Your village, your genuine funeral policy

Our leader of delegation, the impeccable and unimpeachable Genuine Professor Abiti Dr Joyce Befu, MG 66 and MEGA-1, in exercise of powers invested in her by us, has today directed that we remind Malawians about the importance of our communities, neighbourhoods, and villages.

In these days, when people with money buy funeral insurance policies, the sense of community and neighbourliness is quickly being forgotten.

Some argue that it does no longer matter where they will be buried when they die because they will be dead, anyway.  Wrong. Those who think likewise are dead wrong.

Where you are buried is as important as where you were born, where you live and where you will die.  Our people are not mad. Are they? From Marka in Nsanje to Titi in Chitipa and  from Ulisa in Likoma to Ndawambe in Mchinji, they call your grave, nyumba, your house and the your village graveyard, mudzi  (village and community). It is not by mistake that these key words, nyumba and mudzi, are used. They mean a lot.  If you don’t appreciate what they really mean, ask your village head, your traditional rulers.  Nyumba has builders (diggers), adzukulu. These work and transact business on behalf of the community (mudzi) which guards the graveyard (mudzi).

These are your real funeral insurance. Whether you present yourself there alive or dead; poor and impoverished or rich and enriched, your community will not abandon you. They are the best funeral insurance policies around. Invest in them.

Further, throughout history, graveyards and graves have been used as ‘beacons’ to mark ownership of land.  Part of the quarrels between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East is that both can identify and rightly claim that the land they occupy is theirs through inheritance because they can identify where their ancestors rest in peace or pieces.

Someone, here in Malawi, with lots of money went to his village and claimed that almost 10 hectares of land there were his. The chief, the Gogochalo (do you know what this means?) and his people summoned him to a mphala and asked him to accompany them to the disputed site to show them the boundaries of his land.

He took out a land sketch and assisted by a foreigner he had picked from nobody-knows, started pointing at his borders.   The chief asked him how the land became his.

 “I bought it,” the moneyed man replied.

“Bought it from whom?” the Gogochalo asked.

“From the government,” the mpondamatiki answered, drily.

“Who is government? We have never had a person by that name in this village. Show us where he lives or lived or identify his relations.”

“I mean I bought the land and paid in Cashgate City, the seat of the government,” Mpondamatiki said rather impatiently.

“Sorry, young man. You may be learned but you are not educated. You may have money but you are poor. Land belongs to the people and we are the people.  The land you claim to have bought is part our final home and part our farmland. We have not farmed it for a long time to allow it to regenerate.  In this land, do you know where the graveyard is? Do you know any of your ancestors buried here?”

“Yes.”

“Can you identify where he or she sleeps, anagona pati?”

“No,” Mpondamati answered.

“Go back to Government and get back the money. Tell government there is no land for sale here. If government insists, tell him to come here. Our ancestors were here before government came. Is it clear?”

So, the rich man went back, land sketch in his hands, like a crocodile in the Sahara.

The Gogochalo knew that the rich man was indeed from that area but the rich man had never been there. He had never greeted the chief. He had never attended any funeral. He had never invested in the community.  So the Gogochalo decided to pay him back in his own currency. Invest in your Gogochalo and your claim to land will be guaranteed.

Our leader of delegation has also asked to emphasise that we remind people that graveyards and graves are part of historical records. The names on the tombstones are reminders of who was here before us.

This is why some families decide to exhume and rebury their relations in their ancestral lands. To keep their family (mudzi) together in the last village (mudzi).