Relating to people – Tales of mixed reactions

Lets do some matchings between emotions and events I experienced in Malawi.

The events are:  1. Wedding  2. Funeral

The emotions: A. Excitement B. Disconnect

So what is the correct pairing?

1B and 2A, in other words, I felt very disconnected while attending a wedding, and extremely excited at a funeral!

Here in Malawi funerals are a time for the entire community to gather to support the bereaved family. It is very shameful for a person to be prohibited from attending a funeral. The funeral activities actually begin before the actual burial, as members of the community visit the family to comfort them and help with chores for the ceremony. At the first funeral I attended when I arrived at the family’s house I saw the women sitting on the ground around the house catching up with each other and taking a break from household work. The ones sitting closest to the house where the ceremony was happening were singing. The men were sitting by another house under the trees chatting as well. In the back a large group of women were gathered making quite a bit of noise. The atmosphere was quite different in this area as they pounded maize, separated the grains, cooked, and went to fetch water. All these gathered people were able to talk to each other, catch up on community happenings, and just chat away for a long time. In this setting I felt very excited as I was part of the community chatting with the women, helping to fetch water etc. It is easy to forget that this is no ordinary community gathering, and the reason all these people were there at that moment is because someone died.

Weddings are a lot more privet. This time you need to be invited personally to attend the celebration. The wedding I attended was a traditional Christian wedding, in many aspects similar to weddings in Canada. The groom’s sisters and the bride went to a hair salon the day before to get their hair curled, the night before there was a rehearsal, and the bride wore a white dress. Amidst all these familiar situations I could not ignore the feeling that this day was not really about the bride and the groom. After the actual wedding there was a party where the guests gave their gifts to the couple. There they were sitting watching their friends and family dancing towards them with gifts in their hands or heads. They might have been just hungry or tired, but they did not look like they were sharing in the happiness.  This was no arranged marriage, the groom asked the girl quite a few times if she would marry him and it was up to her, not her family, to decide.  After the wedding the groom complained that we did not have a chance to take a picture together. I replied that he should have asked someone to take that picture, but he told me that he had no control over that. At that point I felt extremely disconnected, it was hard for me to comprehend all the things I was observing.

I am not sure why the wedding had that effect on me.

But being an outsider at the wedding felt like a much bigger deal than it did at the funeral. Does that mean it is easier to connect with other people in moments of sorrow than in moments of happiness?

Maybe.

If that is the case, what are the implications of these reactions when talking to people about what is happening in places very far from us such as Malawi?

Source : Malawi Thoughts
URL : http://vivianmau.wordpress.com/