How city dwellers steal the show during village funerals

By Silas Nyanchwani

Funerals have become everything but a place to mourn and give loved ones a well-deserved send off. To a politician, that is crowd and a golden opportunity to campaign. For a preacher or a priest, it is another chance to solicit offering from the congregation.

The amount of posturing, chest-thumping and ‘swagger’ displayed by city dwellers during funerals annoys the rural folk more than it amuses them. It is normally a rude interruption to the quiet, mundane and even idyllic setting as soon as the long hearse pulls over and the English or Swahili-speaking guests alight from the entourage.

Although they grew up in the village, the weather is always punitively hot or unseasonably cold. Wearing black during a funeral is an acceptable borrowed tradition that helps distinguish the bereaved, lest you make an inappropriate comment about the dead, in the presence of their beloved ones.

But, pray, what is this business of fedora hats and dark sunglasses. Could it be that the sun in the countryside is hotter than the sun in the city? The youthful ones will be in tights (an offensive wear by any village standards). This normally makes the villagers very good artists in drawing conclusions about the lifestyles of the said women.

Women and their children have the interesting habit of converting a simple funeral into a fashion show. But fashion makes as much sense to the villagers to as common sense makes to the Members of Parliament.

These very women will be sipping mineral water and will not accept anything that is not sealed or if the seal is broken. That these individuals grew up in the village and drank well or spring water - no less.

It is now standard procedure for any middle-class family to employ the handy services of an outside caterer at a scandalously exorbitant fee, just so to appear sophisticated. But in the village, a bull or a goat was always slaughtered somewhere around the corner near a banana plantation. The meat was cooked in one big sufuria. The village drunkards would make off with the hooves, the tongue, the eyes and other body parts that a typical city dweller would sneer at.

Traditionally, people expected to feast at a funeral, more so in Western and Nyanza parts of the country. But with outside caterers, you will be lucky to get more than two scoops of their prized rice. Nobody ever got full on food served on paper plates. And the culture of ‘bitings’ is still very foreign in the village.

For Cartoonist Alex Kirui, nothing rankles him than a woman or a young child taking pictures using iPad. What happened to cameras? He is equally nettled with the curse of social media.

“People are mourning and 32-year-old man, with a beard, possibly married is on social media posting pictures of the funeral proceedings…Can’t he just follow the proceedings?”

During funerals city dwellers behave like the Afrikaans during apartheid. They don’t want to be associated with villagers at all. As soon as the funeral is done, it is very fashionable for them to gather and drive to nearest town to drink and behave badly. Other clandestine activities are also reported.

So the previously mourning individuals will be reveling the night away, acting and behaving in every single way as if they are in the city on a Friday night. End month. A villager cannot drive with them in the same car. Or even get lucky to drink at their table. Of course, they favour green bottles. 

City dwellers naturally hate any form of physical work while in the village. Carrying a jembe will diminish their stature. Straightening the fence will make them less of human beings. For women, carrying a 20-litre Jerri can that a 13-year old carries without breaking a sweat is an impossibly difficult task for 31-year-old urban dweller.

Men cannot help in splitting firewood, or even dig a trench to help the passage of vehicles in the event they are stuck. Neither can they help even in putting up a simple structure to accommodate guests. They had rather pay someone to do the job. But annoyingly, they never stop talking.

There is always a conflict between the local funeral organisers and the domineering urban folk with a sense of entitlement. The city dwellers definitely feel obliged to conduct all the logistical tasks, leaving the villagers to run errands. Under extremely unforgiving circumstances, they can’t even offer the most noble elder or politician a chance to demonstrate their management skills.

Of course it is never over until the mothers have lined their pretty, cute and handsome babies when it is time to showcase grandchildren, especially if it was the funeral of an old man or woman.

The villagers don’t care anyway. They have been reconditioned to accept city dwellers and their ostentations without complaining. Suffice to say that it is always a breather when they give them a break and go back whence they came from and where they belong. Or where they think they belong.