Club Texas and A Funeral

Apparently our house has become the new hangout (any teenage boy--from America all the way to South Africa--can't resist the allure of itunes and youtube). Every night after dinner we sit at the table, doing what we do: drinking tea, painting, and relaxing, we strain our ears every time we hear a noise outside and make beats on which of the older guys are coming over again. We've basically turned into a hip-hop club (the boys here LOVE them some hip-hop)...blasting the itunes and dancing. We're now Club Texas. And check this, I've introduced them to some of the classics of youtube: "Kittens Inspired by Kittens," "Charlie Bit My Finger," and the ever-so-popular "Blood." Apparently they have a "Blood Remix" out now--I HIGHLY recommend it!

Rewind to Thursday night: the beginning of the funeral rituals. If you read in the last post, a family of three lost their mother last week (foul play is suspected, most likely poison). Luckily Botshabelo has their own cemetery on their property, and since the family is very poor, they buried the mother here at Botshabelo. Tragically, there was a secret plan to send the ever-hard-working Con and Marion on a mini vacation for a few days, but the money had to be used for the funeral instead. Also tragically, here in South Africa, it is extremely cheaper to bury someone on a weekday (thus the Friday morning funeral), but this meant that none of her friends and many of her relatives were not able to attend her funeral (because they couldn't get off of work on a weekday nor could they afford the transportation costs). But this didn't stop Botshabelo from honoring African culture and tradition or from having a packed house at the vigil or funeral service.

At sundown on Thursday night the vigil started. This included singing, clapping, a little swaying/dancing, and some preaching thrown in. It was really amazing to see how the Botshabelo family came together to support the three kids. None of them actually knew the woman being buried, but they stayed up all night at the vigil with the kids...and really did all that they could to keep tradition and give her a proper funeral. Also starting at sundown: the digging of the hole for the coffin. It took until 3:00 in the morning-about the same time the vigil ended-for six of the older boys to dig the grave. On Friday morning there was another short service (again preaching, clapping, singing, swaying), before making the long trek to the edge of the property where the cemetery lies. There was also a short viewing of the woman before she was taken to the cemetery. Not only did Ayla attend her first funeral, but both Ayla and Ilene saw their first dead person. To be quite honest, it wasn't as creepy or disturbing as I imagined.

So at the cemetery there was more clapping and singing and swaying. The coffin was lowered, and then the older boys worked like maniacs to fill up the whole with their shovels and dirt. It only took 30 minutes to be completely finished with the burial service. Then we all marched back down, washed our hands in water with aloe plant, and then technically, ate. However, the Cloete family feared our stomachs couldn’t handle the food (we are not sure why), so Marion told them that Passover had started early and we couldn’t eat anything. Unfortunately, Ayla and Ilene had been asking to go to the grocery store for daaaaays, and only had eggs and corn meal at home, and were really looking forward to that meal. Bummer.

Now most of the kids are going home for Easter holiday, and the campus is eerily quiet. Sorry U.S. kids: South African schools close for 2 weeks for Easter. Hopefully we wont get too lonely. But we are off this weekend to Joburg to celebrate Passover with Josh's family...definitely looking forward to quality "family" time and getting to see some of Joburg.

Until next time...sala sentle!