It was pitch-black outside. Aside from the wood-fed fires
flickering and the occasional flashlight passing-by, I was alone with the
bucket of hot water in front of me. Between two mud houses I stripped down
naked, balancing my towel and recently discarded clothes on the low-hanging
thatch roof. I squatted low to begin to wash the day from me, once again
feeling the clay that makes up this body.
Taking off my glasses the world took on the blurry facade
those of us with poor eyesight are accustomed. Feeling around for the soap, I
began to hear her wails. Perched atop the wet mud ground I tried to make out
what she was saying. Her sorrowful
incantations would rise and fall over and over again. It was clear. Someone had
died. Her cries of grief (were they in Bassa or English?) took form as a
near-song – hallucinogenic and heavy.
Over and over she was asking a question. It is the same
question we all ask, in despair: “Why?” And it kept coming. “Why? Why him? Why
me? Why God? Why?” Her frequencies, addressed to this world and maybe another,
were stirring the air all around. There was no respite, like she was whipping
up a storm. In demand of an answer, her
voice – vibrating – set to shatter the fragile night.
Listening, I couldn’t help but think: isn’t this repetitive
cry, this call into the darkness, this sad song, a way to make sense of a world
turned upside down? Were her echoes questioning His plan, or trying to
understand the profound loss that inevitably strikes us all? Perhaps we are all
programmed to think there is some comfort worth looking for in hearing our own
reprise. That in our darkest moments we can seek refuge in something like song.
Tracing the clay with my fingertips I bathed in silence, her
ululations carrying me into the night.
