RSS feedLife doesn't stop for death.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Life doesn't stop for death. Something still broke in our truck Mwanaume while it was carrying sand with our students at Bukimau. The inspectors still called Godfrey to say that they needed the documents now. The lines at the bank were still long and the complications for transfering money around the country were still numerous. We heard rumors all day of stock markets crashing again around the globe, of riots in Europe, of banks being burned and people in panic, and the quote that everyone talks about is that people in a far off place called Wall Street said that it wasn't the end of the world but that it sure felt like it for a few moments. And Madame Sofia was dead and life just kept on going on.
Sofia was no stranger to controversy -- you can't lead a school of 600 students perfectly -- but she was respected in a way that few women manage to be in this part of the world. She was a Diwani -- a member of the district assembly -- one of the most powerful and influential women of the district -- and for the last four years she had also agreed to be the head of our school at Sawala. Godfrey may have carried the process through at the highest levels of government, but it was Madame Sofia who had pushed to get that school registered at all of the levels that were really difficult. She knew how to talk, that woman! And she also knew when to not talk and to just smile and stare at an inspector with that smile that just said come on you silly man you know what we're trying to do here for these kids so just cut us some slack and do the right thing and sign the papers.
When we awoke this morning to the news that Madame Sofia, the woman who has served as the Headmistress of our school in Sawala, died last night, everything slowed down and everything sped up all at the same time. Godfrey and Emmanueli were at my door at sun up and I greeted them in my bathrobe -- they were leaving in great haste. It was almost noon when someone else came to the door and I suddenly realized that I was still in my bathrobe and I hadn't bathed yet. There had been so many phone calls to make, messages to send to phones in our schools throughout Tanzania, so many phone calls coordinating things with Godfrey while Emmanueli drove -- because Madame was someone known by everyone -- and emails to be sent around the world because Madame was known to so many of those missionary teachers who had come to serve here. Four carloads of government officials, Members of Parliament, and of course many of her former and current students came to bury Madame in her home village and to show her respect.
It was often hard to know where the line was for the kids at Sawala -- sometimes she was their Headmistress, sometimes she was their grandmother. There were times when she seemed to be too kind, too good of a listener, too soft to be a real leader of a school. And then there were the times when she seemed to have just the right combination of wisdom and firmness. She was certainly the consumate politician. She finally weaseled a bulldozer out of the local branch of the big multi-national company Unilever so we could level a huge new area for her new building program this year -- you don't after all make all the profits Unilever makes by loaning your bulldozers out to petite little women who refuse to take no for an answer. The last of her "deals" she pulled off just a couple of days ago -- to get a large stone quarry deeded for free to the school so that she'd have a nearly unlimited supply of foundation stones for the six new classrooms she had her heart set on building this year. People have been donating money in huge quantities to our construction fund and it was beginning to look like with all of Madame's stones and the money people were giving in America, this was the year Sawala would take its giant leap forward. Her students excelled year after year on the national exams; this was the year they were also going to excel at building.
The messages from around Tanzania were sad ones. Those who lead our schools are basically all young people, not one of them in fact is over 30. So while a lot of people called her Madame Sofia, often times she was just referred to as the Mama of Sawala, or sometimes just as Mama. The many emails that came from distant cities and towns in America spoke volumes as well.
Madame Sofia was such an encourgement to me while I was there in Sawala, and I always loved stopping by her home in the afternoons while we were out and about visiting students.
Please tell Nashoni (that's Madame's son) that I will keep him and his family in my prayers at the loss of his mama. I met Madame Sofia on my way home from the doctor's when I was sick in December. She seemed like a very nice woman and I know Nashoni loved her very much.
This just makes me so sad...
Madame Sofia had gone to Iringa to see some relatives on Monday and we got word that she had collapsed in their home and they took her to the Catholic hospital in Tosamanganga. She died in a hospital bed just after midnight Friday night. Earlier in the day a group of her students and teachers had arrived having traveled the 80 kilometers to bring her gifts and to do as we do in Tanzania, to come and say pole. They were with her when she died.
