A loss in the family

Last Thursday, my colleague/PC-appointed work partner/friend lost his infant son. (He was sick for about a week. The doctor prescribed him medicine, but it didn’t work. The doctor did not say what disease it was, only that it was caused by an insect.)

Last Sunday, the day here for going and sitting at people’s houses, I headed off to my friend’s to pay my respects. From before I left my house, I did not want to do it.

As I walked to his house, my steps getting smaller and smaller, I thought about how my life would be easier here if I hadn’t developed relationships like this. If I hadn’t developed a friendship where I felt like I needed to go spent an hour awkwardly sitting in a house where death had just happened.

I thought about my life when I first moved into my village. It was a life of the West Wing and counting the minutes until I go shut myself in my house once again. I thought about how I hadn’t thought that I would ever get to this point. To the point where I had friendships that meant this much to me.

I guess that’s what having friendships is about. Sometimes you have to do things. Things that are awkward. Things you don’t want to do. Things that are hard.

In the end, it was the gratitude on my friend’s face when I showed up with my bag of oranges that made it all worth it.

'til it's gone

I was packing for a trip to Parakou for the weekend when Modeste walked over to my house. He said a sentence to me in English of which the only part I understood was the verb “to die” at the end. After repeating it to me in French, I got the message: my neighbor’s 2-year-old daughter had passed away the night before.

I’m not particularly close with this neighbor. I’m closer with her kids. And despite their ability to show up at the exact moments when I most want to be alone or their ability to go from happily coloring to screaming in one moment, only three days after the family left for the village of the kids’ father, I miss someone yelling “Auntie” at me as soon as I walk into our compound.

The only thing Modeste could tell me about the cause of death was “disease.” It’s too far into the hot season for it to be malaria. It’s not uncommon for infants to die from dehydration. There’s been an outbreak of cholera in the south.

But what was the cause isn’t what really matters. What matters is that the child that I saw the evening before lying with her mother underneath the citrus tree outside my house is no longer alive, and all that I’m left with each time I walk past the locked doors and windows of their house is the question of whether they are ever going to come back.

I want people to dance when I die.

I decided last night that I want my funeral to be like they are here.

Here, instead of a somber, remorseful event of what the person could have been, it is a reflective celebration of what the person has done. You dance. You drink. You eat pounded yams.

When I die, I want people to know that I laughed at every chance I got, I went wherever I could go and I loved more than I thought was possible. I tried to live life as much as I could. And for that, I would regret nothing.

At my funeral, I want people to celebrate what I was able to do instead of what I didn’t.