WAME MOLEFHE ON WRITING Thou Shalt NOT Slumber

A few years after HIV was first identified in Botswana, the cloud that hovered over the country was foreboding.

It brought rain, rain of the

pula ya matlakadibe type. In the early days, people danced to Prince’s ‘Sign o’ the Time’, oblivious, perhaps, to the heaviness of its lyrics: ‘…a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name. By chance, his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same.’ Life went on. And then the virus tightened its hold, it held the country in a fearsome vice-grip.

Death visited. Visited again. Death stayed, and stayed over. Funeral parlours formed chains that necklaced the entire country, promising burial packages tailor-made to match the dearly departed’s station in life. Funeral deals enabled those who remained behind to arrange lavish sendoffs for their loved ones. The deceased rested on beds more luxurious than the ones they had slept on when they still breathed. A stretch Rolls-royce for a hearse, stainless steel casket, attendants in white gloves, marquees festooned in for-a-wedding drapery. If you were a person of more modest means, or were offended by such ostentation, you could opt for a pine box, the back of a bakkie or donkey cart option, and also make use of military green tents lent out gratis by the army.

Florists blossomed. Real, plastic, silk flowers were wreathed. Printing presses churned out funeral programmes - no longer an A4 page, folded in half with a black and white, often blurred, mug-like photo of the deceased on the first page, and an obituary on the back. Embossed cardlike paper became the norm. HD pictures of the deceased as a baby, in school uniform, wedding garb, at graduation, on holiday - reminiscent of a This-is-your-life TV programme. Catering businesses flourished.

Hearses lined up at cemetery gates, like tow trucks at accident sites, more sombrely, of course. They arrived before shovels were set down on the ground, before the most revered uncle in the family had read out the information on the plaque placed over the grave: deceased’s name, date of birth, date of death and date of burial - as if all who were there did not already have this information. Before he had delivered the tatolo, that final speech on the life of the person who was being buried, that stated that he or she, that person who brought them together, would never return to his or her home, that all hope should be buried.

One funeral was barely ended before another family filed into the cemetery to bury their person. Saturday was for funerals - once. Before this terrible time, the burials could stretch from dawn to the lunch hour, devour an entire morning, but there was no longer time for such indulgence. Funerals had to be completed within the time that was allocated by the council that controlled the graveyards, lest they ate into another family’s time. Sometimes, a family arrived to find the service still ongoing. Sometimes, the graves of the ones being buried lay side by side and so two funerals merged, became one. It did not matter that one congregation was Catholic-led, sombre, the other swayed Zcc-style or sang melodic Wesele hymns. The singing of all who were there resounded, and surely reached the heavens. Priests preached in turn. Grief was shared.

AIDS, inversed life’s order. Parents outlived children - but the nation survived. Hard lessons have been learnt.

It is 2020. A new disease threatens. Different from what has been experienced before. (This is what is being taught.) One should not draw parallels. But one thing is clear. In order to battle and emerge victorious over this new disease, we must cure that other condition that seems to have gone unchecked. The general somnambulism and collective lethargy that prevents us from being bold, that prevents us from acting--to make the changes that this country so dearly needs.

Let us not slumber. Tsogang, banna. Emang basadi.