An Ndjuka Funeral

Saturday morning is my favorite time in Diitabiki. I rise early, wash in the river, and make pancakes (or, as I call them, “mancakes”) while listening to the music I grew up with. Last Saturday, however, on my way to the river, I met Captain Baya, who glumly reported, “everyone is dying again.” Da Sawtu, whom I did not know, had passed away in the night.

To begin the Ndjuka funeral ceremonies, the chiefs formally announced the passing at the mortuary, and at the first mention of the name of the deceased, the women started to wail. In the next few days, visitors appeared to attend the ceremonies, which continuing with grave digging.

Digging the grave can take up to three days. This is by no means contingent upon how many gravediggers participate, but rather on how much gasoline the family can afford to buy to transport the workers by motorized canoe to the burial ground. Indeed, about eighty men participated in digging, or at least in drinking for moral support as others dug, and for Da Sawtu, the work took the full three days. While the gravediggers dig, villagers are expected to cook for the workers, and the chiefs provide the essential rum. Upon return from a day of long, hard labor, the gravediggers came singing in canoes while women gathered by the river’s edge and beat the water with branches until the entourage reached the shore.

Upon arrival at the village, the gravediggers reported to the chiefs. They marched in a line, singing while drumming a large paddle and several machetes in rhythm. They circled the mortuary several times before announcing their progress. The head gravedigger, a rather important person in Ndjuka society, addressed the chiefs in typical formal conversation through an intermediary to inform them that while the party had labored intensely, the grave had not been completed and another day would be necessary. The chiefs responded that they had heard and kindly asked the gravediggers to continue the work the next morning.

After the second day of digging, the rum was gone. The head gravedigger requested that the chiefs “allot his men a box, not an empty box, mind you, but a full case, of rum to complete the work.” The chiefs replied that this was too much; the rum they had given was all they would provide for the gravediggers. Attempting to negotiate, the head gravedigger implored the chiefs twice more for a decreasing number of bottles to no avail. Finally the head gravedigger said that he would not trouble the chiefs any longer. They would settle for a single bottle. The crowd erupted with loud but nervous laughter, for the chiefs had already refused three times. Captain Baya expressed displeasure at the gravedigger’s audacity, but nonetheless bestowed six additional bottles upon the thirsty workers.

After another day of grave digging, Da Sawtu was buried. Three days later libations were poured in his honor, and after three months libations will be poured again. The day after the first libations, a food offering was prepared in the mortuary. Children surrounded the food until a signal was given and then ravenously fell upon the victuals piñata-style. Next January, Da Sawtu and the rest of those who have died in the past year will be honored with a Brokoday, but that is another story.

Paddle-making Part I

As we entered the forest Heni told me to watch for snakes. Rains had driven many creatures into the open that we would prefer to stay underground, and my neighbors had just killed a deadly ­­Anyoka snake near their house the day before. That Wednesday morning we sought a boogu-boogu, one of the trees used for making paddles. As my canoe was in the making, I needed a paddle soon or I would have been up the creek.

I had no idea what boogu-boogu looked like, but we stopped at a truly massive gray tree covered in waves of wrinkles. It looked like the leg of a very old elephant. The boogu-boogu tree had buttress roots similar to the tree shown in the picture. Heni and Barka, my two friends, inspected the buttress roots where the wrinkles extended near the base of the tree, but none of them proved promising for paddle construction, so we explored deeper. Eventually we found another boogu-boogu tree and cut a five-foot long portion. Since boogu-boogu buttress roots are thin, requiring less machete work, the Ndjuka have used this and similar trees to make paddles for centuries. An added advantage of this method is that only a small piece of the tree is harvested, allowing the tree to continue living and producing future paddles. As we walked back through the forest, I killed a small black snake on the path with my machete.

Since we were in the bush, Heni and Barka wanted to check an old plot of ground for second-year cassava. We crossed a few creeks and saw three more boogu-boogu trees with good potential roots for making paddles later on. When we arrived at the plot, we found it had been overgrown with nine foot high Kangayesi grass, which clings to just about everything and tears gashes in skin if removed too quickly. Barka carefully beat a path with a large branch until we confirmed that there was indeed cassava to be harvested. Our objectives complete, we returned home with boogu-boogu in hand.

Courage

A few days after I arrived in Diitabiki, I found myself listening in on a discussion of a micro-financing opportunity, which is generally an attempt by a non-profit organization to help get businesses started by lending a small amount of money at low interest. What disturbed me about the situation was the ridiculous seventeen percent interest rate. What disturbed my neighbors was the risky prospect of actually making monthly payments.

In my weekly radio program on basic business economics I am trying to stress the necessity of trying new things and risk-taking to economic growth. As I write and host the show in the Aucan language, a native speaker helps me revise and edit each episode I write. I had to ask what the word “risk” is in Aucan by describing a man in a dugout canoe heading toward dangerous rapids. To “take a risk” in Aucan is essentially to “take a thick heart, ” which implies something Americans tend to forget in regard to business enterprise—courage.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a young Frenchman who came to America in the nineteenth century to learn about our culture of democracy, used the clipper ship to illustrate American economic courage. He said that while clipper ships were extremely fast and had opened up a wave of new opportunities for international markets, they were also very dangerous. American sailors, however, would push their vessels to the limit to see how fast they could go. De Tocqueville claimed that this was because we considered engaging in risky enterprises a virtue. Nineteenth century Americans hailed as heroes those who risked their lives on the open seas to lower the cost of trade.

Today we still consider entrepreneurs an essential part of our economy, and rightly so. While people who take the risks of beginning something new wish to benefit from their ideas, they often stake their livelihood in hopes of making the lives of others better. Entrepreneurs can succeed only if what they produce helps people so much that buyers are willing to cover the high costs to get it to them. It is courageous to do what you believe is good for other people to your own potential detriment.

If we remembered that those who are wealthy from fair business practice have received their reward for providing people with things they need, we would also remember that economic risk-taking requires courage. Instead, it is fashionable to charge such people with some breed of extortion and attempt to correct income inequality by taxing rewards away from those who do well. Such practice discourages new ideas, and hence, new growth. Emphasis these days is on the consumer’s supposed responsibility to buy. What really needs to happen is for people to take risks to find things that others actually want to buy, rather than making them feel guilty for not spending enough to sustain the economy. For this to happen, however, we need to allow entrepreneurship to become courageous again.