Malawian Funerals

Funerals are very important to the Malawian people.  Life almost seems to stop, and everything is dropped for them.  Unfortunately, there are many of them.  Sometimes it feels like death is a way of life here.

When people hear of a death, the youth and ladies choirs go to the home of the family and sings outside the home all night.  They continue the next morning until the service begins.  Children usually do not attend so they are left to themselves at home.  Because of this, I have only attended two funerals – Abambo Charlie was one of those.

Abambo (Mr.) Charlie was very faithful to church, even though it was difficult for him to get there.  He walked hunched over and always greeted us with a big smile.  Frequently his added comments during the preaching made it difficult to contain our laughter.  Because of sickness, he stopped coming.  I really wanted to go visit him, but never made the time to get over there.  How I regret that!  

When we arrived at the house, people were scattered around under different trees.  There is no set time for when it will start, but usually the funeral takes place as quickly as possible or the body will begin to stink – especially when it is the hot season.  They begin as soon as all the family and important people are there, and when the body is ready.  The church ladies help with the dressing of the women’s bodies, and the men help prepare the men’s bodies.  This is so foreign to me and I don’t know if I could handle that – though I know that the Lord could give me grace, if that is what I needed to do.

The guests of honor usually sit near the front center on chairs, while everyone else sits on the ground.  They were going to set a chair for me with my husband and the other preachers, but I requested to sit on the ground with the ladies.  You cannot avoid everyone’s stares, but being front and center makes me more uncomfortable and separated.

The church ladies laid out a tarp to sit on.  They dumped the buckets of flowers they had picked from bushes around the property and a flower that seems like it is a wildflower to me.  They began to gather bunches of stems from the wildflowers and shape them into wreaths.  Two ladies worked on shaping them into a cross.  When they had the wreaths and cross secure, they poked the flowers from the bushes into them.  It was beautiful!  How I wanted to take pictures of them working with the flowers, but it felt disrespectful to do that.

Sometimes I feel like my presence distracts from the occasion.  I felt like I had thousands of eyes on me.  The ladies around me were all talking about me.  Of course I didn’t understand everything being said, but I felt I could understand most of what was being said.  I still speak so poorly that they probably don’t know how much I understand.  It is funny to sit and listen sometimes, and at other times, it can feel stressful to have people talking about you all the time.  

When the funeral starts, the women are called up and sing a song, then place the flowers on the casket.  They all sit around the casket during the preaching and speaking.  Throughout the service, women will begin crying out, some even appear to pass out and have to be carried away.

At the gravesite, I sat with a lady from church.  She told me that we should move to the shade, and I did.  Some of the village men behind us began to talk and say, “She doesn’t know Chichewa!” “No way!”  I was just going to pretend like I didn’t hear them, but the lady I sat with turned around and told them that I knew Chichewa and Sena (the village language here).  I told them a little.  I only know a few phrases in Sena, so it would be a stretch to say that I know that.  But it does have many Chichewa words mixed in so I can sometimes understand still.

So many things seem to make Bible times come alive.  The funerals remind me of when Jesus healed the little girl and had to make all the people around her leave before he healed her.  Part of me feels like this open grieving and focusing on it helps people move on. But sometimes the emphasis on death and funerals makes me think of the verses when Jesus said in Matthew 8:22, “Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.”  People here feel the need to go to every single funeral in the village, but if we do that, we would only be going to funerals and everything else would be canceled.  There definitely has to be a balance.  We are not here to change their culture, but I do pray that we can impress on them to follow Christ above all else.