Monday, February 12, 2007

Yesterday evening I was happily folding clothes and listening to my new ipod (thanks dad) when I heard a rush of high pitched yells heading toward our family compound. At first I thought it must have been in celebration of a new marriage; however, I quickly noticed that each of my moms dropped what she was doing and began running to the commotion. I too ran to the front of our house, laundry in hand, because terror had come upon me as I realized something bad must have happened. When I got to the front, I noticed one of my favorite women being brought to her house. There was a man on each side of her holding her up and propelling her forward. At first I thought she must be hurt because her clothes were askew. The men gently forced her into her courtyard and one of them came out to greet me (yes, in the midst of all this commotion they stopped to say hi to the whitey). I asked what had happened and he responded that her oldest child was killed on the road to Tenado. I asked which child but I already knew the answer. "Do you know Clement?" How could I not know the child, we are in the same family? About this time his father came home, threw his bicycle as hard as he could and ran out of the courtyard. I can only assume that he was trying to go to the place where his son was left on the side of the road. The men forced him back into his courtyard where by now all the women were assembled, and then they went off to go collect the body.

As the women and children wailed and I shook with saddness, I noticed Obu. He was inconsolible with a bloody lip and dirt streaked across his face. Nebilbie and I took him to the health clinic to make sure he was okay. He and Clement were best friends, bothers, and apparently Obu was the only one with him when he died. It struck me as I was hovering over him how differently we and Burkinabes deal with grief. Immediately I began looking around for something I could do, some one I could console, some way in which I could be useful. I had to do something in order to cope. The Burkinabes, however, stopped everything for the entire evening and wailed. I cannot count the number of times I have been chastised for being the white person who is too ready to cry. Yet now all sense of restraint was abandonned as everyone was simply ovecome with grief. It is true that in our culture we hold on to our grief and it takes years to completely overcome a loss whereas for the Burkinabe its seems that when something happens, grief is unrestrained and when they can cry no more, they continue on with their lives. During the course of the evening I realized that when I cried, I did not ask questions about my own mortality or cry for sad events past in my life (I believe this often happens when we grieve). I cried only for Clement who was a wonderful kid with a bright future. I felt the Burkinabes were doing the same. It made me wonder if their way of dealing with death was more pure and better for the soul.

I would like to close by saying a little about Clement and why his death has made such an impression. He was a kid of about 10 years old in his final year at elementary school. I recentlly got to know him and the other kids in the courtyard that are in Bregetou's grade because we have been doing math homework together. Homework could not begin until Clement was there. He was the smartest out of all of them and the only one who thought critically enough to be able to answer word problems. I was teaching him how to help his neighbors with problems and not just give them the answers. He was always polite and never annoying. I often thought during our homework seesions that he would be one of the few kids in town to graduate, go on to college and get a good paying job with the government. He was going to be the one for that family who could help out in hard times. He was going to be the one who made the family proud and respectible. He will be greatly missed by us all.