The inevitable

Saturday dawned with clear blue African sky. No alarm this morning, it’s Saturday, after all and I was up late last night calling back to America. I didn’t have a funeral to attend and I wasn't headed to town, which is nice for a change. However, my host father invited me to come to the neighboring village with him to check the mail and status of the family’s bakkie (truck) which was rattling a little bit more than usual. After 460000 kilometers of driving on roads that look like a giant washboard, its highly likely that something has come loose. Today, the dirt road only felt corrugated in places, a noted improvement since the scraping trucks came through last week. Fortunately, it hasn’t rained since then.

The car repair shop/garage is like any other house here, chickens, some corn growing in the yard, chicken wire fence, a concrete block house with a zinc roof, a lean dog on a rope- but with the addition of three cars in various states of repair sitting in the yard. The owner wasn’t in. We waited, then a rattling engine told us the owner was on his way. He pulled his car (which was probably at least 30 years old… and looked it) into the red dirt yard and told us he would need his co-worker, who has at a funeral a few blocks away, so we headed to the funeral. As we approached the house, I recognized it. But here it was:

Another large striped tent. More women cooking copious amounts of food for possibly hundreds of people. The slow acapella music that rises, falls, and stretches like a mournful dirge on an accordion. Another BaTswanan funeral. Except this one was different. This was a house I knew. It was where another Peace Corps volunteer, Adam, lived and so I had met his host family. The inevitable had come.

The last time I had been here, I had helped take his host sister to the clinic. We had known that she was ill ever since we arrived. The few times I saw her last year she was obviously sick, but around and walking. Not the last time I came. She had been thin before, but now she was emaciated and walked with the aid of a cane while she braced herself against the wall. When she ran out of wall, her mother and I helped her into the truck, which was waiting a short distance from the front of the house.

I assumed she had AIDS or was rapidly progressing that way. After all, she was just a little older than me, 27 most likely, a prime group, and her symptoms seemed to fit. Seeing her so frail, frailer than her ~50 year old mother, was shocking to say the least. My first instinct was concern for myself, a bit of paranoia due partially due to the knowledge of what the virus does. Then I came to my senses, the virus will not travel through skin. She needed help to get to the clinic. She was a person who needed a hand to get somewhere, so I offered her mine. She smiled and took it.

We all knew that she would pass away sooner than the rest of us, but that didn’t stop her from smiling with her mother and me. To her I was Thabiso the moithaopi, the volunteer from the next village who was just offering her someone to lean on and speaking in SeTswana, the native tongue of the area. She might have been a bit surprised, as it is still supposedly uncommon for a white person to act in that way unless they are a doctor or nurse. Her mother was also smiling, joking around as well when I left them at the clinic. Earlier, Adam, the Peace Corps Volunteer who lives in that particular village had mentioned she had been in Joburg for awhile and hadn’t been able to keep food down. We knew she would probably not make it to the end of our service here.

Two days later, I boarded a plane to visit Julie, my girlfriend, in Germany, for a long awaited reunion. However, that incident was a very poignant reminder of where I was before leaving on vacation for a couple of weeks.

Adam’s host sister didn’t make it to the end of our service. She held on for another month and a half and passed away sometime this week. I would not have known except for just happening on the funeral to find the coworker. The word had not made it out to my village. And there I was, a bit stunned. The funeral was winding down, as I could see people leaving, having eaten. People recognized me and asked if I had come to the funeral; I mentioned that I didn’t know she had passed away. They asked me about Adam, who is on vacation right now and probably doesn’t know his host sister passed away. I texted him, but doubt he’ll get the text until he arrives back in country.

I suppose it was a shock because it was just by chance that I stumbled upon the funeral. Since then, I’ve dwelled on it. My last memory of her is of her smiling, knowing full well she was going to die. A noble way to go. Smiling. Despite the virus that crippled her well beyond her years, despite the fact that she was a victim of one of largest pandemics in recent history, she was smiling.

It’s incidents like this that put my life in perspective. Not because I take comfort in the fact that other people suffer more than I do, but that even in suffering, there can be joy. Life, no matter how long we have to live it, should be enjoyed. Be happy with what you have and treasure it. Suffering, at times, seems like a conscious decision.