An African Death

She came into our clinic for the first time on the day she was to die. Not much is known about her other than she lived in our village, had HIV and had been sick for some time. She was on the young side of middle age by American standards. In Kenya, where the average life expectancy is down to 47, it could be said that she was in the winter of her years. She was sick enough to need hospital care but for reasons she never shared with us, she decided to wait, not to go that day. She went home and before the sun set over the lake, she was dead.

It was a Friday night and we didn’t yet know her fate as we left the clinic that day, all of us anxious to be home, slipping into flip flops, relaxing into our weekend plans after another tiring week.

As darkness settled in along the lake we heard a sound rising up from the village. It was a sound we’d never heard before but its raw mournfulness compelled us to turn our heads toward it. It was then we knew- it was the sound of women wailing.

We didn’t connect the sorrowful sound to the patient we had seen earlier but knew that somewhere, someone had died. Men added their voices by drumming a low, rhythmic beat and chanting. It continued long into the night and in the morning we admitted to each other that several times during the night we lay awake in the darkness listening to the tribal sounds.

On Saturday we saw that a pergola of sorts had been built on a small rise overlooking the village. As we left the compound to walk in the countryside we saw a few of the men from our staff sitting under a tree watching the rites. We stopped to speak to them and it was then we learned the funeral was for the patient from Friday. They too knew little about her. She was just one of the many people here who die much too young. She had already been buried but the mourning would continue through the weekend and turn into a celebration each night, ending at dawn on Monday morning. As Christians they honor the dead according to their faith but as Luo they chant and yell into the night to scare off “Death” who may still be lingering about, waiting for another victim.

On Monday as the staff gathered for our morning greeting and prayer I looked around and saw the fatigue in their faces. None of us in the compound slept well that weekend. We were all unwitting participants in marking the death of another African.