Red dirt

The woman with sepsis whose baby died, also died yesterday.
She was 17.
I didn't sleep again last night after I heard news of her death. I tried to wrap myself in a protective energy robe. My eyes were twitching. There was a loud thunder storm and rain beat down like a drum on the metal roof. I felt haunted and restless. A spider bit my foot at some point and I spent the rest of the dark night examining my foot and transferring my middle of the night paranoia onto the bite (if this is a poisonous bite how will I know? Will I die? Or maybe have my leg amputated..... one should never over think in the night) , as flashes of lightning allowed me glimpses into light.
Somehow morning came and once again a cold shower and a hot cup of coffee were my best friends.

We attended the burial at 1:00. Walked 4k deep into the bush, hiking up our skirts to avoid puddles, rocks and red ants as her brother led and a man hacked a path with a machete in front of us. The sun beat down and the red dirt stuck to my beading sweat in a patterned film on my skin, the natural lines mirroring the intricate work of a henna tattoo.
I imagined walking this path in labor to get to the hospital. How long it must feel. How the earth stretching out for miles in every direction could induce deep comfort or fear.
We passed corn fields and millet fields and fields and fields of grass until we came to a circle of 75 people. Our girl was wrapped in a cloth in the center. They unwrapped her face so we could see it. She was beautiful. Her eyes shut she looked like she was out of the anguish we have seen her in for the last week. We bent down, said silent prayers, and they lifted her body and placed her into the earth. Four men went down into the hole with her and began to pull the red dirt in with them. As the grave filled, they climbed higher and higher until they were standing on level ground.
Our girl's five mothers sat on a straw mat and watched silently. Her birth mother lay down unable to watch. As soon as the last shovel of dirt was placed on the grave the silence broke. A loud wail went up and suddenly all fifty women were screaming and crying and beating their chests, a communal wail that must have reached reverberated off the empty plains and fields, almost like a clap of thunder. It was impossible not to weep as well the communal permission to grieve felt much larger then just a sadness over this death, it felt like we were weeping together for all of the moments of suffering that led to this one.
Our girls mother got up first and placed her flip flops on the grave and led the procession back out of the bush into the IDP camp.
We followed behind, trembling but also feeling a sense of closure, this story, like so many others, does not end as the dirt covers the body. It lives on, in our living bodies- in the hearts that feel so much, the cheeks that support the tears, the eyes that take it all in, the lips that share the tale, and the ears that listen with compassion... and advocacy.

I have so much to write.