Tricia, Almut, and I went to our first African funeral several days ago. It was for Pastor Eli one of the first pastors of the Baptist Churches in Cote d’Ivoire. He had died a month ago and they waited until now to have the funeral so that people could make it to the veille. A veille is an all night party celebrating the life of the person who has passed away. Also, in this case since this man is a Christian we celebrated that he is now with the Lord.

   We went to this veille the day after we got back from Korhogo. The only reason I was ok with going to the funeral so soon after arriving was because I had a very good prayer time with the Lord. He gave me so much peace that I was happy to go. The car ride was a little long, but we still got there pretty early. The place was set up for a party, but there weren’t very many people when we first arrived. We got to go through a room where some women were mourning and greeted them. Outside of that room was the kitchen area and it was a sight to see. There were lots of women their sitting around and chatting. I’m going to attach a picture because it’s hard to describe an African kitchen if you have never seen it.

   Some people left so they could accompany the body from the morgue where he had been frozen for a month. For some reason that seemed to take forever and we just sat waiting during that time trying not to fall asleep. When the body arrived around sun set that was when the program began. Many people got up and gave speeches and groups of people sang as well. I had heard that at a veille there was lots of dancing and singing but that didn’t happen while we were there. I was falling asleep in my chair when finally we all decided to leave for the night. A Monastery nearby let us stay in one of the vacant rooms they had. There were 5 of us and only one bed. Three of us slept on the bed and the other two slept in the car parked outside the door. I’m so thankful we had that place because I couldn’t have stayed up all night. We got up early the next morning to go to the funeral. After the funeral we went to ask for the road, but the son of the man who died would not let us leave until we ate. He is the Ambassador of Mali and invited us to the mayor’s house for lunch. There was such a big contrast we were at first at the funeral where there were lots of people and went to a really nice house that was very peaceful. I sat at a table with Angelika and 4 or 5 chiefs. Right away the oldest chief their wanted Angelika to give me to him so he could marry me. It was odd because at this lunch they had the ladies get up and get their food first and in this culture the men eat first. When Angelika and I sat back down I asked if it was ok of us to eat and she said yes. After the men got their food and sat back down one man at the table lectured me a little bit. He said it all in French so I didn’t understand much, but I kept hearing the word “respect”. Angelika told me he was saying it was disrespectful for us to eat before the men had gotten their food and that it was disrespectful for me to look these chiefs in the eyes when I talked to them. But, I was just following Angelika and I knew she knew what she was doing so I didn’t get too worried about it. I must not have been very disrespectful because when it was over and we went to leave the same old chief told Angelika again he wanted to marry me. She said he would have to ask my father then we left. Over all it was a good experience and I learned some new things.