During the September teacher’s strike, I stayed in my village and had the opportunity to do some things that I normally miss because I’m at school during the day. It was a great time to experience village life more thoroughly and cement some friendships.
One such opportunity came when a close friend of my host mother died. She was the grandmother of one of the boys who comes to my house often and she spent many an afternoon at our house sitting under the shade tree sharing laughter. Funerals here in rural South Africa are sadly not uncommon. Saturday mornings are for funerals and it is not unusual to have 3 or 4 going on in the village each Saturday. No, the village isn’t that big if you are wondering. But there are high rates of HIV/AIDS infections killing people, accidents, suicides, and many older people. A little more than 10% of the kids at school are orphans. I’ve been to two funerals for kids at the primary school, another one for a son who committed suicide, and many more for parents, grandparents, or other relatives of teachers and friends.
Up until this time, my involvement was usually going with the crowd of people to the tent set up at the family’s home. The services start early in the morning, by 7am usually, which avoids the
heat of the day and is light during winter. The service is usually a couple of hours long with prayers, songs, and remembrances spoken in front of the casket. Then the people go to the cemetery, the casket is lowered into the grave, 
and the men shovel the dirt onto the casket finishing by covering the grave with rocks. The women sing, console, ululate, wail, and generally grieve in the truest sense of the word. We help people who are overcome with emotion, pour water and hand out toilet paper for the tears, and sing to help cover the emotional parts when someone has collapsed from either grief, heat, or exhaustion. After this ceremony is complete, everyone goes back to the house where there is a bit more eulogizing and then they are fed a meal.
Every time I participate in a funeral, I am reminded of the sense of community that is evident during this process. But I had never contemplated the amount of work that goes into the preparations for the funerals. Then Mma Kgosi (Mrs. Chief, my host mother) lost her good friend. Our family was able to participate the week leading up to the funeral in a way for which I am grateful to have been allowed to participate.
The grandmother who died sent her grandson to fetch Mma Kgosi when she knew she was ill and probably dying. Mma Kgosi spent a lot of time with her friend until she died. At which time, the body is washed and the rest of the family and friends are all phoned to come following the wishes of the woman. If she ever went to the clinic or the hospital, I never heard about it. To my knowledge, this all happened at home with her friends and family all surrounding her. The funeral home is contacted and they do come to collect the body to prepare it for the funeral that will be held that Saturday or the following Saturday. It depends on how quickly the family and friends can get to the village. Transport is not easy and it truly does take a week or more sometimes.
My host sister, Barbara, another teacher who lives here with us, and I went over to the friend’s
house starting on Thursday. We started baking a kind of cookie 
that is similar to shortbread. The three of us worked with some other women from the village in the deceased home for at least 10 hours that day baking these cookies. I didn’t count them all, but quit counting after 1,000. These are given to the visitors to the house as well as to the people who come to the
One such opportunity came when a close friend of my host mother died. She was the grandmother of one of the boys who comes to my house often and she spent many an afternoon at our house sitting under the shade tree sharing laughter. Funerals here in rural South Africa are sadly not uncommon. Saturday mornings are for funerals and it is not unusual to have 3 or 4 going on in the village each Saturday. No, the village isn’t that big if you are wondering. But there are high rates of HIV/AIDS infections killing people, accidents, suicides, and many older people. A little more than 10% of the kids at school are orphans. I’ve been to two funerals for kids at the primary school, another one for a son who committed suicide, and many more for parents, grandparents, or other relatives of teachers and friends.
Up until this time, my involvement was usually going with the crowd of people to the tent set up at the family’s home. The services start early in the morning, by 7am usually, which avoids the
heat of the day and is light during winter. The service is usually a couple of hours long with prayers, songs, and remembrances spoken in front of the casket. Then the people go to the cemetery, the casket is lowered into the grave, 
and the men shovel the dirt onto the casket finishing by covering the grave with rocks. The women sing, console, ululate, wail, and generally grieve in the truest sense of the word. We help people who are overcome with emotion, pour water and hand out toilet paper for the tears, and sing to help cover the emotional parts when someone has collapsed from either grief, heat, or exhaustion. After this ceremony is complete, everyone goes back to the house where there is a bit more eulogizing and then they are fed a meal.Every time I participate in a funeral, I am reminded of the sense of community that is evident during this process. But I had never contemplated the amount of work that goes into the preparations for the funerals. Then Mma Kgosi (Mrs. Chief, my host mother) lost her good friend. Our family was able to participate the week leading up to the funeral in a way for which I am grateful to have been allowed to participate.
The grandmother who died sent her grandson to fetch Mma Kgosi when she knew she was ill and probably dying. Mma Kgosi spent a lot of time with her friend until she died. At which time, the body is washed and the rest of the family and friends are all phoned to come following the wishes of the woman. If she ever went to the clinic or the hospital, I never heard about it. To my knowledge, this all happened at home with her friends and family all surrounding her. The funeral home is contacted and they do come to collect the body to prepare it for the funeral that will be held that Saturday or the following Saturday. It depends on how quickly the family and friends can get to the village. Transport is not easy and it truly does take a week or more sometimes.
My host sister, Barbara, another teacher who lives here with us, and I went over to the friend’s
house starting on Thursday. We started baking a kind of cookie 
that is similar to shortbread. The three of us worked with some other women from the village in the deceased home for at least 10 hours that day baking these cookies. I didn’t count them all, but quit counting after 1,000. These are given to the visitors to the house as well as to the people who come to the
funeral. During this week, there are women from the village who come to the house to stay with the family, pray with them, sing with them, etc. There are informal prayer services several times during the week where the ancestors are called upon to look after the soul of the newly deceased.
Friday, the women reassembled to start preparing the vegetables for all the salads that are prepared. In my village, there will always be a beetroot salad (my favorite), coleslaw, something called chakalaka that I love, a potato salad, a cooked cabbage salad, 
a baked bean salad, and a butternut squash or pumpkin salad. That is the minimum for salads. There will also be pap (think really stiff grits), rice, sometimes samp (looks and tastes a bit like hominy), and chicken and beef, sheep, or goat. The women cook in enormous black pots that are brought from the other women’s houses. They cook over an open fire outside. It takes all night for the preparations. 
Women taking a break
The men are not idle while the women are doing the cooking and consoling. They, of course, come in the kitchen to get cookies, but they are mainly outside preparing the yard for the tent which is put up two or three days beforehand.
The men are not idle while the women are doing the cooking and consoling. They, of course, come in the kitchen to get cookies, but they are mainly outside preparing the yard for the tent which is put up two or three days beforehand.
They also dig the grave and slaughter the cows or sheep. They collect the firewood for the women and are generally helpful. Women slaughter the chickens. The men cook all the meat for the celebrations. Again, it takes all night.The body is brought back to the house on Friday night. This means interruption in the work for a prayer service, singing, and the women sit with the deceased that entire night. Some men also sit, but it is generally the women. Then early Saturday morning, the part I was familiar with already starts.
If you didn’t know better, you would swear that there was a big party being planned. The sense of community is very strong and I felt honored to be a part of all the preparations with my host sisters and mother while the boys all did their part with the digging and slaughtering. It is hard for me to describe how much I enjoy being in the midst of the families of the village and just pitching in as expected with all the other women. My favorite is to do the beetroot that stains my hands for days going forward. The beetroot is usually mixed with mango chutney and I love this dish. I could and have eaten just that for a day.
A year or sometimes many years later, the entire thing is sort of repeated at something called a Tombstone Unveiling. Everyone gathers again at 6am, there is a shorter ceremony with prayers, songs, and then the tombstone is unveiled at the grave. Then everyone goes back to the house again for the meal. You don’t want to go to these things after having eaten a full breakfast.
It seems odd to me that many of these families don’t have enough to eat during everyday life, but when someone dies, all this food comes somehow. It costs a lot to feed everyone and often people who come, donate 10 rands to help cover the costs involved.
It seems to me that all the celebrations have the same food and the same type of preparation
with lots of people coming to help. One change is that for happy celebrations, bojalwa or a traditional beer is brewed. This 
tastes to me like yeast and water, but it is a sorghum beer and packs a punch. I’ve never seen this at a funeral, but I have seen it at weddings, anniversary parties, Christmas and New Years, that sort of celebration.Now when the Peace Corps Volunteers leave the village to return home, a large celebration is held, normally called a Farewell Celebration. Regretfully, I had the chance to participate in one of these recently when the nearest volunteer to me returned to the US early to accept a job with a previous employer. My boys loved Sonja, principally for her iTunes playlists and her video games that are much more to their liking than mine since she is a lot younger than I am. She came to my house along with some of her girls
Sonja's girls and my boys
Sonja's girls and my boys (who like me, hah!) to tell the boys she was leaving early. Their reactions were almost tearful…one told me that “my throat feels like crying” and another said, “sister Karen, can’t you just talk to her and tell her to stay”. They’ve since decided that there must be a way that she can now send them Game Boys and Nintendos from the US. I’ve told them not to get their hopes up.
The Farewell celebration was held at the school where she worked and was lovely. The speeches
were particularly moving with her host father saying that he was losing a daughter. That made me cry and I decided then and there that I wasn’t having one of these celebrations at my village. I love them all 
too much and figured I’d just be crying, as they are all already talking about how much they’ll be crying in a year when the time comes. I said that I’m planning to just sneak out in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. I’m sure there is no way that will happen, but it is what I’d like to do. These celebrations are big with the entire area coming to say Farewell in many cases (I’m known by name in at least a 30km radius to my village). One couple was honored with a slaughtered cow and 100 chickens…like I said, BIG. There are prayers and thanks and lots of hugging and crying. I thought it was very moving to have everyone stand in a circle holding hands, to say a prayer to wish her well in her future. Again, that sense of community is very strong here. I believe I’ll just say au revoir as I know I’ll be back many times and my heart will stay.
Saying goodbye here in South Africa when I’d like to be in the US saying goodbye to friends or family is maybe the only hard thing I’ve had to work through. Since I’ve been here, I’ve lost a beloved aunt who shared a love of cross-stitch, the husband of a good friend who was one of the kindest men I’ve known, and just this past week a coworker that I would have liked to believe was indestructible. Those times would have been easier, at least on me, if I had been there to say goodbye in my own way and to share grief with friends and family. Those have been the only times when I’ve felt like my choices have taken me away from something important or that I’ve felt alone. Somehow, just talking about it to friends here in the village or even to the one or two other volunteers I’d be comfortable sharing my feelings with doesn’t seem appropriate to me. I don’t know why, but it seems easier to me to put a smile on my face and go to school where people make me laugh all the time. Other friends are going through difficult times more or less without me, but I lend support through emails, phone calls, letters, or little packages that I send home. It isn’t the same, but my hope is that the little support I can give from here is enough for now. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything and think this past year has been one of the happiest of a truly blessed life, but there are times when it is hard. I’m grateful that those days are few and far between, but my thoughts are with the US during those times no matter where my body and heart are.
The Farewell celebration was held at the school where she worked and was lovely. The speeches
were particularly moving with her host father saying that he was losing a daughter. That made me cry and I decided then and there that I wasn’t having one of these celebrations at my village. I love them all 
too much and figured I’d just be crying, as they are all already talking about how much they’ll be crying in a year when the time comes. I said that I’m planning to just sneak out in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. I’m sure there is no way that will happen, but it is what I’d like to do. These celebrations are big with the entire area coming to say Farewell in many cases (I’m known by name in at least a 30km radius to my village). One couple was honored with a slaughtered cow and 100 chickens…like I said, BIG. There are prayers and thanks and lots of hugging and crying. I thought it was very moving to have everyone stand in a circle holding hands, to say a prayer to wish her well in her future. Again, that sense of community is very strong here. I believe I’ll just say au revoir as I know I’ll be back many times and my heart will stay.Saying goodbye here in South Africa when I’d like to be in the US saying goodbye to friends or family is maybe the only hard thing I’ve had to work through. Since I’ve been here, I’ve lost a beloved aunt who shared a love of cross-stitch, the husband of a good friend who was one of the kindest men I’ve known, and just this past week a coworker that I would have liked to believe was indestructible. Those times would have been easier, at least on me, if I had been there to say goodbye in my own way and to share grief with friends and family. Those have been the only times when I’ve felt like my choices have taken me away from something important or that I’ve felt alone. Somehow, just talking about it to friends here in the village or even to the one or two other volunteers I’d be comfortable sharing my feelings with doesn’t seem appropriate to me. I don’t know why, but it seems easier to me to put a smile on my face and go to school where people make me laugh all the time. Other friends are going through difficult times more or less without me, but I lend support through emails, phone calls, letters, or little packages that I send home. It isn’t the same, but my hope is that the little support I can give from here is enough for now. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything and think this past year has been one of the happiest of a truly blessed life, but there are times when it is hard. I’m grateful that those days are few and far between, but my thoughts are with the US during those times no matter where my body and heart are.
