June 9

I find myself thinking about life and death a lot more often here than I did at home. At home, birth and death are events worthy of serious attention, because they don’t happen that often. Here, births and deaths are happening all around us all the time. We live next to the maternity ward of the Odibo health center, and we often hear newborn babies crying from our windows. The expecting mothers who live far away come to Odibo as their due dates approach. They camp in tents behind our house until they go into labor, and then they go to the health center. So we see lots of pregnant women, and lots of mothers with newborns. Birth seems less extraordinary when it happens next to us so many times a day. Deaths also seem less shocking. Every day I hear about a new death, a new funeral. Traditionally funerals were conducted on Saturdays, but these days they have funerals on other days, too, to accommodate all of the deaths (HIV is claiming a lot of young lives). I frequently sign permission slips for students who need to leave school to attend the funeral of a parent or aunt or uncle.
I am closer to the births and deaths of animals, too. There have been lots of families of farm animals with their newborns on the mission since we came here. This morning a goat was born behind one of the classrooms. (One of my grade 9 classes watched the whole process through the window. Good timing…I’m giving them a test this week on reproduction in goats, chickens, and insects.) There is a chicken mama and her 5 pullets living in our backyard right now, and a couple of kittens. As you read on the blog, I myself killed some chickens during grade 9 slaughter day last term. I sometimes see enormous cows tied into the beds of pickup trucks, lying on their sides, with ropes around their heads. On the way to slaughter. If I’m in a car that stops by one of these trucks, or if I’m walking by, I always notice the eyes of the cow. Sometimes they watch me. Cows have big, innocent, observant eyes. Usually the cows look like they are in extreme discomfort. Every time I see those cow eyes, I think to myself, “ I’ll never eat a burger again!” And yet I’m still eating meat. I have much more sympathy for animals when I live around them, and when I witness their slaughter. It’s good for me to understand the whole process (where my food comes from) but it’s a painful understanding, too. Ignorance was bliss, back before I had a nonverbal conversation with a cow in a pickup truck.