Sometimes Babies Just Die

We parked Carolyn’s car on the side of the rutted “main” road through the tiny village of Kyabando. The eight people we had managed to cram into the car, all staff members at the National Bahá’í Centre, clambered out and began the slow walk up to the compound where Mary and her family live. This was no easy climb, we had to squeeze ourselves between houses and straddle mud and refuse, trying not to slip and fall. The younger staff took the hands of us older folks to help us up. We kept going, ducking under laundry hanging on the lines to dry, dodging charcoal burners where people were already preparing their dinner, and attracting the attention of the children since there were two “mzungu” in their midst – it is unlikely that white people have ever come up into the private domain of the poorest of the poor who live in this ramshackle little neighborhood.

We finally arrive at the cluster of run down homes where Mary and her family live. The houses are three in a row, made of mud and sugar cane poles with metal sheets pounded together for roofing. Already in the compound people have gathered and are sitting outside of Mary’s home, where she lives with her husband and five children, although now only four children as we have come to pay our respects and condolences and grieve with her over the sudden death of her baby daughter Grace.

In an earlier blog post I wrote of the high mortality rate in Uganda, not just infant mortality, but death in general. From HIV/Aids, malaria, cholera, typhoid, or just the hazards of everyday life in Africa, there is no family that I have met since arriving in Uganda that hasn’t been touched by early deaths. Already since being here, this is the second child of a member of the staff at the National Centre that has died. In the spring of 2012, the 17 year old son of Jesca, the longtime secretary of George Olinga in the Office of External Affairs, died from sickle cell anemia. Jesca’s daughter, only 12 years old, also is afflicted with this insidious disease, and she was so traumatized by the death of her brother, realizing of course, her own mortality, that Jesca had to leave her job in order to get her daughter the psychological treatment she needs to cope with her physical illness. Now, after spending morning and lunch hours laughing with Mary, the staff cook, she is suddenly called away because something has happened to her baby daughter Grace, a bubbly, plump, and happy 8 month old girl, whom everyone at the National Centre had adopted as their own. Not long after Mary returns home, we get the impossible news that baby Grace is dead. No one knows why, she was napping, and then she was simply gone. The family will never know what happened to her, there will be no autopsy. Unlike in the United States, where sudden deaths at home have to be investigated, it’s doubtful that even if the police had been called, anything would have been done. Sometimes babies just die, and it’s a cruel fact of life in Uganda, and most probably anywhere in Africa. I suspect that this is why there are large families and education about birth control goes largely unheeded – you have a lot of children because you know that not all of them will survive to adulthood.

Once we arrive in the compound to join the other mourners, we are invited one by one to go into Mary’s home and grieve with her. Ordinarily, tradition here is that the mourners gather around the body of the deceased, sitting vigil for hours on end, not talking, perhaps occasionally keening and crying. But Mary’s home is a small room – maybe 10 feet by 10 feet, in which six people have been living, so only one or two people at a time can go in to see Mary and the baby. The homes are on a slope with the door facing uphill, so in order to keep rain runoff from coursing down the slope and into their home, sandbags are piled in front of the door, forcing us to climb down into this tiny room.

Lying on the mud-packed floor, upon which straw mats have been laid, is the shrouded body of little Grace. Mary kneels beside her infant daughter, keening and wailing the mournful cry that only a mother who has also lost a child can fully understand. There’s not even two square feet of room on this floor for others to sit or stand, the entire room is crowded just with the beds that the family sleeps in – triple decker metal bunk beds line two walls. There are no windows, nothing but an open door to let in air. The room is suffocatingly hot, even with the door open, and I can only imagine that one possibility of Grace’s death could simply be that she suffocated in this airless room. I kneel down beside Grace and stroke her face and the little tufts of hair, while trying to console Mary at the same time. Two other times I’ve had to bend over the shrouded body of a child who has died, and one of those was my own son Hayden. I know what Mary is going through, and there’s nothing I can do to console her, to take this grief away.

Before leaving I hand Mary two envelopes – donations of money collected by the staff and also donated by the National Spiritual Assembly. In Uganda, this is the best response needed by most people when a loved one dies – contributions of money to help with burial expenses. While there are funeral homes, those are reserved primarily for the wealthy. I’ve yet to see a city cemetery in Kampala – I don’t think they exist. Many churches have cemeteries, and we have a Bahá’í cemetery on the Temple grounds but  most people simply buy a wooden coffin and either take their deceased loved one to the village where the family is from for burial, or they simply bury the them in their own compound.

We sit for a while longer as the sun is beginning to set and as more mourners arrive. One of the other traditions is that the mourners come and stay for hours and sometimes days simply to be with the family and to comfort them. They’ll bring food or help with cooking the food and many will stay overnight. We are not among that group, and as soon as we think it’s appropriate we make our way back down the hill and to the car.

When we leave the compound we are told that the plan is to take the body of Grace to Kabale, a village inthe far southern region of Uganda, close to the Rwandan border. This is where Mary’s family is from. However, it is such a long way, and this family has little money, and we all wondered at the wisdom of this. Mary and her family are not Bahá’ís and so not bound by the laws of burying the deceased within an hour’s journey from where they died, but we can’t imagine them going to the expense of taking Grace so far away for burial.

The next day, however, we learn that the family has reconsidered, knowing that they couldn’t raise the money for the transport to Kabale. The owner of the property where they live has offered to let them bury the baby in a plot of land just steps away from their home and so the burial will be held at 2 p.m. that very day.

I’ve long held that funeral and burial practices have become too “sanitized” in the United States. Many of the traditions I am observing here with this death and burial is what would have happened in the U.S. 100 years ago, although I am sure there are still pockets of the U.S. where this more natural form of burial is observed. In the U.S. now, funeral directors take over the preparation of a body and set visitation hours are given for mourners to come see the family. Sometimes still, perhaps after a burial, people will congregate in the home of the deceased to continue offering consolation to the family, but more and more it’s a very clean affair – perhaps you only go to the visitation to see the family, but don’t go to the funeral, perhaps you can’t get off of work to go to the funeral – any number of things can happen that insures a bit of a disconnect with the whole business of death. However, in Uganda, and probably most traditional societies, it is expected that everyone stops everything they are doing to come and mourn with this family. In the smaller villages the entire village would come and sit vigil with the family, and no one would think of leaving until they feel they’ve done everything they can to help this family. It is with this in mind, and the fact that we love Mary and her baby, that the same group who went to visit the previous evening, decide to go to the funeral and burial that afternoon.

So we make the same trek back up the hill and find ourselves sitting in roughly the same places we sat the day before. I am sitting where I can see into the room, and I see two women helping prepare little Grace’s body in the coffin. While attending to this chore, they start singing the Luganda version of “Shall We Gather By the River.” More and more people begin to gather, but also daily life is still going on about us. Children are playing about, oblivious to what is happening. Women are peeling and cutting matooke to cook and serve the family and visitors later. I’m a bit disconcerted as I realize that in the very spot where we’re likely going to have Grace’s funeral, there is pile of matooke peels swarming with flies, which are also biting the guests. No real effort has been made to sweep the compound and make it clean – life simply goes on. I realize that this is my test, and shut my mind to it. The Christian minister arrives, soon after they bring the tiny wooden coffin out into the open space and set it down on two planks. A white embroidered cloth covers the coffin and on top of that Mary places a photo of Grace.

The minister starts his sermon, but I get the feeling he doesn’t really know this family or anything about the baby. In fact, later in his sermon he openly asks for her name and how old is she. His sermon is a bit random – spoken in Luganda –  but in deference to the mzungu he has someone translate for us. He then invites a friend of the family up to read a message from the parents. That is when we learn that the money we donated was used to purchase Grace’s coffin. When other people are invited to say something, James, one of our Temple guides speaks for the Baha’is in attendance. Afterwards the minister comes to speak again and we can tell by what he is saying that he is a bit threatened by the Bahá’í presence. We all move with the family and the pall bearers to the small plot just yards away and while they are burying Grace the Bahá’ís begin singing one of the verses from the Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh that we have learned to sing in Luganda. Mary very quickly begins to collapse from watching her child being buried, Carolyn and I move in to help her away from the burial site.

The saddest part is that while in the States the parents of a child who has died will be given time to grieve, and would be told to take all the time they need before going back to work – Mary will likely be at work on Monday, back to her routine of cooking the lunches of the National Centre staff. This won’t be because we won’t give her the time off, it’s just that she won’t know what else to do. She’ll worry that she might lose her job or that she won’t get paid if she doesn’t come, and again, this child’s death is too common in Uganda for it to take too much time out of normal life.

In contemplating Grace’s death, in seeing the conditions in which Mary and her family live, I’ve really mused over what the answers are to this kind of suffering I’m witnessing. I don’t think there are any pat answers, and I have opinions only, no real answers. I won’t go into any of this now, and perhaps in a future blog post I’ll try to come to terms with this experience. All I can really do right now is pray for little Grace’s soul, and rest assured that she has been received into the “sea of light” and is buoyed by the many souls who were there to greet her.