Thursday, May 5, 2011

Death Happens

Recently, we experienced our first funeral in the village. This is something that all Peace Corps volunteers experience at some point during their service. It is a natural part of life that people die, sometimes unexpectedly and sometimes with advance warning. Different people and different cultures deal with death in different ways. Nonetheless, human emotion is universal and grief is no exception.

The good thing about funerals in Fiji is that when someone in the village dies everyone, including the animals, eats very well. It’s not what you think…the Fijians have long abandoned their cannibal days and the bodies are treated with complete respect. However, much like an American wake where any number and variety of casseroles and lime jello molds may surround a picture of the deceased on their dining room table, the Fijians pull out all the stops in preparing a feast that commemorates the departed.

Typically, several pigs, chickens, and at least one cow are slaughtered to support the feast and associated mourning period, which, in our region, lasts about 3 days. While the human emotion of grief is no different than anywhere else, the process of mourning bears some similarities and some differences to American culture. Some aspects are familiar and some might seem more foreign. One thing that stood out to me is that the Fijian ceremony is much more personal on several levels.

The man who died was named Matia. He was an older man, about his mid-60’s, but bore the scars and deeply creased skin of a man who had spent his entire life farming in the Fijian bush. Nobody had seen him on the day he died after he left for his farm at 6 a.m. that morning. They found him that evening around 4 p.m. in his dalo farm, his body prone with his right arm stiffly outstretched and his left hand clutching his chest; tell-tale signs of a heart attack.

The police were called and dispatched a Toyota Hilux truck to retrieve the body at about 9 p.m. They brought the body to his wife, Akessa, for a positive identification before delivering the body to Labasa for autopsy and preparation for burial. Interestingly, the police investigate every death in a village, no matter how clear and benign the cause of death may seem.

Michelle had grown close to Akessa over the previous weeks, so we had gone to lend support to her during this time of grief. The police truck arrived before us and the police were inside Matia and Akessa’s modest tin house consoling the widow. Outside, we waited near the police truck where Matia’s body lay in the bed, contorted beneath a blue tarp with only his worn and twisted feet visible on one end. This was not the first time I had seen a dead body, but it seemed oddly peaceful knowing that here, underneath a South Pacific sky full of stars where the Milky Way glows warmly absent the city lights that drown it out in most parts of the U.S., was a man that lived a simple, serene life that was uncomplicated by much of the meaningless clutter we accept as part of American life.

The following day brought the funeral preparations. As I said before, the funeral was a three-day event. The first was a day of mourning for the widow and immediate family to grieve in private. Meanwhile, relatives from every corner of the South Pacific and reaches beyond poured into the village in taxis, transport trucks (loris), and private cars, practically doubling the population of the village overnight. The village men put up several temporary sheds constructed of bamboo, bush wood, and sheets of roofing tin to provide for shelter from the sun and rain. The women began preparing the food that would feed hundreds over the next two days.

The next day, the widow and family received visitors while families gathered on porches and beneath the shelters. Yaqona was plentiful and there was much ceremony at each tanoa bowl as ministers and associate ministers gave thanks and shared scripture related to the death in some form. A tea was held that afternoon with an abundance of cakes, scones, and a variety of traditional desserts made from tavioka (cassava). Two hours after the tea, there was a full meal that consisted of several curries, pork and dalo (taro) cooked in a lovo, waci (dalo leaves cooked in coconut cream), and several other dishes. Occasionally, you could hear uncontrolled sobbing erupt from Akessa and other relatives through the thin panel of tin on the house that was only about 30 feet away.

The last day there was a morning tea at about 10 a.m. with more mounds of food and a lunch with even more food following at about 1 p.m. There was so much food that the dogs, which were usually so emaciated you could see their ribs, were turning up their noses at pork and beef bones tossed their direction, nearly bursting from the scraps of a monumental feast. Then the pastor made an announcement and people began to stand and head toward the edge of the village where the burial ground sat inconspicuously between the last homes and the jungle.

The ceremony started rather abruptly. Fijians from several clans gathered around the grave and began singing hymns, many of which the tune was familiar even if the words were not. Shortly thereafter, several young men carried the casket toward the gravesite in a solemn and methodical fashion. The casket was wrapped in elaborately crafted woven mats made from local plants, representing days of work on behalf of the women who made them. The mats were beautifully decorated in unique patterns and included brightly colored fringes of yarn. The sound of the hymns only slightly overwhelmed the sobbing of many of the relatives, as the men slowly approached the grave.

The ceremony might have been like any in the U.S., except that the pallbearers, and many of the extended family, were immediately involved in physically lowering the casket into the ground. Men, young and old, gently placed the casket in the ground. Each man then took a shovel or digging fork and covered the casket completely with soil. Stones were then carefully piled on top of the soil followed by the men wrapping the entire structure with swaths of brilliantly colorful fabric and flowers that surrounded the entire rectangular perimeter of the gravesite. The personal involvement of the family lent an air of finality…of closure…that I think sometimes is not achieved in funerals in the U.S. where sometimes people never even see the casket go into the ground.

The senior pastor made a final benediction and people went on their way, some in sobbing tears, others in solemn silence. In any event, the privilege of observing this ritual reminded me of the saying that, “the measure of a man’s life is not made by the number of people who come to his birthday, but by the number of people who come to his funeral.”