little brothers

                I didn’t really know Moeketsi Tsepe. 

For starters, he was in the first grade, and my interactions with those kids are pretty limited to waves of “hi!” and “goodbye!” when I’m coming and going from school.  But Moeketsi’s older sister, Nthati, is one of my 7^th grade girls.  She and all of her friends used to drag him around the school grounds during lunchtime, showing him off to the teachers and making him do things that only 14-year old girls could think of doing.

                Nthati was a really proud big sister.  I could just tell.  The way she talked about him and forced him to play with her and her friends, smiling and teasing him the whole time, reminded me of my own brothers when we were little.

                Moeketsi passed away in the hospital last weekend.  Everyone said “he was sick, he was a quiet boy, he never ate, something was wrong with him…”

                We let school out today at 11am so the students could wait alongside the road for the hearse to pass and sing hymns for it.  Except that when it arrived it wasn’t really a hearse at all; his coffin was so small that it fit inside the back seat of an SUV.

                The car slowed and turned down the dirt road towards its destination, and we formed two solemn lines along both sides of the car.  We walked steadily through the village singing hymns as loudly as we could.  People came out of their houses and stood in their yards watching us pass. We walked all the way to the family’s house, where we surrounded the car as the back seat doors were opened.

                The coffin was small enough that it only took two men to lift it out.  When it emerged, one of my 6^th grade boys who was standing directly in front of me turned around to face away.  His eyes were filled with tears.  He looked at me until I told him it was OK to turn around again.  As the coffin was carried into a nearby hut, we stood around in a clump and continued on with our hymns.

                It must have been one of the family members who ushered us into the hut to pray around the coffin.  My students filed in one-by-one, and the teachers waited until all the kids were inside to enter. 

                I wasn’t ready for it.

                I wasn’t ready to see Lineo, my smartest 7^th grade girl, sobbing on her sister’s shoulder.  I wasn’t ready to see Kamohelo, a troublesome, talkative 5^th grader, wiping tears off of his cheeks.  Lehlohonolo, who never talks in class and hardly lifts his head up when he answers, looked over at me with big, watery eyes.  Nthati was crying and moaning out loud. 

My little, humble school was packed in this crumbling hut, praying over a tiny coffin, mourning the loss of one of us.  Suddenly, we weren’t teachers or students anymore.  We were a family, and we were all suffering the same.

The funeral is tomorrow.  But I think that today was almost more special, more private, more personal than the actual funeral will be.  On our way home, one of the villagers explained to me that since Moeketsi was so young, he wasn’t able to meet many people in his life.  Our school was his everything.  Apart from his sister and mother, we were his family.