Life and Death

Since coming to Burkina, I have realized that death is a huge part of life here but haven't really been closely affected until a few weeks ago. Before this, I knew that the infant mortality rate is very high here (around 85 per 1000 live births) and have found that basically every women I meet has had at least one or more child that has died and/or has had a miscarriage. The birth rate is very high here as well and it is not uncommon for me to find women that come in for pre-natal consultations that report this being their 8th, 9th, or 10th pregnancy.

In my own family, there are eight mothers, several who are probably near the end of their reprodutive age. Since arriving in January, three babies have born. I love these children dearly but also see the difficulties on the mothers and their families from having so many kids. I enjoyed the Muslim baptisms and naming ceremonies for these children as I believe I have earlier described.

Recently, the wife of the pharmacist at my health center gave birth to her first child, a boy they named Rodrique. This is one of the few Christian families that I am close to in village so I attended the mass for his baptism. Although we have a Catholic church in town, there is no priest since he travels to several churches in the area and a catechist does mass on the days he can't attend. On the day the priest attended this month, there were three babies being baptised. It was very similiar to a service in the US.

On the other side of the spectrum of life, about a month ago the patriarch of my family passed away. He was blind and very frail when I arrived last December and has been sick for months so it has come as no surprise. I have enjoyed learning about cultural traditions regarding death in my community. Baba (or Grandpa) passed away very early in the morning and when I got up a 6 am there were already mourners coming to the house to pay their respects. I was amazed how quickly the word spread throughout the community. I greeted the family and then went into work that day since I had a big project planned. I was quickly informed that I needed to be at home and would be in mourning with my family for three days as is customary. This meant that I had to sit with the women until the body was taken from the house for burial, wasn't suppose to leave our home courtyard, and ate dinner with my family the first evening. Over the three day period probably a thousand people from our small village and surrounding areas came to the house to pay their respects to his widow, our Yaaba (Grandma).

According to Bissa tradition, the family gathers again on the 5th day for a dinner of rice--a meal reserved for special occasions which I partook in. I've been told there also are celebrations on the 40th day and 100th day. During this time Yaaba is in mourning and is not supposed to leave the house or courtyard. Instead of wearing black which is common in the United States, here she has a gown made of navy blue that she wears every day.

A few weeks after this when I was out of town, the first wife of the president of my community health board (he has three) became sick and came to the health center. She died the next day and nobody really knows why. She leaves behind six or seven kids with the youngest being only about six years old. This seems so shocking to me that she could pass away so quickly with no understanding why but again this is not all that uncommon here.

My most recent encounter with death was a few days ago when I went with our chauffeur on an evacuation for the health center a few towns over to the hospital about 45 km away. We are the only health center with an ambulance in the area so our chauffeur takes patients for three other health centers. On this day, he asked me to go along to keep him company since I didn't have any work. We drove on an awful, rutted path to reach the health center and picked up a ten year old girl with severe malaria and anemia. She was non-responsive and was carried limp into the ambulance. Several members of her family came with us and we returned on the rutted path out to the main road. I was in the front seat and was torn apart listening to her moan over every bump we went. A little ways after making it to the main road, we stopped and I turned around to see. The girl passed away a few moments later while her grandpa was holding her. They listened for a heartbeat and then we turned the ambulance around to take her back home. I was shocked that no one seemed very upset and just accepted that this is a part of life. Back at the health center, the staff was trying to comfort me and tell me not to be discouraged though I was trying to stay in the background and out of the way. I was saddened that they seemed more concerned about me being able to handle this even than the actual death of a young child. One of the nurses made a comment that it was the parents' fault for waiting too long to bring her in. I feel that this is only part of the issue though. There are so many factors at play including the poverty, high rates of malaria, inaccessibility to adequate health services, and ignorance about the importance of early health care. It seems like such a senseless death to me and yet I know it is a common occurence in my village and those throughout Africa.

Here where it is accepted that women will have many children, several of whom probably won't make it to adulthood, it seems that little mourning is done for these youth. In the same culture, the death of an elder is shown a great deal of respect and celebrations continue for a long time after the person has passed away. Such a contrast to our lives and deaths in the United States.