Saying Goodbye

I attended my first Ethiopian funeral a few weeks ago. Sadly, our Assistant Manager’s father died after a long illness. In a show of solidarity, forty of Lalmba’s staff piled into our two land cruisers for a 45 minute drive to visit the manager’s home—a process that involved some creative “seating.” After driving as far as the cars would take us, we traveled on foot along a well worn path to reach Wolde’s childhood home. The staff naturally separated by sexes, the females leading the march. Each woman covered her head and shoulders with a soft white cloth and the crowd looked strangely ethereal as we progressed forward on the path. When we arrived at Wolde’s home, there was a tent constructed outside in which the men sat—playing cards, talking, eating. The women were gathered together inside the home. As we approached, the women in our group began to cry, scream and wail—announcing our presence and expressing our empathy for the family’s loss. The cries were met by even louder screams from inside the home as the women received us. I have to admit, for a moment I was stunned, unsure how to react. Should I join with these women and express a level of emotion that, as guarded Americans, we are reticent to show—especially toward strangers? But before I could ponder this question, I found myself swept up in the wave of female voices, and my voice joined with the others as we let loose hysterical, painful cries. As we entered the home, our voices melded with the women’s inside into a crescendo of pain and mourning. We surrounded sisters, daughters, wives, and mothers of Wolde’s family and cried with them. Some women fell to the floor, overcome with their pain and sadness. We gathered on the floor and on benches huddled together holding each other and crying. Slowly the screams quieted, the sobs calmed, and a strange peace blanketed the gathering. As I sat in silence holding women I had scarcely met, I was surprised by how comfortable I felt. Although this gathering challenged my cultural comfort zone on many levels, it also felt like the most appropriate way to support others in a time of grief. It was strange to experience so much pain, but also so much peace in one brief moment. On that afternoon, for the first time in Ethiopia, I did not feel like a foreigner detached from everyone around me. I felt like I was part of this group of women, connected by universal understanding that crosses all chasms of culture, history, privilege, and past. I felt less alone than any time I can remember… I can only hope that the women we were there to support that day felt the same.