Thankfully, I have not personally experienced a large number of funerals in my lifetime. However, I will probably never experience a funeral that’s even remotely similar to the one that occurred in my village a couple weeks ago. I was completely unprepared for the event, which was some combination of a family reunion, a feast, a concert, a holiday, and a college frat party. Almost forgot, it was also a cultural celebration of sorts. It lasted over 48 hours. And my humble abode was smack in the middle of all of the festivities.
My house is conveniently located in the middle of a group of family compounds that house the chief/councilor of Takaledougou and his numerous family members. I use the word “convenient” because it has been relatively easy to establish a personal relationship with the chief and other important individuals in the village who meet with the chief on a regular basis.
Since moving to the village, I became aware that an older woman in the chief’s family was gravely ill. It’s hard to determine the exact relationship of the chief to the old woman, who he referred to as his mother. However, she is the only surviving wife of the four wives of the former chief, which complicates the term “mother.” The family tree is probably more of a family bush. Lots of girth.
A quick tangent: Imagine having four wives! Sounds awesome, right? Christian Burkinabe are technically not allowed to have more than one wife, but polygamy is relatively common among the Muslim population. Polygamy is generally a village phenomenon, but there are a select few husbands who “cheat” the system by living and working in one of the bigger cities of Burkina while maintaining wives and children in the village. After pondering the subject for some time, I grew increasingly frightened at the prospect. Some families with multiple mothers seem to function well, especially if the husband is respected and well off financially (i.e. chief of the village). On the other hand, wives often develop rivalries for the affection (or money) of their husband, with the well-being of their children as a paramount concern. The kids can also develop rivalries if their moms don’t get along. All in all, it sounds like the makings of a horrific soap opera which I have no intention of ever taking part in. Unless I meet the right women.
Anyhow, one fine evening I was relaxing in my house reading the B volume of Encyclopedia Britannica when suddenly I heard a group of women wailing and running around outside. I put down the heavy, leather-bound academic reference tool and peeked out my windows. I witnessed the chief with a group of eight men talking in hushed voices and a group of women wailing incoherently at the top of their lungs. They were clearly very upset about something, as I had never seen women in my village express that much emotion. I began to suspect that the older woman in the chief’s family had died.
My suspicions were confirmed when I saw a body shaped object being wrapped in a white sheet, rolled up tightly in a bamboo mat, and placed on the tomb of the former chief, conveniently located in the middle of the family courtyard. The group of women who had been wailing began dancing in a circle around the tomb and chanting in local language. Within the hour, a traditional Burkinabe music group had materialized and began banging away on drums and bylaphone (a marimba made from gourds, bamboo, and wood). Little did I know, I was not going to get much sleep that night.
As it seemed like just the family was involved in the night’s activities, I decided to sit out. I called my friend in village, Ibrahim, and he explained that it was indeed the beginning of a funeral, but that the official events would take place the next afternoon and night. He also explained that the music and dancing was meant to drive bad spirits away from the body during the night.
They were serious about keeping the bad spirits away, as the music and chanting continued all night: 6pm to 6am the next morning. I got a couple hours of sleep and then gave up. The next day, the attendees of the funeral began arriving in a variety of vehicles ranging from Yamaha motorcycles to Mercedes Benz sedans. As I walked to the health clinic, I witnessed a group of ten men with shovels digging a large hole in the field next to the chief’s compound. I probably should have guessed that they don’t have graveyards in Burkinabe villages, but it was still pretty shocking when I realized what the hole was for. By the time the afternoon rolled around, there were over 200 people gathered in and around the chief’s courtyard.
At around 4pm, the official ceremony started. Before the chief’s wife was buried, she was given a special send off into the afterlife. Two older women in the village who had personally known the woman lifted her body, still wrapped in the bamboo mat, onto their heads and started parading around the crowd. A group of ten women followed the body, dancing and singing and chanting. The traditional Burkinabe music group was backing them up with a combination of upbeat melodies. The chief and other respected family members took turns leading the body through the crowd, which immediately parted to make way for the deceased.
Throughout the entire spectacle, people were dancing, singing, cheering, and recording the festivities on their camera phones. At one point, the women carrying the deceased began a playful game that I call “body tag.” They would run the deceased through the crowd, attempting to get others to come into contact with the body. This was apparently a faux pas, because anyone who touched the body was hit repeatedly by the women following the body. Cries of laughter rang out from the crowd every time someone was tagged.
After about an hour, the time came to bury the body. The immediate family of the deceased carried her to the grave and lowered her down. The mood immediately became somber as the family said their last farewells. Men who were already dirty from digging began filling the hole. A palm branch was laid over the grave and the chief gave two older men a rooster from his flock. Although I had gotten to know many of the chief’s animals, I didn’t know this rooster personally, which in retrospect was for the best. One of the older men unsheathed a ceremonial dagger and slit the rooster’s throat, spraying the blood over the grave. As most of the men had their heads bowed in silence, I felt it was an inopportune time to ask why the animal had been sacrificed.
With the official ceremonies over, there was a pause in the festivities as women began preparing a massive feast and proper amounts of dolo (millet beer), banji (palm wine), hard alcohol, soda, and other beverages were acquired. I returned to my home, unsure of what was in store for the night. With hundreds of people partying around my house, I decided to enjoy the sights of the funeral from my windows for a couple hours. After night fell, I ventured out to find Ibrahim drinking with the chief and some of the wealthier village men. I was offered a drink consisting of ginger mix and Pastis, a 90 proof French hard liquor. It’s the Sailor Jerry’s of Burkinabe hard alcohol. Needless to say, I got drunk pretty fast.
With the traditional Burkinabe music group still going at it, many people had begun to dance. After countless women begged me to dance (two…and they were told to by the men I was with), I decided to join in the festivities. I danced, trying to copy the moves of other Burkinabe, which was pretty easy until someone decides to show off. On account of getting little to no sleep the night before, I grew tired around midnight and decided to take a little nap, telling my friends I’d be back. As anyone who’s tried to “just take a nap” after drinking heavily can tell you, you aren’t coming back to the party. I woke up around 3am to people still partying and dancing and singing. The party continued until sunrise.
The funeral was an eye opening experience. It was entirely possible that I was exposed to more traditional Burkinabe culture in those 48 hours than in the previous four months. It would be easy to conclude that the villagers who were taking part in these unique cultural practices are simple minded animists who believe that these rituals are necessary to ensure a smooth passage into the afterlife. However, I found myself pondering the validity of such a conclusion. Many of the chief’s relatives are highly educated, wealthy men and women. They don’t exactly fit the stereotype of the “simple minded villager,” especially when they show up in Mercedes Benz’z (plural…?) and use their smart phones to take videos of the celebration.
While funerals in America are often somber, religious events, funerals serve an entirely different purpose in Burkina society. Grief was expressed by immediate family members, but the funeral was a celebration of the life of the deceased. It was a rare chance for the entire family of the chief to gather together, catch up, and reacquaint themselves with the village they came from. The rituals performed at the funeral have no doubt been practiced for hundreds of years, but it was clear that the meaning of the rituals had fundamentally changed. While the rituals still hold religious importance for many in the village, most of the chief’s family considered the rituals a celebration of Toussian culture and ethnicity.
Imagine a Burkinabe attending a large American funeral. It’s likely that a number of customs and rituals of the funeral would seem very strange. For example, most people wear black to American funerals as a symbol of mourning, in contrast to the purposeful display of bright colors in the dress of Burkinabe at funerals. Eulogies would also seem strange to Burkinabe, who would question the necessity of talking about a person who everyone attending the funeral knew. The sheer amount of grief expressed at an American funeral would also be alarming to Burkinabe, who tend to view life as a struggle that one is lucky to survive to a ripe old age.
Clearly, one set of cultural practices is not “right” or “better” than the other. Both sets of traditions are important because they represent different approaches to the question of death in human society. Just as the rituals of a Burkinabe funeral hold different meanings for different people, the rituals of an American funeral do not mean the same to everyone.
As I sit in here drafting my last will and testament, I am moved to request that a majority of the aspects of the funeral I had experienced in Takaledougou be included in my own. I can picture it quite clearly: the chorus of voices singing “Sweet Home Alabama” as they celebrate my journey into the afterlife, the laughs and shouts of onlookers as respected women in my life chase people around with my body and strike them if they accidentally to touch me, and of course, the all-night party that will commemorate a life lived to the fullest.
Gotta start saving up for that open bar…..
