The funeral

 The funeral for which we practiced lo these many weeks took place this past weekend. Friday night was the wake. At Dela's suggestion, I didn't attend that one. I was dressed and ready to go, waiting at her house, when I got a call from her. She told me (as I walked across the courtyard to the door of the house) that the wake would start at 8:00 p.m. rather than 7:00, so it would probably be too late an evening for me. Since I do usually go to bed early, I agreed to her suggestion.

Saturday, I was glad that I had done so, because it was a very long day. Dela had told me to come to the house for breakfast around 7:30 a.m., dressed for the funeral. We left the house between 8:15 and 8:30. The site was not far away. Funerals here are held outside people's homes. A canopy and chairs are set up in the street. Since we were among the first to arrive, I was able to see the empty venue.

As we waited for people to arrive and everything to begin, passers-by walked through the place as if it were a normal day. Once things started, they would walk behing the row of chairs on the right side to pass through.

As you see, the street is now blocked. I could have videoed them bringing in the casket, but thought it might be impolite. Obviously, it wasn't since there was a videographer. The two men in front of me (not shown in my picture) did not want their pictures taken. The one put his hand up in front of the camera when the man pointed it in his direction. The other just turned his head and held his hand up beside his face. I was especially sad about him doing that, because I was contemplating asking him if I could take his picture. He just looked especially regal in his traditional dress.  There were a few heart-stopping moments where I thought the four and a half pall bearers (one guy helped out occasionally) were going to drop the coffin. but they safely got it to the funeral site and, I am assuming, to the graveyard as well.

The funeral consisted of three parts: The funeral itself, the burial, and the after-party (sorry, that's what it was like). At the funeral, there were prayers, of course. Hammer preached a sermon (on Genesis 3:1-3); our congregation sang a hymn; two different brass bands played songs; people got up to sing and talk. All of that was pretty much what I was expecting. What was different was that there was an MC who kept announcing that it was time to start and calling the family to come out of the house where they had gathered. He then would announce what was coming up and remind the speakers/singers that we started late so they should cut it short. To no avail. The bands played two to three verses of every hymn; we sang all four verses of ours; the spontaneous songs and condolences went on for ever.

Eventually, however, that part of the service was complete.

Part two, the burial. We walked to the graveyard; fortunately, it was close. In fact, rather than follow the coffin, we took a shortcut and got there before it did. That part of the ceremony was quite brief. They brought in the coffin. Hammer prayed or read Scripture--I was too far away to hear which--and then they put the coffin in the grave. Fortunately, the hole was big enough. I'm pretty sure I told some of you last year that they had to re-dig the hole at Louise's funeral.

Part three: the after-party. We walked back to the funeral site and the party began. As friends served food to the family and guests, we set up to do our traditional singing and dancing. We were not the only group to do so. One set of dancers had already begun before our return from the graveyard. It took a while to get set up and ready, but finally we began. I thought we sounded really good. Lots of people came inside the circle to dance, even some men. One of those came up to me in my seat and held out his hand for me to dance. I enjoy dancing, but only when no one is watching, so I turned him down, but pointed to Karen. She danced with him and then with several ladies in the crowd. After we finished, our sister congregation did their set. By that time, two other groups had started as well, so it was quite loud. You can not imagine my relief when our friends finished up and we could go home. It was nearly 4:00, so I spent about nine hours at this funeral.

This is a picture of the group from our sister congregation. The chairs form a circle where the singers and shaker players sit. The people standing in the center of the school are going to dance.