A good number of Zambians seem to like free things.  If you give a lift to someone from Lusaka to Kitwe, for instance, he will not contribute even a litre to your fuel, even if he is able and will even expect you to buy lunch for him when you stop to buy yourself a snack.  In Botswana, when you give a lift to someone, no matter how short the distance, they will pay for the ride even if you don’t ask them to.

When we are invited for buffet we like to heap our plates with food that we cannot even finish and either waste the leftovers or take away. Some of the people who come to help you cook at a funeral will go away with sugar, cooking oil and relish.  Gate-crushing at parties and funerals is getting more and more common.  Even when the number of people at a funeral is small, people still want to cook nshima in a pot the size of a 200 litre drum.  I have always wondered why funeral nshima should be stone hard!  What a waste! 

Still on funerals, the idea of too many people traveling from the village to attend a funeral in town and expect the person mourning to pay for their passage is one of the most unkind things you can do to a person who has already lost a loved one.  The question we need to ask ourselves is, which relatives should travel from the village?  Is the traveling necessary?  Can’t one or two persons represent every one  from the village?  In a situation where the funeral is the village or different town, should the whole family travel?  Will the chief mourner not find it more useful if you sent them your transport money instead?  If the funeral is along your street, should you take your whole family to go and eat there or take some food yourself?  Why can’t we take a leaf from Hindus who when their colleague is bereaved, all those in the same town prepare food bought from their own resources and deliver it to the funeral house and they themselves do not take part in the eating.  Only mourners from outside town are expected to eat at a funeral.

We also need to revisit the idea of sleeping at funerals.  Most people feel that when a close friend, relative, workmate or neighbour has passed on, they must spend nights at the funeral.   Even at the risk of their own health, they will sleep at a funeral for fear that if they do not, people will be talking.    You are considered anti-social and stone-hearted if you do not sleep at funerals and people plan to ‘revenge’ when your turn comes.   Do we take into account the space and facilities such as running water?  In my view, only close family members and those relatives and friends who have come from outside town should sleep at a funeral. Of course the idea is to provide moral and spiritual support but we should really ensure that numbers are controlled so that people do not fall sick during or after the funeral due to congestion, bad weather and mosquito bites.  We are not being fair to the men by making them sleep outside all night by the fireplace or in a vehicle.  We need the men to run around and make arrangements for burial so they need all the energy they can get and therefore sufficient proper rest is  a must.  Why not stay up late at the funeral house and then go and get proper rest?  Apart from that we also need the men to be able to go for work the next day and earn the money that will help at the funeral.  A person who has spent a night at a funeral will not be as productive or as alert as usual and the quality of his output will therefore be affected.  This in turn will affect customers, who may complain about the product or service and ultimately affect the company’s profitability.

How many reports fail to be submitted on time because people are spending too much time in funerals?  How many orders are not being processed because staff are away attending funerals?  How much money are individuals and companies spending on medical  bills for illnesses arising out of attending funerals?  How many customers walk away unhappy because the person who should attend to them is attending a funeral?

I am not saying that we should stop sleeping at funerals.  All I am saying is that, we need to change the way we mourn and take health and costs into account.  A mourning family does not need you crowding their house all night long – they need prayers, hymns, counseling, money, food and a manageable group of people.  Neighbours should come and help but retire back to their homes until the next day.  In-town relatives and friends should also do the same unless they are extremely close.  If resources are limited, even the number of people going to the cemetery should be controlled to save on transport.  Excess cash will come in handy for the bereaved family after the funeral.  For funerals where cash is not such a problem I have observed that sometimes the number of available seats on the buses and cars far outstrips the number of people.  Why not have people share vehicles and either do away with the trucks and buses or park some of the cars?  Once in a while you get people who cannot combine or share vehicles because they have a different programme after the church service or burial and that is an exception but more often than not it is just failure to co-ordinate and communicate.  Just think of how much fuel a ten-tonne truck will burn to just carry four people from Avondale to Leopard’s Hill and back when half the cars on the same procession have a maximum of two people in the car?

When it comes to times for celebration we are not any more careful.  The duration of a party is determined by the amount of food and drink and even when they have eaten their fill some party-goers want to eat and drink until the supplies run-out.  To end a party some people simply announce that the drinks have run-out.

For the well-to-do, weddings, kitchen-parties, matebeto and funerals have become a way of showing who is who and some people will go out of their way to borrow just to make sure they surpass all others before them.  Kitchen party gifts bought for certain brides cannot even fit in their one-roomed homes and they never even get to use certain things bought for them such as coffee makers.  Matebetos have become commercialized and turn into big braais.

On the whole, we seem to have problems adjusting our habits to suit the times or circumstances.  In the eighties when the road network was worse than it is now and when you had to book your seat  by UBZ Coach one week prior to your trip, it used to take a whole day to travel from Lusaka to Chingola for instance.  Naturally, you would have to stop and have your lunch half-way through the journey so when the bus stopped you would disembark and buy food.  Now you can travel the same distance in five hours.  People are so conditioned that when the bus stops at certain places they must buy food and you find even for afternoon trips when people have already had their lunch, as long as they have money, they will buy a snack.  This not only makes you poorer but is also not good for health.

It is good to preserve our culture but times are hard and the world is no longer what it used to be.  Morbidity rates have tremendously gone up and we cannot afford to continue to mourn the way we always have.  Let us stick to what is useful but discard what may no longer be.