The Last Day

As in October we visited our home village in Dibombari for a relative’s funeral which is culturally very important.  With an average life expectancy of just 46 (compared to over 80 in the UK) and huge extended families, funerals come around with stunning regularity.  They are highly visible as they are held outdoors and involve hundreds of people.  The Saturday burial can be preceded by a wake lasting for days and culminating in an all night vigil on the Friday. 

Dad went for the Friday wake-keeping while we followed the next morning just in time for the advertised 11am start. Being Africa we needn’t have rushed as we sat baking under a canopy, waiting for things to begin.  We saw the body of Ngondedi, the deceased, on display in the coffin.  She had been beautifully made up and dressed in white wedding-type dress.  The cost of this, the service, the flowers, the hiring of the tents, chairs, choir, and the provision of food and drinks for the guests is astronomical.  But people save all their lives for this Last Day – sadly instead of saving for health insurance that might delay it a good while.  The emphasis on having such a funeral plays a part in Africa’s many problems and seen through western eyes this expense looks absurd.  But this isn’t the west.

At precisely midday two men dressed in black smocks approached slowly but purposefully down the dusty street.  Being (high) noon it had the feel of a spaghetti western but of course they were the pastors clutching bibles.  Once they had performed a blessing, the now closed coffin was brought outside.  Then there were a number of tributes, including one by my Dad who spoke at some length (not unheard of) in the Douala language.  When I asked him later what he had said, he just said it was “the usual stuff”.  Some of the other speakers drew spontaneous outbursts of crying and wailing from the choir and from groups of women in their clan uniforms.  By 1pm we were very hot and the service adjourned to the church.  We skipped that bit and returned to our family house where Suzanne had a nap on the veranda and I had a chat for an hour with my uncle Emanuel under a tree just a few feet from where my grandparents (his parents) are buried. 

Soon Dad and Grace and my uncle Isac returned from church and took us to the VIP section of funeral reception (we may all be equal in death but while we are alive we’ll have a dedicated table, the best food and a plentiful supply of booze, thank you very much).  Some very good Douala food was washed down with a surprisingly drinkable carton of Spanish red wine.  Isac looked relaxed in Dad’s company having been worried earlier this week when the national TV channel ran a documentary about Dad’s life, which he assumed was an obituary!

My grandparents' graves next to the house in Dibombari

For many, funerals are the main reason to go back to the ancestral village. Because of that and because our house there is full of pictures of those no longer with us, such as Grandma, a visit to Dibombari always brings back memories for me.  Whatever the future holds for such rural villages we can be sure it will continue to fill the well of nostalgia.