We were supposed to visit a hospital on Saturday. We went to a funeral instead. In Kinshasa I would rather go to a funeral than a hospital.
It was our first day with our Congolese hosts, who would have charge of us for the next 8 days. Pastor François gave us the news of the change in plans when he came to pick us up at 10. Well, he was not picking us up but waiting for Marie-Jeanne to come with her Toyota SUV and driver but Marie-Jeanne was running errands and running late. For overnights we would be passed back and forth, in various combinations, between François’s household and Marie-Jeanne’s household since neither could accommodate three American ladies at the same time. But we would be spending most of our days together.
The funeral was for the mother of the pastor who is president of a local Mennonite church district. It was important for François to show up and he thought we ought to see this, too. Funerals take precedence over just about anything, certainly over a hospital visit (Amen!). So when Marie-Jeanne and her driver finally showed up at Suzanne’s around noon we all piled into the SUV with our luggage—7 of us including the driver and an interpreter Francois thoughtfully brought along. He and the interpreter, Azir, rode in the back with the luggage.
Nobody in the car knew exactly how to get to the funeral. They knew which neighborhood and had the name of a street but nobody in that neighborhood knew exactly where the street was. Although everybody who was asked gave directions, they tended to contradict each other.
“Street” is an exaggeration for the kind of passages in which we soon found ourselves in this large residential quarter. We’re talking about a maze of narrow dirt alleys rutted with rocks and washouts and remnants of ancient pavement and in places literally paved with garbage. People live here, in rows of low cement buildings with connected rooms and shared compounds, which we could glimpse only through openings in the cement block walls that lined the alleys. People stream through these alleyways and sell their wares along them, especially at corners. Children dart around. They are not appropriate for vehicles, not even a rugged SUV. Nevertheless, some vehicles were back there, blocking the way, and had to move to make way for us.
After many inquiries, meanderings, and turnarounds, we came upon the funeral, tucked away in a small open area fully set up with tents, chairs for several hundred people, and a canopy for the casket and mourners. There must have been 200 people crammed into the little open space but you couldn’t see or hear them from half a block away.
The funeral was well underway as we all traipsed through and were seated first on a far edge and then moved to a front-row view. One has to get used to being a disruption. The leader of proceedings was calling people to a mike to eulogize the deceased grandmother. The eulogies that I could understand sounded familiar, like you would hear at one of our funerals. A granddaughter spoke, an old woman who had been the grandmother’s friend, and a number of friends of the church leader, her son.
We were led in a lively Lingala version of What a Friend We Have in Jesus, with Allelujas and many refrains thrown in, and another hymn I didn’t know but could soon hum along with in harmony. Gorgeous, energizing singing. There was a prayer for the immediate family. Boy and Girl Scouts were summoned to surround the casket and give a salute. Then the master of ceremonies called upon a succession of family groups to lay flowers in front of the casket. All the wreaths were made of artificial flowers and covered in plastic. Many family members wore outfits of matching cloth, shirts for men and dresses for women. The cloth was of two patterns: one blue with flowers and another black with chickens and eggs. Marie-Jeanne, who has a sewing training workshop, sewed most of the special outfits in the last few days. Black was not predominant at this funeral. Women were dressed in their colorful best but young people were there in tight jeans, too.
Then people were summoned in groups, according to protocol, to pass by the casket. Family, leaders and officials, pastors, women leaders—including some of our théologienne friends from Day 1. I lost track of the protocol but we followed François and passed by the glass-covered open casket. The tiny Granny, covered up to her face with silky cloths and scarves, looked as imperious as any Egyptian mummy queen and almost as shriveled.
We left after we had paid our respects, as we might have at an American funeral. What followed would be burial at a rather distant cemetery and maybe some soft drinks. Instead we made our way back to more navigable streets, descending from the high Ngaliema neighborhood to late lunch at an Italian restaurant run by Lebanese and then to first one host house and then the other. They were not close and it was hot.
Earlier, as we were driving up the Ngaliema hill toward the district, we passed by a striking white mansion that looked familiar to me from the 1970s. Nina asked what it was and I asked Marie-Jeanne. “That’s the Marble Palace,” she said.
Ah. The palace Mobutu built, a place where official functions used to be held. Are they still? Yes, President Kabila still uses it, Marie-Jeanne said. But I wonder how much. It is where his father, the first President Kabila, was assassinated. And it is so close to the crowded, dusty neighborhood, so close to the places of hard life and death and singing.
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