Notes from

Sierra Leone

Idriss's Funeral

8 June 2005

I spent last weekend in Kenema. After two months living out of a bag in backstreet guest houses where Egyptian men sit in a row watching smoking as I take my morning coffee in the outdoor palaver hut, and Mauritanian medicine doctors ask my hand in marriage, I finally found a quiet place with my colleagues Lanik and Wennie.

Lanik likes to ensure I have a full cup of coffee or beer as we watch the TV5 piped in via DSTV from France. As leader of the weekly convoys of UNHCR trucks repatriating Liberian refugees, Lanik is used to taking care of people. Anyway care was much appreciated a couple of weeks ago when I called him begging for medicine from where I lay shivering in the Catholic Pastoral Centre, assaulted by malaria for the third time in six months.

I hardly see Wennie in the house, but his constant chuckling reverberates from his bedroom through the halls. No matter how hopeless the situation, or how sour the subject, he always tells it with a laugh. I try to learn from him.

There wasn’t much cause for laughter last weekend, however. Mrs. Idriss, the caterer for our Development Training Centre, died on Friday. One of the trainers, James, called me as I was taking Lebanese coffee in town to inform me and say he wanted to make arrangements for her body to be brought from Freetown back to Bo. Apparently she had gone to Freetown for some sort of a feminine check-up and Dr. Sidiqi told her that she needed ‘womb-cleaning.’ They put her to sleep for the surgery and she never woke up.

Colleagues clucked bitterly that the doctor just made up the need for surgery to make money. Fallah, our Regional Officer for Kailahun District, told me that Dr. Sidiqi had been kicked out of Bo because he was famous for accidentally killing his patients. Mrs. Idriss had been stocky and strong when I saw her two weeks before, and I can’t imagine she had any condition so dire that it was worth the risk she took.

On Sunday all staff met at the Kenema office at nine and proceeded in convoy to Bo, about an hour away, to pay our respects to her widowed husband, our colleague B.B. Idriss. We twisted and turned through the wide streets of downtown Bo, past the pepe doctor stand touting traditional medicine in Bo 2, and finally through the low grass into Bo 2 Extension where hundreds of people were gathered around B.B.’s house.

I said to Abraham, ‘I can’t believe how many people are here! How could so many people have known here? I don’t think I know the names of anywhere near this many people in the whole world!’

Abraham hypothesized that most of the people had come to pay there respects and show their support because of B.B.'s status as a big man in the community.

A Sierra Leone Red Cross LandCruiser pulled up and a wooden coffin was manoeuvred out. The women on the ground started wailing. An old women with wild hair clutched her shirt and ran behind the crowd babbling hysterically in Mende. A lady dressed in white near the front screamed, fell to the ground and buried her head in the knees of a lady seated on a plastic chair, then let out another scream and lolled over. The seated lady patted her hair.

Half of the crowd started gathering itself into a line to file through the house where Mrs. Idriss had been placed. Standing near me, Abraham said, ‘In my country, in Eritrea, you don’t show the person. I think they are Muslims here, but for us Muslims, you would never show the person once they are died.’

‘You remember T-boy?’ I responded. ‘When he died a few months ago, I remember they laid him out in the coffin at the church. But he was so bloated and looked so strange that I would never have known it was him… I don’t think I feel this need to see people for the last time like this. He was such an active, funny guy, and I’d rather remember him that way.’

Bryan was watching the wailing woman. ‘I think she needs help.’ We looked back at her. ‘In my country we have a tribe called the L– people who have professional mourners. You can even hire them when you have a funeral and they will mourn and wail the loudest. But you’d better make sure you remove all your valuables and lock all your drawers because when they leave, you’ll have nothing left. If the L– people are coming, you won’t even use dishes; you’ll use paper plates and plastic spoons because they’ll steal even the silverware.’

‘What about other tribes in Kenya?’ I asked. ‘Would any tribe hire the L– people when they have a funeral?’ ‘No, just them.’

We made our way slowly to the line, with Abraham following hesitantly. Suddenly I was crushed into the sweltering house and a man pushed me to the front of the crowd so I was inches from Mrs. Idriss, who lay on a table wrapped in white cloth from head to toe like a mummy with only her eyes showing. B.B. stood behind her, dressed in a white lace shirt. I held onto Bryan’s shoulder and we pushed our way through to the back door where a Fanta was thrust into my hand.

Abraham eyes were wide, eyebrows high. ‘I didn’t expect to actually see her!’ he said. ‘You’re right, when you see like this, then it ruins the memory. I had this nice picture of a happy smile and now…’ he gestured, unable to find the words.

‘What is the program now?’ asked Bryan.

‘I think there’s prayer at the central mosque at two.’

‘OK, that’s another hour or so. Let’s find some food in town and meet them there.’

After cold noodles and Nescafe in a clausterphobic blue chop shop, we drove to the ornate white and blue mosque and found the crowd of mourners already assembled. I couldn’t hear any noise from the crackly loudspeaker that usually blares the daily prayers, but someone said the prayer had started.

Most people milled about in the street in front of the mosque. I leaned against the yellow paint of the mosque across the street next to Lanik, who handed me a coconut. A small boy watched eagerly until we had drunk our fill and passed it to him. We ordered two more coconuts from the old man with the wheelbarrow for 500 leones each and waited for the prayers to finish.

Eventually, people started packing into cars and onto the backs of pickup trucks, so we joined the convoy and drove over gentle hills to a cemetery nearly hidden in the fresh elephant grass grown tall with the heavy rains of the rainy season. We walked for a ways down the uneven dirt road, until some people cut abruptly to the right and through the grass.

Lanik grabbed my forearm and gently pushed me back. ‘Women stop here,’ he said. Konima, a trainer from CARE International, saw me and said, ‘Come let’s move to the shade.’ I squeezed with the women in the street under the single tree and waited again.

When the men returned, we proceeded back to the house to present B.B. with the money we had gathered among GTZ colleagues, a small consolation but important when funerals are so expensive, not to mention that he still had three boys to raise.

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Copyright © 2005 Julie Greene