Never Far, Death is Our Constant Companion

By Joseph Weber
CRS Volunteer, Zambia

This morning I walked the muddy shoulder of Leopard's Hill road to the old cemetery. In crowded "Old Leopard's Hill Cemetery," in Lusaka, Zambia, I did not see a grave predating 1997.

About one week ago I was here for the funeral of a co-worker whose face I just couldn't place. In the car, colleagues talked about how thin he had become over the past six weeks, and how he was wearing a leather jacket on hot days.

At the viewing, a woman swooned. They carried her past me faced down, with her arms stretched out to the side. Her face was tired.

At the funeral, a little man in a cheap red sport coat barked directions to the crowd. His pulpit was a mound of red earth and rubbish, soon to lie as a heavy blanket over a man's eternal rest.

Behind me was a deep pit. Men shoveled red earth and rubbish, digging and filling holes. This labor shaped and hardened their shoulders, and red clung to these men like black to a coal miner.

At the inner most core of the crowd were the women, and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Like an old time Baptist preacher on a sweltering Louisiana Sunday morning, the little man barked the Word of God.

"As it is written: For your sake we face death all day long;

We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." —Romans 8:36

He wove together Christian platitudes, circled the crowd with his voice and conviction, bounced and jolted from his moribund pulpit, but it was the Word of God that rung in my ears as I took in the sights and sounds around me.

We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

So I returned to the cemetery this rainy Monday morning to take pictures which came out blurry, as if death, ever present, does not mind being seen, yet still refuses to be seen clearly.

Crowded Together

There is, if you will, a rich side and a poor side to this place. On the one, there are thin slabs of rock and stone and concrete that lay across the graves. Most are cracked or broken or lean to the side, loose fitting lids that were not snapped into place. There are traces where letters, the writing of names and dates and final prayers, have fallen or been washed away. Too many graves are only a few feet long, for children. And they are crowded together. Even in eternal rest, they are crowded together.

On the other side there are no stones, no lids. Small signs protrude from only some of these mounds of red earth, declaring 2007. Some include a name, others do not. On one, I found four pieces of a broken plate. But it didn't stand out. Trash and long-dead flowers and nearly anything imaginable is scattered throughout this cemetery-dump.

On the edge of this second section is where our friend is buried.

As the man barked scripture, we were joined by another group of mourners, winding their way, much as we had, through the departed and encircling one of these smaller pits. They had come to bury a child.

This group began more somberly than ours. With a smaller crowd one can read scripture in a softer voice. But soon, this group, mostly young men, became almost rowdy, pushing and teasing one another as they shoveled. It is a strangely heavy sound, the first clods of dirt striking a wooden box. It is not loud, but you can hear nothing else.

I was struck, confused, by the interaction, or lack of interaction, between our two groups. Two disproportioned ovals pressed flatly against one another. We stood quite literally back-to-back, breathing the same air, sharing the same space, hearing the same sounds. And each went on as planned, speaking and barking and even laughing as loudly as if they were alone, not sharing that space, that air, as though they were not back-to-back with the death and grief of others. This should have been offensive, and I was struck that, evidently, it was not.

Within a few minutes, another crowd came winding their way, much as we had, through the departed, encircling yet another pit. There we were, lined up and stacked up, one, two, three. It was too much to take in, three funerals and mounds and rubbish and pits and so soon I forgot about everything else around me and listened only to the man in the red suit as he reminded us of Christ's victory over death.

Blurry Pictures

This man was buried a week ago now and on this rainy Monday morning I have come back to this place in order to tell you about it, and to take blurry pictures. On the edge of this place, stone men with pick-axes and shovels wield their tools with might and grace in the soft drizzle.

"So, you are just taking a few snaps?"

"Yes, a friend of mine was buried here last week, and I didn't have my camera."

"You must have permission." We were joined by another, taller man. "You know what we are saying. You must have permission from these people." He gestured at the ground around our feet, crowded with unmarked graves.

"You are a big man, you know what we are saying."

I had some idea of what he was saying, but would wait to be certain. I nodded. After a brief pause the newly arrived wingman added, "You can go to civic-center to get permission."

The shorter man jumped back in, again making reference to my size and intelligence. "You are a big man, you know what I am saying."

He was right. I did know what he was saying. But I didn't know what to do about it. I've never paid a bribe before, and I didn't know how. How much does one offer? What words does one say? He would be as direct as he could without coming right out and saying "Give me 50 pin and I'll leave you alone."

So surely there were words I should and shouldn't say, and he, a big man, would know what I was and wasn't saying. But what were the words? And there were four men, these two and two others still at work. Would I need me to make change?

While the hamster of my mind spun his little wheel in his little cage, this man must have thought he was dealing with the village idiot. "I am saying that you can give us something, so that when the big man comes we can explain to him what it is that you are doing here and we can tell him that you were just leaving."

Time To Act

Alright, enough consideration of the angles. It was time to act. I reached into my pocket, hoping not to show all of my cards. I pulled out one pin. That was not going to cut it. I reached again, finding a twenty and some small loose bills. I offered him the twenty, claiming quite honestly that I needed the rest for lunch and a bus to work. To my surprise, he accepted and returned to his digging. I took a few more pictures rather hurriedly, having grown exceedingly self-conscious.

I was pleased to give these guys something, to buy them a round, perhaps. And I'm hopeful that this was also an expression of my gratitude, a request of permission, or an act of homage to the people whose pictures I had been taking.

You see, this is the challenge, eh? To tell you the stories of people, I must tell you their stories, stories that belong to them. And in this place, I cannot really ask permission. It is important for you to know them, to know of them, but we must not fall victim to the ever-present temptation of abstraction. These are people, and each one an individual. Each has his or her own story and his or her own dignity.

Many of the graves are unmarked. Even in the "richer" side, many of the names have fallen off. Rich and poor here remain nameless, except to those closest to them, of which there may be great crowds. Regardless of names or memories, each lived, and each retains a God-given dignity, in death as in life, which we need to recognize and remember. This, if possible, is so much more the case here than in many other places. These are the meek, the lowly, the poor, the little ones with whom Christ identifies himself in Matthew's gospel.

And one day we will be forgotten just like them.

Death Is Crowded and Familiar

When was the last time you thought about death? When did you last consider your own death? Here in Zambia, death surrounds us. The life expectancy is 37 years and falling. Funerals and graves are crowded against one another. Death is crowded. One in five people is HIV positive. When the women wail and mourn the dead, I wonder if they don't also wail for their own inevitable end.

Of the few guys I've spoken to at St. Dominic's Seminary, my temporary home here, most are orphans. Death is never far here; it is our constant companion.

To walk with death in this way, to be reminded of death daily, to know death is to know limitations, contingency, and dependence. It is to know that ultimately one does not control one's own destiny.

Why do people here believe in God? Why do they feel as though they know Him? They walk with death, and know him as someone who has sat at their table for dinner each evening, not as someone they read about in a biography or saw on T.V.

As One Of You

I came here as one of you, the ones who think about and wonder about God, who have touched God and been touched by God and have gone on living and have forgotten time and time again about death and God and are always seeking to remember and to know more deeply.

I wonder if the man who sold me permission to take photos is a Christian. For some reason, I doubt that he is "religious." I doubt he prays or meditates or believes in any sense conventional to you or me, although I wouldn't be surprised if he attends a church. But he spends his days and nights with death. And so he may know and understand God in ways that you and I do not. And I believe that there is a place for him in heaven.

There is something terribly wrong when so many can be so terribly dissatisfied with life while so many are always barely outrunning death. Looking at these crowded graves, I think again of that Word of God.

"As it is written: For your sake we face death all day long;

We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."