Could We Please Have the Body of Our Dead Father?

Corruption. It’s a word that has come to seem synonymous with the word Africa, but it’s hard to even imagine how bad it is until you see it in real life. The people we work with are people of unlimited honesty and character. We have seen it proven over and over. It is the personal side of Africa we are lucky enough to experience. But the outer world these people have to deal with is something unbelievable, not that our country is a bastion of integrity. But at least our government is not our avowed enemy.I could use as an example our stranded 250 solar lights (not released to us because we refused to pay the bribe). Or I could talk about the container of humanitarian goods that sat in the port in Mombasa for months, while the price demanded to access it went up and up, from $6,000 to $45,000! Or I could talk about the 6 tons of contaminated maize that recently went to market (despite the fact that it could sicken and even kill thousands of people) because someone paid the right price for the deadly contamination to be ignored.But the incident that really blew me away was a small one. I’m sure this one never made it to any newspaper. The likes of it happen every day. We were told this by our friend Mousa, the Area Councilor, an elected official. He said he had spent the previous day in Mombasa trying to get officials to release a dead body. The family was very poor. Their father had become very sick. They had managed to get him to a hospital in Mombasa. He died there. If they wanted to claim his body, they would have to come up with the demanded cash, cash that, of course, they didn’t have.Family ties go deep here. To not be able to bury your loved one on your land is a horrific thing. To leave his body in a hospital is unspeakable. But still, where does money come from when there is simply none of it? When even friends, neighbors, and family have all been bled dry by the same relentless demands of poverty?How does the human spirit continue to breathe when they have to ask, “Could we please have the body of our dead father?”