“Cry Dies” or death memorials celebrated after a year in honour
of the love one that passed away. Cameroonians are well known for the way they
celebrate their cry dies. This is a memorial festival that is organized and celebrated
a year after a person dies. This period is always very emotional as family
members and friends turn back to those sweet memories they once shared with
this loved one. Weeks and even months before the day of the event, several
family meetings are held to raise funds for the occasion and to plan for the
day activities. Some families go to an extent of designing and printing invitation
cards for the events outlining the activities that will be done the day before
the day of the ”cry die” and the day of the “cry die” event. For some families
that have other relatives in distant places, travel will be required. Some
relations out of Cameroon, travel back home just for the “cry die” because it
has a huge meaning in our culture. The man in the picture below has to wear his
mother’s dress every year on the day she died to emphasis his love for his late
mother who passed away in 2008.
As a kid living in the village, I could count the number of times I heard that someone had passed away and it was always an elderly man or woman. I remember going to a funeral for the first time and seeing the corpse dressed in African wear, lying on a mat on a bamboo bed. The service was for an elderly man who was known as Pa Fondze. I remember stealing my way in because kids were not allowed to see corpse for the reason that they will see dead people at night in their dreams. If a man died in the morning, that person was buried that same day before sun set, and to this day, no burial takes place close to noon. I have never known the reason why, but it is a practice that all tribes in Cameroon follow and respect.
When I was 7 years old, my auntie’s husband, with whom I was living in Bamenda, was transferred to Douala to work as a Police officer. That is where my knowledge of death ceremonies was strongly affected. In Douala funerals are more of a rendez-vous area for meeting friends, drinking, dancing and being introduced to new people. The deceased is kept in the mortuary which is like a deep refrigerator for days depending on how much money the family intends to spend on the burial. In cases where some family members live abroad and have to come home, it can even take up to a month before the service and burial. A day at the mortuary is about $10, but only the rich can afford to keep people for longer than two weeks. In some traditions, when a youth dies when his parents are still alive, the burial is done as soon as possible, because it is considered ill luck to lose a child.
Bui is one
of the divisions under the N.W. Province in Cameroon. It has six sub divisions and its population
in 2008 was estimated at 420,000 people, and the capital of Bui Division is
called Kumbo. The Nso people are regarded as the grassland people and their
traditional language is called Lamnso (Language of Nso). The Fon of Nso is the
traditional ruler, both respected by his people and the government. The Fon’s
palace is called “Ntoh Nso”, known as the centre for social and cultural
festivities. The Nso society is divided in lineage group often referred to as the
“Big Compound” and they are ruled by traditional heads known as “Fais” instituted
by the Fon of Nso. Like all traditional heads, they do not shake hands with
humans as traditional demands.
Traditional
marriage rites take place in most Big Compounds and as tradition demands, the
groom to be must visit the family of the bride. The parents of the bride have
little say about what will be given as a bride’s price. The price for the first
girl of a family is paid at the mother’s family Big Compound as tradition
requires, and the other girls are paid for at the father’s Big Compound. Tradition
of the family compound demands that is what was paid for your mother will be
the same that will be paid for you, the bride to be, and it can be in the form
of cash or kind, but mostly the groom’s family is provided with a list of
things to bring as a bride- price.
My home country of Cameroon,
like many Sub-Saharan African countries, struggles with high levels of poverty.
From an international perspective, the average gross domestic product per
capita is estimated at approximately $2,300, compared with $41,100 in Canada.
Unemployment in Cameroon is estimated at 30%, and 48% of the population lives
below the poverty line.[i]
These
statistics suggest that people struggle to survive in Cameroon, but I do not
think statistics really tell a story the way it should be told. I would like to
tell you a bit about life in the city where I lived before coming to Canada, as
well as the village where my mother currently lives. To help with your
perspective, try to imagine your own hometown looking like what I’m describing
below, keeping in mind that Bamenda is a city of three hundred thousand people.
