At about 4 pm, we were summoned by Demis. Demis works for us, is an elder of the church, is our closest Gumuz neighbour and also a good friend. The burial was about to take place, did we want to come? We were pleased at the thoughtfulness shown.
We arrived and the body covered in a cloth was being slowly brought through the door and placed on a stick bed (without legs). The crowd of relatives spent another 10 minutes looking under the cloth and wailing over his body. The crying is so intense that it most certainly allows for grief to be fully expressed. I had two thoughts while observing them mourn.
One, we could learn something about openly expressing our feelings of grief and grieving as a community.
Two, our family felt really peaceful about Wotak’s death. He was a man of peace and always showed great interest in the gospel. He may never have publicly declared his belief in Jesus, but we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him in heaven! So it is hard to observe people mourning without hope. There is no sitting together and sharing all the amazing things about this man...it is only a feeling of hopelessness and fear.
Two large drums were carried on poles – one woman at each end. The drums are moved back and forth and the drummer keeps the rhythm as he moves with the drum . A man calls out the words to the mourning song and the crowd of people singing respond with a haunting wordless tune. The same tune is sung all day and most of the night for 2 or 3 days.
We followed the crowd towards the gravesite. Gunshots were fired into the air which is typical at all funerals and weddings. It is a practice that the local authorities are trying to end as the guns are powerful AK-47s.
We had nearly arrived at the grave when someone fell bleeding and obviously dead. The bullet had hit the person in the chest. I thought it was a child. I was stunned. I immediately began to wail. I was instantly filled with grief and anger. Demis was right beside us. He grabbed my arm and told us to run. Rolf hadn’t seen it happen and initially thought there was a swarm of bees. He grabbed our two youngest children and the others ran ahead of him. Demis was pulling me along with him while I wept. At the time, I didn’t even think about why we had to run but Demis feared there would be immediate retaliation.
As we crossed the road, several of Demis’ sons started running back and I feared the worst. It must have been one of Demis’ children killed. Rolf gave the keys to Kalia, took Sonia from my arms and handed her to Joel and told our children to run home. It didn’t take long before we heard that Wotak’s younger wife had been shot by Wotak’s son Wombak (son of his older wife). He had been one of the men digging the grave. The men had been warned by numerous people to stop drinking but they didn’t.
We then heard Demis’ mother, Yaguk had been hit by the same bullet. We watched them carry her to Demis’ house (which is right near the road). I hurried home to be with the children as I knew we were about to get even more involved.
Wombak was immediately taken from the scene, police were called and within ½ hour had arrived and Demis’ mom was carried to our front door. Her wound had been wisely tied with a long band of cloth that is used to tie women’s skirts around their waists. The bleeding had already stopped for the time being.
Demis, his wife, and his brother Chapay were there and though I advised them to keep the cloth on, they decided to take a look at the wound. I have never seen a bullet wound before but it had done a lot of damage considering it had already gone through one body.
The hole was about the size of a small orange and had hit the upper femur bone on her left arm. I couldn’t see any bone left. Yaguk flinched but didn’t make a sound as her children moved her obviously broken arm.
The decision was made to take her to Dibate. My first thought was that the arm would need to be amputated to save her life. She was actually conversing normally with everyone and it all seemed rather surreal. I just hoped she wouldn’t go into shock.
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