Life and Death

At 5:30 am, I awoke to wailing. A woman and her children sobbing hysterically across the street. The old woman, referred to as "tsohuawa"-meaning old woman in Hausa, who lives there with her daughter had been ill with a cold. I found out that afternoon she was having difficulty breathing and went to the hospital. When I went to visit, the woman laid in agony, curled up on a bed as her friends and family sat on the cold ground beside the bed listening and watching her attentively. After sitting there a while, waiting outside the old woman's room, a nurse invited me into a room across the courtyard where a young woman curled up on a bed breathing quicker and quicker with each contraction. Just a few steps from where a woman is fighting to live, another is birthing life. As the sun set, I left the hospital. I will wake in the morning wandering if a child was born and if a woman died. As life comes and goes, Nigeriens digest it all. Since they believe that Allah controls life and death, mortals cannot control the cycle. The next morning, when I opened my gate, a cluster of men sat in silence in front of tsohuawa's house. I saw them and knew the woman had died in the night. Traditionally, when someone dies, men sit in front of the house and women gather in the concession, waiting for people to come pay their respects. I kneeled before the men, bowing my head slightly, as I greeted them. "Ina kwana" (how was your sleep), followed by "Allah ba mu hankuri"- "May Allah give us patience"- the phrase I remembered reading in my Hausa study manual that one utters after a death. After greeting the men, I entered the concession. Even after knowing the old woman only a few weeks, it was strange to not see her sitting under the tree and shelling peanuts as she had done everyday. Instead, ten women, heads down, greeted my coming. I kneeled and returned their greetings. Death, such a big part of life. A difficult part of life, but one that is engrained in a country where the average lifespan is 45 years old and children die everyday from malnutrition. We know not when or where or who. All we can do is appreciate the moments that grace us each and every day no matter where we are.