Swaziland

This morning Esther, Heidi and I got up at 4:30am and were gone by 5:15am to attend a funeral. It was coooooold!!! Precious Langa met us and rode there with us because we didn't know how to get there...especially in the darkness. When we finally got there about 15 minutes later, the place was packed inside and out. There were cars, tons of cars. More than I've seen in one place since I've gotten here. We walked through the chopped sugarcane field which was used as the parking lot at this time and were stumbling over the stalks that weren't cut low enough to the ground, so we held hands so that we would fall together. The funeral was in a huge tent made of tarps.

FYI (Because I don't think I've said so yet), Precious Langa is related to Israel Langa who was the former headmaster of EWBC. Her husband is a brother to Israel. Precious' maiden name is Dlamini, which is royalty. So she is princess. She runs the preschool. I think I already said a little about that.

We stood for what felt like hours, watching the people in the tent sing and give some speeches. Then there was a point where they told people to go down to the grave. We walked down the field to where there was a hole in the ground. They had already brought the casket down before us and it was in place to be lowered. There were songs being sung when we were walking and songs sung when someone was not talking. The whole time there was singing, but they were songs that were sad. Some of the women carried bouquets of flowers and put them up on the casket once they got down to the grave. Some of the men read the tags on the flowers. The ones who were addressed to the family were showing their sympathy. The ones addressed to the man himself, who died, were aimed to ancestral worship. This is not unusual here.

Once they started to lower the casket many people started to weep. It wasn't the loud weeping and waling though. The people cried quietly. Some more words were said and they started to cover the casket with cement. This method is used to prevent anyone from coming and digging up the casket, emptying it, and trying to resell it. After it was cemented, they covered it with dirt. The widow was covered in black clothing and had a black, lace veil over her head. There were 6 or 7 women attending to her, helping her move and blocking her view as well as the view of people trying to see her. I guess that is a tradition of some sort. So when she was brought away from the grave (right after the casket was lowered), the woman walked all around her in front, back and sides.

Unlike American funerals, hardly anyone wore black. Only the widow and maybe the family members wore black. That is something significant that I noticed in comparison to our funerals. That and that we don't get up before first light to do our funeral services.

We left the place about 7:30am-ish and headed back to campus. The only problem is that we didn't have Precious with us, and we drove there in the dark, so we had no idea how to get back now that it was light. It took us about an hour to get home, whereas it took not more than half an hour to get to the funeral.

We slept a few hours and then got back up for church. The service was nice. We went back to Bheksisa's church, but he wasn't there this Sunday and so Precious' husband spoke.

Not much happened the rest of today. We just rested :)