Saturday

Funerals are on Saturday in Lesotho. Saturdays are busy days in Lesotho. Last Saturday, I attended my first funeral in Lesotho; it was for Baby Moletsane. In typical Basotho fashion I wasn't told where the funeral was or when it started, just that it was on Saturday, April 26th. According to what other PCV friends have said, I figured the funeral would start at about 1pm. I left my house at about noon and starting walking towards the village where I hoped to find the funeral (since it obviously wasn't in my village); my ausi stayed there with family sometimes. Ironically I hitched a ride in the back of a covered pick-up truck with a coffin. Just me, 2 old men wearing blankets, and a dead guy in a coffin... oh Lesotho. I got off near the school where my ausi teaches, hoping the people there would know her and point me in the right direction. There were three little boys playing in the road who told me where to go. They actually pointed me in the opposite direction of where I was headed, but a friendly old man showed me the right way and even found me an escort who was also going to the funeral. We walked about 20 minutes down the road, picking up a few people along the way, and made it to the house.

I didn't see my ausi, but a woman I didn't know immediately led me to a rondavel house. I walked right into what I would call a "cultural experience"--a group of women dressed in purple and white stood in the middle of the round room singing and clapping. One woman pounded a simple beat on a large drum covered in animal skin, and another played a bell. I sat in a chair next to my neighbor, the only person I recognized. At first it was a bit intimidating, but I soon got comfortable enough. There were about 8 or so chairs against the wall, the rest of the women sat on the floor on the other side of the room. In the back of the room, a man who appeared to be a priest leading the ritual stood behind a simple white table with a single lit candle on it. He was a thin, middle-aged man with long clean dreads. He wore a long purple robe decorated with some cheetah-print fabric details, fabric stars, and embroidery. His hat, also purple with a big white star on it, looked like a little kid created their own version of the pope's tall hat. His dress appeared very "tribal" except poking out from under his robe were clean old school Adidas sneakers. Western culture seeps into almost every corner of the world, no matter how remote. He welcomed me in Sesotho shortly after I arrived.

Eventually the group moved outside in a procession led by a few men carrying the coffin. A bouquet of fake flowers with the store-tag still attached lay on top of the tiny white coffin. The official ceremony began. The small coffin sat on the dirt floor outside, in front of a row of men seated in chairs. I could feel tears swelling up in my eyes when I looked at the baby-size coffin so I looked down at the ground for most of the ceremony and tried to think of something else. For once I was glad to not understand what was being said in Sesotho. The ceremony was similar to any other funeral I had been to, except that men performed almost all of the rites. Only one woman spoke, compared to about a dozen men. Then when the funeral was over we walked to the burial site--only a few minutes from the house. There are so many people dying in Lesotho that the cemeteries are scattered throughout villages near homes and roads without any demarcation. The tiny coffin was placed in the pre-dug hole in the ground and covered with a large animal skin (probably the animal slaughtered for the post-funeral feast)... more speeches and songs. Then all the men took turns shoveling dirt back onto the grave, like everyone had to help bury the body. A few women threw a handful of dirt on the grave too, including my ausi who nearly collapsed after doing so. It was the first time I had seen her for a few weeks, and she looked exhausted and distraught.

Then tons of people came out of the woodworks because the most important part of the funeral was about to take place--the feast. At all funerals and weddings, the host is required to have a feast for all the guests. While it doesn't seem unusual for such an event to serve food, paying for many funerals and feasts drains Basotho (and sub-saharan African) families' funds, leaving little or no money for school fees or healthcare. Finally I got to talk with my ausi while she was eating. I was happy to see her, but I knew she was suffering deeply. She said she felt better than the previous week, though, so at least she's healing. Then I said my goodbyes to everyone and headed home on a taxi with some other women from my village...