So they improvised: they paid the police a Z$40 bribe to avoid the
costs of transporting her body to the mortuary, having a postmortem
examination and obtaining a death certificate. They cut a wardrobe in
half for a coffin and put a mattress beneath her decomposing corpse
when it began leaking fluids. They rented a street vendor's trolley for
another Z$10 and wheeled the makeshift coffin eight miles (12km) to a
patch of common land that has become an unofficial cemetery for
Zimbabwe's poorest. There they paid Z$1 for a plot and laid their
mother to rest – mattress and all – in a hole they dug themselves.
The whole affair cost Z$51 (less than 1p), raised largely through
donations from friends and neighbours, but it was hardly a dignified
send-off. Mrs Potoroya's body was wrapped in old blankets, not the
customary shroud. Barely a dozen mourners attended the burial because
the family could not afford food for a wake. Her headstone will be an
old wooden board.
The manner of her burial has merely compounded her family's grief. I'm
very upset . . . The way she was buried is giving me nightmares, said
her daughter, Memory, 14, who fears that her mother's spirit will be
angry. It's very painful, but when you have no money what can you do?
asked Edisi Masarambani, 74, Mrs Potoroya's grandmother.
Such stories are common in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, where 3,000 people
a week die from Aids alone, life expectancy is the lowest in the world
and 94 per cent are unemployed. It has become a country where millions
can barely afford to live but the cost of dying is even more
prohibitive. For many a death in the family is financially an absolute
disaster, said Oscar Wermter, a Jesuit priest who works in Mbare, one
of Harare's poorest districts, and often receives desperate appeals for
help from the bereaved.
In happier times Zimbabweans clubbed together to form burial societies,
paying monthly dues into a common pot that would finance funerals, but
with saved money halving in value almost daily most have long since
collapsed.
An official told The Times that each month roughly 50 adults and 180
children receive paupers' burials in mass graves at Harare's municipal
Granville cemetery. Father Wermter said that such conduct showed the
depth and enormity of [Zimbabwe's] present disaster . . . Shona culture
believes in the ongoing relationship between the living and the dead,
and not to bury a person properly would cause people to be gripped by
terrible fear that their ancestors might take revenge.
Roadside vendors sell flimsy coffins for Z$50 but even if they had the
money there is another reason why Zimbabweans might hesitate to spend
lavishly nowadays. The graveyards attract thieves. Expensive coffins
have to be covered in concrete so that they are not plundered for their
brass handles. Slabs of plain granite vanish within days. It's
rampant, the owner of a gravestone company said. On the rare occasions
when he sells a tombstone he makes sure that its surfaces are all
covered with inscriptions.