Beer, songs and quarrels

One day a friend of mine asked me to go to a funeral with her. So we went to the home of the man who had died.

When we got there people were drunk, singing lots of different songs. The wife was sitting there with a rug over her shoulders. Her name was MaShange.

While people were singing a lady came in. She wanted to talk about her dead brother as it is the custom. People shouted that she should be quiet but she sat down and started talking, “This is my brother and I want to talk about him now. When he was alive it was me who was carrying his difficulties. During the time when the people burnt his house he ran away and came to me.”

“And during the time people were looking for him with guns he ran away to me. And now you don’t even give me a chance to talk about him. If you don’t want to sing properly or to talk about him we can fight. Then we won’t have a funeral now.”

And soon people didn’t sing any more. They started quarrelling. One man asked the people to be quiet but they did not listen. My friend and I did not know what to do but we stayed on.

It really was a strange funeral.

***

The second wife

After we had been in the house for some time a car stopped outside and we saw some people arrive, about 20 or 25. And among them was a lady who had a rug over her shoulders.

I asked my friend, “Why does this woman wear a rug? Is not the wife here with us?” My friend said, “Oh, this man had three wives and they did not know each other.”

The woman with the rug came inside and sat down.

Now some new problems started because the people in the house were against the woman who came in and the new people were against the woman who was already sitting there. Again there was a big noise. Everybody thought it was a big joke now and people did not even try to behave well any more.

Everybody was just talking about the story of this house, “This man had two wives and they are both wearing rugs.”

Then one man said, “Sorry about this. You have all seen that this woman came inside with a rug. This is my brother’s eldest wife, MaHlange.”

He then told us to get into the buses which would take us to the funeral at Emolweni. When we were inside the buses we kept on talking about this strange story to the people around us.

***

The third wife

At the funeral the two wives had to sit together. We people were standing behind them and the Reverend started doing his job. He was just going to say, “It is time now for the family to put down sand.”

But at this moment another car arrived and another lady with a rug and another group of people. The lady was crying. We did not know what to say but we thought that this must be the third wife. Who was she? Nobody knew. But now we wanted to know what was going to happen.

We were not sorry any more about what had happened before. Now we started to enjoy watching everything.

We all said, “Move, move” and we all moved out of the way and the lady passed and went to join the other two wives and sat down.

The funeral continued and my friend said to me, “We mustn’t go home straight from here, we must go to their house so that we can see what is going to happen there.”

And I agreed.

***

Number one, two, three

When the funeral was over, the three wives and their families got into their cars and we got into the buses in order to go back to the house. It is the custom with our people to stop by at the family’s house first after a funeral so that we wash our hands. In Zulu we call this geza izandla.

When we got there the wives also arrived, all three of them. It is the custom that the wives take off their rugs after the funeral. They have to go to the cold shower before coming inside.

Now the wives started quarrelling. The one who had been staying with the husband until he died, said, “I am going to shower first because I have been staying with him.” The one who had arrived second, said, “That can’t be. I have to be the first one because I am his eldest wife.”

Then somebody asked the third one, “Hau, MaSondo, why do you just keep quiet, why don’t you go there?” Masondo said, “Eh, leave me alone.

I don’t want to talk. Leave them to do what they want to do.”

After a while the sister of the last wife started calling, “Number 1, where is Number 3?”

We did not understand and asked her, “What do you mean?” She said, “Oh, I mean these three wives. I can’t say MaShange, MaHlange, MaSondo. I must call them Number 1, Number 2, Number 3.”

“Number 3 is here,” says Number 3, “It’s MaSondo.” “Then come, MaSondo, it’s your turn now to go to the shower.”

So they went to the shower one after the other and then all three of them came back into the house.

But when the food was brought in, the two wives who had just come on that day did not want to eat. The other people were happy. They were drinking. They did not care about what had happened to the family.

One person said to them, “Why are you making so much noise? We should not be noisy because we have just come from Mr Mbongo’s funeral.”

But another person answered, “No, leave us alone. It is true that we came here to cry with the family but now they are not crying. They are talking, they are drinking, they are fighting. So why should we worry if they themselves behave like that?”

But people did not listen to each other.

A few minutes later, a boy came in, the son of MaHlange, the eldest wife. MaShange, the last wife, was sitting in a corner. The boy went over to her and kicked her and said, “Get out of here! You stayed with my father last, you gave him some bad muthi, some poison, you are no good.”

Now everybody got up and started running. That was the end.

I certainly in my life won’t forget that funeral.