Last Sunday (22 May), my intern Sterling and I were in Sengerema for church. During the service, Hamisi, who is the evangelist of the church, had his cell phone ring during the service. He quickly shut it off, but not before recognizing that it was a call from Maila, a twenty-five year old man who had come to know Christ last year and was baptized in November.
We had not seen Maila for the last two weeks because he had been sick. The previous Sunday he had been admitted to the hospital in Sengerema, but Hamisi had visited him and was pleased to see that he was on the mend and would be released on Monday. So it came as a shock to us to hear that he had died one week later.
The phone call that Hamisi had received during the service was from Maila’s brother who was using the phone to inform Maila’s friends that he had died. It seems that Maila’s sickness was diabetes and after returning home from the hospital, he had an attack and died at 2 AM on Sunday morning.
Once Hamisi was able to talk with the family, we heard that they were planning on burying him at 4 PM that day, 14 hours after he had died. Since we were his church, the family was telling us that we should come now to the house (it was 1:30 PM at the time). So, we gathered seven of us from church and drove to Maila’s home village of Nyampande, about 20 km (12 miles) away from our church, a distance that Maila had biked many times to come to our Sunday services.
When we arrived, it was a little before 3 PM. There were more than three hundred people gathered around the mud huts of Maila’s parents, vibrant splashes of color clumped under the thick shade of mango trees. The family invited us church members into one of the huts where Maila’s body lay. The overpowering stench of death hung heavy in the air as the casket was opened for each of us to see the body of our friend. I was asked to pray, and we sang a few hymns.
We continued singing as we escorted the paulbearers out to the open area in front of the house. The casket was laid on a small table. Hamisi said some words and then invited me to preach some words of comfort from Word. I spoke from 1 Thes. 4 of the hope of the resurrection for believers in Jesus, and then gave a brief presentation of the gospel. Next, the small hinged door of the casket was opened, showing Maila’s head. A procession line was formed, each person passing by the casket paying their final respects to the deceased. A young man stood over the casket with a aerosol bottle of body spray constantly spraying the air over the body to try to mask the smell of decay. Then, the casket door was closed, and the final nail was driven into the casket lid.
The paulbearers carried the body to the grave that was already dug at edge of the family’s property. We accompanied continuing to sing hymns and choruses. They lowered the casket into the grave by hand, then all of the men of the neighborhood took turns furiously shoving dirt into the grave. When a foot or so remained to be filled in, the men stopped, and women from the family each took turns throwing handfuls of dirt into the grave. We stopped our singing while representatives from the family, village, and church took turns laying wreaths of flowers onto the grave. Finally, Hamisi closed with a word of prayer.
This is not the first funeral that I have attended in Tanzania, but it is the first one that I have participated in officiating. It was very sobering.
“Kuiaga dunia” means “to say goodbye to the world.”
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