Not in Kansas Anymore

After 8 months in country and already more than 5 months in the village, there are times when it’s easy to forget that I’m even in Africa. Apart from the immediate surroundings, which I’ve adjusted to as anyone does a new environment after some time, and the fact that I am pretty much the only person with white skin that I come in contact with most days of the week, the nuts and bolts of life here seem perfectly natural. And, though people do talk of it, allude to it in offhanded ways, the suffering that is all around me is hardly evident in their friendly greetings, their seeming joy and carefree natures.

Yesterday, however, I was reminded of the realities which I myself escape by my myriad medical examinations, vaccinations, check-ins, extensive education of threats and preventions, and unlimited supplies and care that comes courtesy of the U.S. government to each and every Peace Corps volunteer. While walking to pick up report cards from the office a student in my youngest class stopped to inform me that one of their classmates had died. Though I don’t know all of my students by name, (especially the girls, who are obliged to shave their heads making them difficult to distinguish), as soon as he spoke her name I could see her wide eyes and bright smile shining from the back row of the classroom. I went to say a few words to the class quickly and was surprised to see that things seemed to be carrying on as they would on any typical school day. I mentioned it to some of the staff as I tried to share the initial confused shock and grief that is so unfamiliar to me.

I got little to no reaction from anyone and felt angry when the Discipline Master, who Claude later explained to me should normally be responsible for organizing the students and informing the school of the loss of a comrade, came to ask me to help them plan the Fashion Show for the Youth Holiday next week. Shortly thereafter and 2 hours before school had even terminated they brought out a sound system and started blasting music on the campus. By then my 5ieme class, Olive’s class, was to begin. I went and offered a few words of condolence, asked some details of the cause of her death, and requested that a few students guide me to where she lived so I could greet the parents, offer my support, and ask permission to come to the burial.

A virtual troop of students started walking with me and, deep in reflection, I was practically at her doorstep before I turned and realized that we had accumulated in such a way. I asked the students to stay behind, envisioning that a family who had lost their child less than 24 hours before would be in such a delicate state that a mass of students was wildly inconsiderate and could be a horrible reflection on me in the village. I insisted that 2 students join me and the rest wait, but upon arriving I realized that a crowd was already gathered there. One of my older students greeted me and stood to lead me to what I thought and hoped would be Olive’s parents. To my surprise it was her little lifeless body wrapped in a bed sheet, laid out on the family’s kitchen table under a chalkboard with equations written on it. Apparently all the students, knowing their own culture better than I, disregarded my demands and were all behind me in the room before I knew it. I am not sure whether the students or my gesture, or the two things combined with their grief led all the women assembled there to move into the room with us and begin singing and crying with such emotion it could have vibrated the house. They approached the table and I understood they were telling Olive that her friends and teacher had come from school; they shook her little body as if to wake her and cried harder when their pleas were answered by her silence. Her mother stroked her face and called to her, “Tata Olive”.

My students, who while walking in the road seemed to bear a cold indifference to the loss of their classmate, now began crying, some even sobbing, as well. Even the boys had looks of fear and confusion on their faces and I felt at home suddenly among their pain. Finally, there was the intense sorrow I had expected to find since the moment I heard the news. Finally, the commonality of our humanity was before me; pain, a reaction to death I could make sense of.

We stayed there like that for an undetermined amount of time. I felt a combination of confused, awkward, sad, and somehow more mature than just a few hours earlier as I wanted to reach out to the young girls who were clearly examining the mysterious finality of death for the very first time in their short lives.

Walking back from her house the girls were very somber. They too, I am certain, had grown older in a matter of minutes. I was happy to have Claude here when I got home to turn over the whole thing with him. I kept seeing her face all last night, in the classroom, and then on that table. Her body looking just as healthy as in the class last week. I found her homework on my desk, her words written there by her hands not a week before. And now she’s dead and I can’t quite make sense of why. When you ask people here the cause of someone’s death they always just say, “an illness”. Apparently Olive fell sick over the weekend and by Monday night she was no more.

It is here where true poverty rears its head. Poverty that prevents a family from providing their child with medical care. Poverty that prevents them from understanding why or how their child is gone. Poverty that allows for the possibility of other deaths, because we cannot even learn if what killed her was actually preventable to begin with. In the face of so many unanswered questions, it is simple to comprehend why many people here explain away death by saying that it is simply God’s design, or even more say that it is sorcery, that someone cursed that person and that is why they have AIDS or whatever it may be.

I take a lot of time to try incorporating basic sanitation education, nutrition, and general health in my lessons. A couple Saturdays ago when I was trying to explain so and so “died of” to one of my classes I tried to make them understand that in our context it is always important to know how someone died because you can gather statistics and possibly change the habits of the entire culture if there are seen to be lots of deaths from a particular cause. A student responded that life is just as long as God wills it. I asked him why then do people live longer in my country, does God love us more than he does them? That seemed to sink in.