Update 4

Sometimes in my daily life here I’ll have these moments, almost like an out of body experience, when I remove myself from my present state and imagine I am in a satellite looking down at me. I find great pleasure in doing this because most of the time I am doing something completely absurd. Not that the doing is absurd, necessarily, but that it is me that is doing it.

This happened twice in the past two weeks. Last Sunday it was during a crazy attempt to attend a funeral and today it was at a wedding.

Last Saturday night I found out that the father of one of my closest neighbors died unexpectedly. The family has six kids aged two to fifteen. I have never been close with the parents—they do not speak much Portuguese—but I have always been close with the children, particularly the four youngest. They are good kids—I love them dearly—and was sad and shocked to hear about the death of their father. The following day many people had gathered at their house for the funeral. It was decided that he would be buried in the nearest big town, because that is where his family is, as opposed to our small community. Because he worked for the railroad company they sent a truck from town to pick up the funeral participants and bring them there and help with the burial. Around 10am Suzana came and got me and, along with about 30 friends and family, we gathered in the back of the truck for the 20 minute ride to town. As we set off it began to sprinkle. I had on a t-shirt and skirt and had wrapped a capulana (the large colorful clothe that women wear as skirts but are used for just about everything from head wraps to baby slings to carrying corn from the field) around my waist as well. As the rain came down harder Suzana took off her capulana and covered us both with it. We huddled there until the rain paused and emerged only when the other passengers shouted to us that the rain had stopped. As we came out from the capulana, grinning because we were soaked, everyone burst into laughter—I think they were worried about me getting wet and surprised to see me with a smile on my face. After a short time the rain began again harder, and even though we attempted to cover ourselves again, it only took about 3 minutes for the thin cotton to soak through and we were defenseless against the wet. We had been sitting in the very back of the truck and the others motioned for us to come to the front to avoid as much of the rain as possible. We did so which left us sitting on the ground only to be flooded by standing water that would rush forward whenever the truck slowed. By the time we arrived at the hospital to pick up the body to take to the cemetery all of us were drenched to the bone and shivering and laughing. (The funerals I’ve been to here are solemn events, but it was not unnatural for us to be laughing. It sounds strange to say, but at that point I was having a good time—we all were. Perhaps it’s because death seems much more a part of daily life here. I have been to more funerals of friends or acquaintances here in the last year than in all my 25 years at home.)

After we descended from the truck, we stood under the eave of a back wall of the hospital as the rain continued to pour down. Eventually I lost feeling in my fingers and wondered at just how unaccustomed to the cold my body has become. We waited for two hours because there was a dispute amongst the family about when and where he would be buried, during which I stood as still as possible trying not to let the sides of my wet skirt touch my goosebumped legs. Eventually it was decided that the funeral would actually take place the next day and we would all go back home. So we piled back into the truck, people shaking their heads at the effort we'd made. Any drying that had taken place huddled under the hospital eave for two hours quickly vanished as the rain poured down again. We were laughing again by the time we got home.

Yesterday I asked Suzana if she was going to go to church today and she informed me that there was a wedding that we should attend. Even though we weren’t invited she said it was fine for us to go and watch the ceremony, especially because it was at her church. Every once in a while I go to church with her, mostly because the music is incredible and it’s a good way to see people and feel a part of the community. There are lots of churches in my community—they are small one room structures made out of mud and thatch with tiny wooden benches and a table at the front serving as the altar. In the fifteen minute walk to her catholic church we pass at least three others of different denominations, singing and drums ringing out. In her church when we aren’t singing we can usually hear the music from a nearby church.

The last time I went to church with her we didn’t sing at all and there were no drums—afterwards I had felt kind of cheated by the church going experience and Suzana explained that there was no singing during lent. Today when I entered the church for the wedding ceremony/Easter service, it was an explosion of music and drums and dancing and color. After so many weeks of no dancing and singing, people were especially energetic. It was an elderly couple getting married, both in their seventies. It is quite common here for people who are legally married to wait years and years to have the actual ceremony. Most people don’t have the money to buy wedding clothes or enough food to feed friends and family.

The couple pulled up to the church in the cabin of a large open back truck, which was filled, overflowing, with people dancing and shouting and clapping hands and stomping feet. They slowly descended and gradually made their way to the church surrounded by the vivacious crowd, its music beautiful and deafening. The couple inched forward towards the church walking on straw mats—as they came to the end of one and stepped onto the next the first was immediately removed, passed over head, and rolled out in front of them. It was done automatically and a little frantically, adding to the spirit and movement of the people as it rocked overhead before being placed down. We entered the church and I was certain it would crumble with the noise. During the ceremony, similar in some respects to traditional wedding ceremonies at home, there was intermittent singing and drumming and dancing.

Afterwards Suzana and I went to greet the priest who is a catholic missionary from Mexico who Suzana’s husband Simão works for a few days a week. Normally he preaches at a large mission church about 5 km away but came to our rural one in honor of the wedding and Easter. He insisted that we join him and another missionary woman from Mexico at the reception. A bit hesitant because we hadn’t been invited to the wedding, Suzana and I piled into the back of his car and found ourselves next to the bride and groom. Leading the large truck full of wedding goers, we headed down what was only a small footpath. The house where the bride and groom lived turned out to be a 15 minute drive into the bush—straight downhill on what appeared to be a dried up riverbed. We bounced along, joking about when the road would finally get better as the groom claimed it would (“It gets much better right up here,” he kept proclaiming to the dubious priest, even though we were clearly only venturing farther away from anything resembling a road). I sat in between Suzana and the groom, who was next to his bride. Sometime along the way her veil (handily made from a mosquito bed net) began to come off and though he clumsily tried to help her fix it, she was sitting on most of it and they only managed to fumble around and mess it up more. Suzana found this hilarious and she kept poking me to point out their nonprogress on fixing it and I kept turning to her to tell her to quit it, only to find her in absolute hysterics, about to lose it. Which made me about to lose it too—not so much because of the fact that the groom couldn’t fix the veil but because Suzana was having a laughing attack and what were we doing anyway in the bridal car bouncing down to who-knows-where when we hadn’t even been invited to the wedding in the first place? (Here is where I have one of those out of body moments: how has life gotten me here, to this place and time? What have I done right to deserve this? Because, truly, this is amazing. I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else, not at this exact moment.)

Finally we emerge from thick brush to a small clearing which is the bride and groom’s house, and people run to meet us and they throw rice as we all descend from the car. It wonder as I get out, rice falling from the sky, if it’s bad luck to have rice thrown at you as you emerge from a wedding car when it’s not your own wedding day. There are probably over a hundred people singing and cheering. We (the bride and groom and priest and Suzana and I) are lead into a structure of wood and thatch specially built for the wedding feast where there are two tables. At one sit the bride and groom and family members and a few friends and at the other are Suzana and I and the priest. We are served rice and goat, a luxury I can’t believe, and warm cokes, and I secretly keep giving Suzana the pieces of meat from my plate that look like intestines or some unrecognizable part. I also secretly remove stiff black goat hairs from my food.

There’s been a lot of sadness and a lot of funerals in the past few months. Funerals that are solemn and beautiful in their own right. But today, it was an amazing day, full of energy and life that seems sucked so dry in the difficult times. If you ever have the opportunity to go to a wedding in Mozambique, go.

To be a part of a community in the sadness and the goodness, I feel so blessed for that.

Following are some photos of hanging out with my neighbors and the wedding. More to come soon.