Dial - Season 2 - Episode 67

Episode 4 years ago

Dial - Season 2 - Episode 67

It was quite dark now, and they chanted and beat drums as we moved through a small path at the back of Nana Basomba’s shrine. Many people came along, wailing with distress, as if it were a second funeral for Akos.

Finally, the people set the palanquin-like contraption down.

Nana b0s0mba, holding a lantern, pointed to my right. I followed the line of his pointed finger, and then I gasped!

What he was showing me was a wretched bog! It was a dirty, stinking, muddy place. The grass was almost overgrown. It was filled with debris and smelt strongly of excreta. The area was a muddy slush, both disgusting to the eye and an atrocious enemy of the nose.
I could see crude tombstones rising up at irregular portions of the ground.

“That’s her grave, the one with the green tombstone,” her father whispered with a sob. “That is where my daughter is lying!”
“How could you people do such a dastardly thing to her, to her memory?” I cried with pain. “This is sick!”

“No, Mr. Biko, it is custom!” he said grimly. “If you had done the right thing, she wouldn’t be there now!”
“Please, take me to her,” I said earnestly.
“No, Mr. Biko, we’ve come as far as custom allows,” he said grimly. “We can’t go any further. We only enter that graveyard to dig a new grave, or to bury a new humiliated soul. If you still want to be there, you have to go yourself, or we’ll carry you back to the shrine. It is your choice, please.”