Four Funerals and a Wedding

I’ve been thinking about marriage a lot lately. It seems that everyone I know is getting married. I’m sad that I’m missing out on the sharing of all this joy but joyful that all this joy is being enjoyed. And finding myself reflecting on the manner in which Africans enjoy their joy. I will try and paint a mental picture for you. Not unlike in America, weddings are good times with wild and crazy dancing and acceptable public drunkenness. Unlike American weddings, everyone is invited. Those immediately involved go to the “mayor’s” house for the exchanging of vows and signing of contracts. That is the equivalent of the ceremony. No one but the bride, the groom, and their parents are expected to be interested in that part. There are no registries with china patterns and cutlery. Your gift is showing up and getting down. The party starts at sunset and ends when the roosters start cock-a-doodle-doo-ing. The bartender is someone’s underage cousin serving up home brewed millet beer in nature’s beer mug, a dried gourd. There is drumming, dancing, and chanting of the sort that one might see on the discovery channel.

Here’s the part that kills me: the wildest (drunkest) party goers are the old, the crazy, the terminally ill, and the handicapped. My hypothesis: people who have nothing to lose have a hell of a lot more fun. My secondary hypothesis: we Americans (and Europeans) are driven by a deeply rooted fear of looking like a jerk. It’s okay to BE a jerk, as long as you don’t LOOK like one. So we institutionalize all those folks who are not encumbered by self-consciousness. That way we don’t have to look at them and be reminded how uptight we are. The party line is that crazy people, old people, and very ill people can live a more “dignified” life away from our judgemental eyes. This amounts to robbing them of their freedom. You might say to yourself “My grandpa is really happy at the nursing home. He plays shuffle board and takes Viagra.” I would respond by saying fake happiness is what happens when you resign yourself to the fact that the real thing is not an option. My neighbor is 70 years old, blind as a bat, has one leg, and may be one of the happiest people of have ever met. He is surrounded by his grandchildren and treated with respect. People don’t think he’s sad. They think he’s funny. There is a crazy guy down the street from me who is the filthiest person I have ever seen in my life but he laughs all day long. No one thinks twice. They don’t care where he throws his poop as long as it’s not at them. Crazy guy and old guy are joyful and they are free. That is the rule, rather than the exception. In America I think it's the other way around. We rob them of this freedom by institutionalizing them saying it's for their own good. The fact of the matter is that they would make us more uncomfortable than we would make them. They would remind us that some day we too will pee our pants or laugh inappropriately or (god forbid) die.

This brings me to funerals. That’s when the real party starts. And here I thought weddings were fun. The drinking starts in the morning. The masks come out around noon. The black magic starts at sunset. People wail and flail. No one is sad. Death is the most natural end to Life. Who knows what lies in the great beyond but what’s the point of fearing the inevitable. You may as well party like its 1999. It makes a lot more sense to celebrate the unavoidable than it does to avoid the unavoidable. The grimness of American funerals doesn’t make any sense to me. We fixate on lives cut short rather that celebrating the good fortune of having lived at all. I am not exempt from this fear. I often feel that I waste my time chasing after some imaginary good life that will happen sometime in the future rather than living in the present. I think when I get that degree or that job or marry that guy or have those kids or buy that house or see that place I will be happy. Meanwhile life passes me by. Forgetting that I’m have this beer and laughing with this friend right now. Quality of life is a funny thing. The appearance of it and the actuality of it are not one and the same.

Pictures: Random kid; My yard at dusk; me with a few other volunteers and John Negroponte when he came to Africa to promote “Africom”. My brush with fame (or infamy).