“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
― Zora Neale Hurston
On the morning of April 12th, as my daughter and I prepared for our early flight to Benin from Lagos, my phone rang. It was my mum.
“Are you coming?”, she asked. In the past few days, she had been pressuring me to come to Benin to see my dad who was doing poorly- in her estimation. I didn’t trust her judgment because she was prone to exaggeration, but I had decided all the same that we would head to Benin as soon as I received some money I was waiting for. My daughter and I made jokes about how pleasantly surprised they would both be to see us so soon. The money arrived on Monday that week, and I had purchased tickets for Friday, the 12th. But to my surprise on the night of the 11th, my mum had transferred some money to my account probably to speed up my arrival. I laughed knowing I would send it back to her once I was settled.
“Yes, we are leaving this morning.” I responded. “Ok. Hurry abeg, hurry up” she said and hung up.
I was mildly irritated now because I did not understand why she was trying to make me panic. I could not hurry the flight and it was not as if my father’s life was tethering on to a thread that would break if I delayed my arrival. Then she called again.
“What time is your flight?”
“10.45", I said.
“Oh, oh. But he died last night.”
Everything thereafter till I arrived at my home in Benin was tangential.
One of the worst things you can do is to die a Nigerian, in Nigeria. But by far worse than that is dying a Bini man in Nigeria, and leaving a family behind. There is something putrid in Nigerian society that encourages vultures to lurk at the whiff of any misfortune; and when someone dies, these vultures slink in from the recesses of culture and tradition to feast. Except in Bini culture, they feast both on the living and on the dead.
Why did you let him die? Why were you not there when he died? Where were you when he died? Why did you kill him? Come to think of it, why are you not on your knees while your brother is speaking to us? Why do you even work in that place that you do? Who was it you got married to and how come I haven’t seen your spouse? Who was your brideprice paid to? Those are the questions you are likely to be assailed with from the ‘bereaved’ relatives when you go to formally announce the death of your father.
My father had been ill for 13 years. Complications of diabetes along with injury from a road accident. As his military might and his fortunes waned so did his visitors, including his family. Including all but one of his siblings.
The month he died he had undergone surgery twice on his feet — his toes were amputated. My elder brother, a doctor, who had flown into town to care for my father, conducted the surgery himself. On the night of April 11th, shortly after he had retired for the night, and administered his drugs by the nurse, a fire broke out in his room. We suspect that a switch on his bed which had been rigged for ease of access short-circuited and caught fire. Neighbours saw the flames before my brother, or my mother, who was home, heard anything. Despite the collective and successful efforts of the neighbours and my family to put out the fire, my father weak from his illness succumbed to death by smoke inhalation.
I was fortunate to be excluded when my siblings went to inform my father’s siblings of his death. Unaware that my father had died the night before, I had not packed for mourning. My elder brother took one look at my black and white striped outfit and decided I stay back. An excellent call considering what occurred- and my fiery temper.
Of the six or so of my father’s siblings gathered to poke holes in my siblings' account of how he died I remember seeing only one in my adulthood. Two I had last seen when I was 13- I am 42 now- and one I had never met at all. But they were not there to grieve, they were there to settle scores and satisfy their curiosity about us, his children.
I was told my elder brother went on his knees and as he began to recount the events that led to my father’s death he wept. Undeterred, the ‘family’ would ask him to ‘shuttup’ and begin again. Interjecting with questions like ‘why we could not pull my father out of the burning room, why my mother, (the then 70-year-old woman, who unlike them, had been there for my father every day of his 13 year illness, and throughout their almost 50 year marriage)had not been sleeping on the floor beside my father’s bed so she could raise an alarm if something went wrong. They seemed to have no remorse or feel no pain at their decades-long absence in the life of their brother or of his children. Rather, whatever guilt or shame they probably felt they deflected back on us, brusquely interrogating our personal lives and excavating petty grudges.
The latest discovery of my father’s siblings complained about a time she came to our house, ostensibly in the early 80s, and my mum did not give her water to drink. Another was upset that when my father had the car accident in 2006 she sent him a flask of peppersoup and none of us could even be bothered to return her flask. Someone wanted to know when my younger brother got married and to whom? And how many children he had and when he was going to bring his wife to be introduced to them. Even I was not spared the torrent despite my absence.
My father’s sister said her children had drawn her attention to an appearance on CNN where I spoke about being HIV positive. “No!”, her brother had interjected, “It was on wazzap (Whatsapp)!”. She continued by saying that I was disgracing the family name; the ‘Ero’ name was a perfume that should not be tainted. (It was at this point in the retelling that I was grateful for not being present during the conversation. I do not have the patience for foolishness and would never have tolerated being judged as a disgrace by a convicted drug smuggler, nor would I have had my HIV activism questioned by a serial philanderer, with no apparent knowledge of sexual health. Family or no.) They then went on to ask if I was healthy and if I was taking medication, in an attempt to fish for information from my brothers, and assuage their curiosity.
That fiasco over, the next step would be to meet with the larger Ero family. This is the stage where the children of the deceased would be (assessed and) given a long list of items and other requirements for the family- more never-before-seen people to be involved in the burial. These extensive requirements included money, cows and goats and loads of (mostly) alcoholic drinks. In other words, fleecing the bereaved. This was a delicate process that involved a lot of subterfuge, negotiation, persuasion and pretence to arrive at a compromise that would not make the extended family walk away in anger. I saw my elder brother struggle to keep it together as he returned daily from the meeting with the ‘family’. I marvelled at how he kept it together at the accusations and thinly-veiled threats from those who were supposed to be my father’s closest biological siblings. It was important that he did; extended family members are known to cause trouble for the surviving members of the deceased so as to extort as much as is possible from them. In many cases, they seize the corpse during the funeral until their requirements are met. The sad thing is that every grouse can be settled with money.
Luckily for us, my father’s funeral was a military one as he had been in the army, so the extended family rites had to be excluded. That did not prevent them from camping at the house beginning the night before the funeral, consuming copious amounts of food and drink, and extorting any of us who walked past their vantage point. You no give me transport money o. This your earring na gold?
Shortly after the interment, and the majority of guests had dispersed, the extended family settled down to a meal of pounded yam and egusi soup, their third meal before 3 pm. Thereafter they called I and my siblings together, broke kola, and uttered a dodgy prayer for our welfare and our progress. I assumed because he was sated and happy with his largesse, the spokesperson wanted to bless us. I was wrong. This was another attempt at fleecing. He told my elder brother that for some spurious reason, we as a group, needed to pay them 20 000 naira , and that I, who had been the first to give my father a grandchild, would give them a he-goat or the financial equivalent. We were then dismissed to gather up whatever cash we could. I had already made up my mind to ignore them and was discussing with my cousins behind the house when I heard shouting from the living room where they sat. Apparently, an older family member had chided them for being too greedy and a quarrel ensued. People supposed to be mourning their ‘brother’, buried just a few hours ago, just a few feet from where they sat, were almost at fisticuffs over how much more money they could extort from the children he left behind. They called me again when the shouting subsided asking for my he-goat equivalent. I told them to wait for me, picked up my things, and, making my way through the back door, I drove off in my cousin’s car. I was informed that they eventually left.
They are all like that, everyone I spoke to told me. That is how they behave in ‘the village’. I never understood that. I do not understand that. You mean you know these bloodthirsty humans exist in every community, and everyone just lets it slide? Is this normal behaviour, preying on the bereaved? Capitalising on their grief and pain to extort them, in the name of culture and tradition? To leave a bereaved family in debt after a burial? And because this depravity is detribalised and unified does that make it right?
In retrospect, I suppose I should be grateful that I had a level-headed, elder brother who was committed to seeing the funeral process to a logical conclusion. I would have walked out on the gluttonous, barefaced sods at the first signs of trouble, and left them with the corpse since they wanted it so much. It would mean nothing to me to do that. Seeing my father’s body amidst several bodies haphazardly strewn in the mortuary, I woke up to a few home truths:
- burials or funerals, though about the dead, are actually for the living, to offer some form of closure.
- The dead cannot be ‘laid to rest’, they are dead. Only our imaginations, thoughts and fears about them need to be allayed.
