Yesterday started off well. After my run I decided to choose the best Moringa from my tree nursery and plant them in the school garden along with some sisal. The day was beautiful until I heard a woman start wailing as I was taking my bucket bath. Automatically knowing there was another death my heart sank, as it always does when one finds out bad news. N fa Mou calls for me and I tell him I’m bathing. He remains at the door for a second and yells that a baby has died and I need to come and sit outside to pay my respects.
As I walk up to the house I see two groups of men and women and I place my chair among the women facing the men. Somewhere in the midst of benedictions, mothers’ wails, and bouts of silence I start to hear my own heavy breathing followed by sniffling. I started balling over a death that I don’t even feel like I should have been so worked up over. I didn’t even know them!
I’ve cried a lot in my life but I’ve never had to hold back the fury that I held back within me yesterday. Not like that, because I have never felt so many shameful things at once. I was not only disrespecting the will of Allah by being a woman shedding a tear but I never felt so scared with the unfamiliar. I felt anger too like where the hell am I…God doesn’t want babies to die. I felt embarrassed with N fa Mou sitting among the men trying to get me to stop sulking, while speaking in Malinke. I felt confused and sure of what I was being told because language is universal in times of desperation. I felt detached from my body while watching N fa Mou carry the tiny body in goat skin away to the river. I felt relief that I won’t be blind because washing my tears with water was the advice given by the woman sitting closest to me and no matter how silly you know the superstition to be you follow it because it’s motherly.
As I walk up to the house I see two groups of men and women and I place my chair among the women facing the men. Somewhere in the midst of benedictions, mothers’ wails, and bouts of silence I start to hear my own heavy breathing followed by sniffling. I started balling over a death that I don’t even feel like I should have been so worked up over. I didn’t even know them!
I’ve cried a lot in my life but I’ve never had to hold back the fury that I held back within me yesterday. Not like that, because I have never felt so many shameful things at once. I was not only disrespecting the will of Allah by being a woman shedding a tear but I never felt so scared with the unfamiliar. I felt anger too like where the hell am I…God doesn’t want babies to die. I felt embarrassed with N fa Mou sitting among the men trying to get me to stop sulking, while speaking in Malinke. I felt confused and sure of what I was being told because language is universal in times of desperation. I felt detached from my body while watching N fa Mou carry the tiny body in goat skin away to the river. I felt relief that I won’t be blind because washing my tears with water was the advice given by the woman sitting closest to me and no matter how silly you know the superstition to be you follow it because it’s motherly.
1 comment:
Whoa, that is tough! I would have been a mess. Find strength in the Lord. Love you!
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