Only the Good Die Young

Hermenigilda Esperança (Hope) Vilanculos
April 13, 1984 - March 24, 2014

Perhaps the greatest indicator of ones’ “faith in humanity” is rooted in the belief (or disbelief) that the natural laws of our world tend toward justice. That, from the headwaters of human nature comes a generous affinity for truth, optimism, and egalitarianism. It’s from the confluence of these ideals that we form an assumption: that life dishes back what we give out. That what goes around, comes around. That the universe prevents bad things from happening to good people simply because it should. After all, if we are to have a social contract, for most of us it’s in our interest that it should be at the very least, fair.

And yet, with more time and exposure to the small cruelties and everyday tragedies of life, we are stripped away of our illusions. From our very first childhood disappointments to our entrance into society as adults, we realize that our mothers were right – “Life ain’t fair.”  Bad things really do happen to good people. Deplorably, they happen all the time. The question that we then must all reconcile and crave an answer to at some point in life, is why. WHY.

I was thinking about all this while staring at the casket of my beloved friend and colleague yesterday afternoon.  Hermenigilda Esperança Vilanculos died suddenly at 7am Monday morning from complications from childbirth. She was only 30 years old and left a week-old baby, her first child, in her wake. From what I gathered, Hermenigilda essentially re-entered the hospital a few days after giving birth, hemorrhaging, and the hospital simply didn’t have any of her blood type in stock. So she bled out.

The magnitude of this tragedy is staggering, mostly because Hermenigilda’s death anywhere in the developed world would have been completely unheard of – 100% preventable. But here in Mozambique, Hermenigilda just became another statistic. A waste of a life, amongst many.

I found out Hermenigilda had died from our mutual friend Angelica. Monday afternoon after I returned home from a weekend visit to Inhassoro, Junior, Angelica’s 4 year old son, shuffled over to my hut and mumbled that his mom wanted to speak with me. I remember thinking that this was odd, as usually when any woman in the village wants to talk to the other, they just converse loudly through hut walls and across corn fields, shouting their fofoca (or gossip) house to house to save themselves the walk. Getting up wondering, I wrapped my caplana around me quickly and left, Junior pulling on my hand incessantly. I entered the neighboring house. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Angelica gestured for me to sit down. “I have some horrible horrible news, amiga.” She said quietly. “Mana Hermenigilda passed this morning.” Passou. “Passed?!” I asked sharply. What the hell was that supposed to mean? I thought, my heart jumping into my throat. “Passou. Morriu.” Died. Hearing the word aloud shocked us both into silence. “What do you mean she died, Mama?” Junior implored, looking at his feet. Junior lost his own father when he was a baby, too young to remember. Yet, his instincts were sharp. Quickly, trying to avoid any questions, Angelica pulled Junior over and explained, “Mana Hermenigilda is on a great plane, high in the sky, looking down at all of us. She’s gone on a long voyage. She’s not coming back, filho” Then the questions poured out of my mouth. “What? How? When? What happened?” OH MY GOD, NO. Angelica turned away from me, tucking her head into her far shoulder, hiding her face from Junior. Anguish. I couldn’t stop thinking, THIS MUST NOT BE TRUE. There’s no way this could be true! Maybe it was a misunderstanding. This cannot be real. I simply don’t believe it.

And then that evening we received the details from our school director for the funeral the next day. And quite acutely, the reality of our loss set in.

The funeral was beautiful, if such a thing can be said about a ceremony of mourning. Wednesday morning nearly 40 teachers and students from our school and the nearby mission school piled into two chapas and made the drive to Vilanculos. I had Prof. Adelaide, the matriarch of our school squeezed in on my left and Prof. Sergio, my gangly superhero friend who always seems to turn up when I’m in a time of need, squeezed in on my right. For the whole drive, the remaining 19 teachers of E.S. 25 de Junho spent the whole hour in song, singing for our lost sister. Hugging isn't exactly a “thing” in Mozambique, so for once I rather appreciated the closeness of bodies, and the ability to feel the rumble and breath of song in my colleagues chests and shoulders as the chapa hurtled down the national highway.

We stopped on the outskirts of Vilanculos, at the sandy intersection to Hermenigilda’s house. Pouring out of the chapa, the women stretched and readjusted their caplanas and headdresses, while the men beat out the crinkles in their pants and straightened their ties. Then we began walking, shoulder to shoulder down the long sandy road into the hot morning sun.

Arriving at the house, one side of the shady yard was already occupied by over 100 women.  In every hue of capulana and lenço (headscarf), the women were kneeling, rocking, resting, burping babies, fanning themselves in the early heat. But most remarkably, especially for Mozambican women who incessantly find something to talk about, they were somber – silent. Our rank and file of teachers and students settled on the opposing side of the yard. Men took the chairs, while women squatted and plopped their butts in the sand, feet straight out in front or cradled under them. And we waited. And sang some more.

Somehow I had the foresight to bring my portable recorder with me, and I recorded many of these songs. They’re songs that, even without understanding Xitswa, evoke emotion. You feel these songs at the most basic human level. And so, to my pleasant surprise, even though I didn’t know any of the words to these hymns, it only took a basic musician’s ear to predict the melodies and accompanying harmonies. Humming cautiously, I thus got to join in as well.

Suddenly, everyone leapt to their feet.

The truck carrying the body.

In a whirlwind of activity, the casket is off-loaded from the white truck and carried into the house where the door is shut and a private ceremony conducted for immediate family members. Hundreds of us rush behind the casket, forming a huge circle around the viewing table. I clinch a spot only two rows back from the front with Gloria, Angelica, Adelaide, and Natalia, and push one of my favorite students, Sonia, forward. I rest my hand on her shoulders.  Time slows. We sweat. We wait. I try to not lock my knees. I feel a bit nauseated.

Finally, the door to the house opens once more, and the delicately gold-inlaid casket is brought out and placed gently on the viewing table. Fake, gaudy neon roses tumble to the sand with a gust of wind. To my relief, the casket remains closed. Yet, to give the funeral its sense of finality, a framed portrait of Hermenigilda’s face is placed at the head of the casket by a hand-carved cross, her teasing gaze locked forever into our mournful ones. Gloria and Natalia burst into tears. With the conclusion hours later, 500+ people hopped into chapas and into the back of trucks, and paraded out to the cemetery in a two dozen car wake. Hermenigilda was lowered into the deep sand. A screaming, wail erupted from who I took to be Hermenigilda's brother, and two other women fainted, landing body-board stiff with a loud THWACK. The two rotund bodies of the women were casually dragged to the outer ring of the circle. The young man was escorted out of the premises to wail out of earshot. My final view and last act was laying a single stem of stunningly beautiful bouganvilla upon the top of her mounded grave. With that, I'd had enough. I took my own deep breath and retreated to the edge of the onlookers.

Hermenigilda was a natural leader, a dynamic woman in every sense – smart, opinionated, very well educated, and a role model for the many young girls at our school who needed a trailblazer to lead the way. One of my favorite memories of Hermenigilda was when at one of our horribly formal, drawn-out, bureaucratic school meetings last year, she fearlessly confronted the Director about the discriminatory forgeries and corruption practices going on in our school administration that were docking payable hours from the female professors in order to raise the payable hours for male professors – male professors that often didn't even show up. When given a dismissive wave typical of any guy at the top who doesn't want his dirty laundry to be publicly aired, Hermenigilda pressed him further, making some of us squirm in our seats breathlessly. Her pointed questions ended up making our Director so uncomfortable he walked out. I absolutely loved her for her guts and approached her the next day to become my library counterpart.

As it turns out, Hermenigilda was also an incredibly humble woman. With more than a tinge of bittersweetness, I realized at her funeral that I actually knew very little about the woman who had become one of my dearest Mozambican friends. Born in Beira, April 13, 1984, Hermenigilda spent most of her life in school, either as a student or teaching the next batch of young minds. What I didn't know however, was that when she talked about her husband, she was talking about Antonio Vilanculos, one of the primary leaders of the FRELIMO party in the area. Thus, as the funeral transitioned from religious pomp of the Methodist pastor, to the tearful personal anecdotes from family, friends, FRELIMO party members, and old students, it was very clear just how beloved and respected she had been to those that had known her for so many more years than I had. 

And so, our school community begins to adapt to Hermenigilda's absence. We are learning how to keep on, although I have sadly had less practice in dealing with death than the majority of my students and colleagues.  It was incredible to me, how, after nearly a full 8 hours of mourning and burial ceremonies, the whole ride back to Mapinhane was a cacophony of riotous bantering and joking around between my colleagues. It seemed like they had put the events of that day out of their mind completely and it was now time to celebrate being alive. Life, afterall, in Mozambique is always too short. I think a woman like Hermenigilda, so full of life and spirit herself, would have clapped her hands and loved us for it. 

Descanso em paz, mana Gilda.