. . . and rising . . .

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our death rate here in Nigeria – it’s much higher than in any other place I’ve known so intimately. Or maybe it’s not and it’s just that I’m so intimate with all of the deaths. Both of my parents lost siblings in their youth, as have many of my many aunts and uncles lost numerous children - to mostly treatable illnesses nonetheless. . . . And aside from the all-too-common passing of children, people are constantly lost to traffic accidents, complications from minor surgery, and of course, old age.

Since I’ve been home there have already been four deaths that I’m aware of; two within the family and two with close family ties. I know it’s sort of an inhuman assumption, but I was beginning to believe that people living here certainly have to get just a LITTLE bit desensitized to all of the loss. . . . But as I began to think more about it I realized that I don’t see that it has so much to do with being desensitized as it has to do with traditions and beliefs surrounding death.

Westerners have a notoriously sanctified notion of the entire process, constantly separating life and death, further mystifying the latter with an unspoken decree that only the most depraved and morbid dare to engage themselves with death while life pulsates all around them (i.e. the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an undertaker – God! Even the name!).

But so many other cultures integrate the two, and even with the influence of Western beliefs, I believe this integration may be what keeps my people afloat amidst so much seeming tragedy. Here, apparently, death is no great mystery, but unfortunately, for far too many, not living just at the edge of it is.