Impact of natural disasters on the traditional rites.

Hello friends.

I had the opportunity to attend the funeral ceremony of the late mother of my university professor. It was about two and a half hour drive. I was to join the professors in the ride, but more lectures turned up so I had to go by a public transport. At was an awesome experience for me to be on this route again after about twelve years. 😂😛

I could not get a good position in the vehicle so I could take some random photos but I saw a lot of things which I kept thinking over .
There is one major fact about this area which is, THE AREA IS ALWAYS AFFECTED BY FLOOD. And in 2022, the flood rate was very high as compared the flood of 2012 as I was told.

a cross section of the professors who attended the funeral of the mother of their colleague.

While going I found out that mangroves were dying and the farmlands were still waterlogged as I asked an elderly woman said that the flood only dried from the roads but their farmlands are still in pool of water. It is a terrible situation, when while what could they do, it's a natural occurrence.

I took selfie when I got to the community.

At the community, we were told that the woman whom we have come to bury died since 2021. Wow 😮, and she has been in the mortuary? They said yes, why? Some narrated:

mama died in December, 2021 and we were coming out of the covid-19, and government fixes dates for funerals and there were more people on the line and a later date was given to us which was some time in August, 2021 and before the date, the flood came and we became homeless .

laying in state

The flood stopped every activity within the community .

The entire Local Government Area became a river, no dry land, the the people were taken to IDP camps for refuge till the flood dried. In my next article I will bring to us photos on level of the flood on the houses of the people. For now let me stay with the funeral.

died 2021, buried 2023

I tried asking how they were able to preserve the corpse during the flood, I was told that the morgue attends called the families to come and evacuate their persons from their morgue and they did, moving it to a nearby state or LGA not affected by the flood.

Funeral in Nigeria is more or less a celebration, eating and drinking and making Merry is part of the way we send our beloved home to be with his/her maker. If you don't follow the system it would be that you did not give the dead person a befitting funeral and by the African Traditional Religion, such a person won't be regarded as an ancestor. This would be a topic for another post .

Any hope ?

Honestly, I can not tell what the Nigerian government is doing to check the flooding crisis which have become a yearly phenomenon. Yearly, people and goods perish the economic development dashed, yet the attention of the government is almost zero to it.

May the soul of Mama Evelyn and the souls of all of the faithfully departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Adieu