The Hardest Thing

This weekend I was faced with probably the hardest/saddest thing I have had to deal with thus far in Africa. On Saturday morning i was awakened by singing outside our house and did not really think much of it. Fifteen minutes later our second headmaster came over and told us that a student had died and we needed to go down to Isoko asap for the funeral. It was a form one student named Atukuzwe. In Tanzania they have the actual funeral and burial immediatly after a person dies but the mourning period at the family's house can last up to two months depending on how well off they are. I found out on the way down to Isoko that the singing was the students who live at Kafule on their way down to the funeral.

It was one of the saddest things for me going to the funeral. Although I did not know Atukuzwe very well because she was a form one student, I still knew who she was in class and felt really bad for her young classmates. She was only 12 or 13, loosing a classmate at that age has to be really hard for the kids. All of the students were there dressed in their uniforms and crying. Apparently she had a heart problem and collapsed on her way to pick corn on Friday afternoon, but there is no real way of knowing how she died because this is Africa and where I am an especially poor area and they don't really preform autopsy's.

We were of course made to sit in the front row and it was rough when the boy leaders from school brought the body in on a stretcher, covered thank God. They also moved her into the coffin right there in front of everyone at the service.

Even though most of the people here, kids included are used to death because there is a very high AIDS rate in my area (there are at least 47 kids at school who are complete orphans). it still seemed to hit the kids and people really hard. My second headmaster had to go outside and cry at the service and at one point I was even tearing up thinking about how in America this probably would not have happened. Here if someone has any condition other than AIDS it seems like it is hard for them to really get any correct diagnosis and medication. Also it was just hard because it was someone so young. I was impressed how it seemed like all the students were there to mourn the loss of their fellow student, they were singing special songs from school and they even contributed a nice sum of money to the family, which is a big deal considering most of them have so little. This was defiantly the hardest thing I have had to do here. I was also surprised how today everything was business as usual at school, although they did have a moment of silence for Atukuzwe during morning assembly.