Six baptisms, a wedding.....

..and now a funeral.

The sister of my farm manager took ill yesterday and as I was told the story “we took her to hospital for treatment but brought her home dead” She died at 6pm yesterday and her funeral took place at 2pm today.

Families cannot normally afford to embalm the body so funerals always take place very quickly after a death

The requiem mass was very similar to the ones we have at home and then the coffin was carried to the graveyard with probably around 300 of us walking behind, with the choir singing all the way there.

All villages have a graveyard, normally within a clump of trees in the middle of a field. This one was no different. In the centre of the trees there were numerous burial plots, most of them with a gravestone.

At the graveyard the mourners quite simply sat on the ground whilst the choir sang and a beautiful service continued. At the point when the coffin was lowered there was a great commotion from the mourners, many of whom wailed and cried out very loudly. This is a very normal part of the ceremony.

The choir continued to sing whilst the soil was piled back up to ground level. Then followed the laying of many floral tributes before the mourners respectfully walked away.

It really was moving to see the numbers who had walked so many miles on a very hot day and with very little notice. Deaths seem to be so very commonplace here with many dying at a young age yet the community continues to gather around and support each bereaved family