I am at somewhat of a loss for words today. My only inspiration came from the unnatural howling I heard (mistakenly) from the direction of the District Hospital compound.
For anyone who's lived in Africa, or at least in Zambia, the wailing that accompanies a death is something that, for lack of a better phrase, follows you to the grave. Unlike the church choirs here, which exhibit the epitome of human voices joined in exultation, funereal wailing is a discordant cacophony of chants screamed aloud ... the nadir of human expression against our fate, spun without our wishes or desires.
The sound of wailing in itself brings back those long months in 2005 after the most recent drought Zambia's experienced. I lived about 200 meters from the rural health centre in Kelongwa Village, and each week brought those howls anew from those mothers' whose children had died as an indirect or direct result of hunger. The bleak stares from hollow-eyed fathers in the half-light of a single solar-powered bulb at a visual component to the sounds. A part of me remembered those months five years ago when I became familiar with the abhorrent realities of death, when life finally became a tangible thing that had value and purpose.
All of this raced through my mind as I went to the guard to ask the origin of the noise. Was it a funeral? Had someone died at the compounds? No, he said ... they have caught a thief in the compounds and they are beating him before taking him to the police.
Oh.
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