relish. Just as we were starting on our bowl we heard a wave of screaming, crying and wailing so we knew that the body had arrived. We promptly all lost the urge to eat. As the group accompanying the body came into the compound many women were overcome with emotion and everyone withdrew into themselves (into different corners of the hut, sunk lower into their chairs) and wept silently. It was a very jarring experience for me to see all of the strong, older women in my village, who usually are very stoic, unless they are joking or mad, so sad and clearly contemplating so many things. If they were born in this village they probably have known this man since they were born and even if they came here through marriage he was a village elder, a prominent man in village so everyone knew him and had some connection to him. It was for me just another affirmation of how connected everyone is here. After everyone had settled down the men outside, led by the imam (religious leader for the village), started to pray and eulogize Baay Matar. I have never seen the women of my village so quiet before. Every so often someone would greet or say something to their neighbor but other than that there was no joking, no laughing, no nothing. I have never seen my village so stoic.

After about thirty to forty minutes of prayer the men formed a procession to take the coffin to the cemetary to be buried. They started wailing, "Laay laay e laay laay," and walked the coffin around the compound. Everyone stood up and the women/men who had previously been so stoic lost it--sobbing and wailing. My counterpart and friend Bai ran through the house and "cried like a woman" (quote from a nearby woman) in the backyard. Another friend was beside herself sobbing while two women yelled at her to stop crying because it was Gods will and God doesn't like it if you cry. Those two images brought me very close to tears because I felt like any comfort I would give either of them would not be able to bridge the cultural gap between us. Talk about feeling completly helpless. After the men had gone all of the women went outside to sit. We all sat in utter silence until the men came back. At that point all of the women gave a charity of 5 dalasi or more to the three widows and dispersed.

Strangely enough after all of the sadness the dispersement outside of the compound was like a social hour. Greeting people who I had not seen in months from other villages and really marveling at the sense of connectedness and community I feel for this small village, even in this moment of grief; I marveled at the sense of comfort I got from experiencing mourning with them.