Funeral Saving Funds

I was invited to a funeral a couple of days ago. I was kind of curious, but Wellington and I already had plans, so we declined. It seems like funerals are a fairly common occurrence around here and I have no doubt that one of these days, I will be invited to another one.

One of the Self Help Groups that I attended last week actually had a funeral fund. They put a certain amount of money in every month and if any of the members of the group had a funeral, they would take out a certain amount and give it to that member. This is on top of their regular savings program that they do. I don’t know about you and me, but a funeral is the last thing I’m saving for, but the members of that group find it necessary to put money aside every month. It shows what kind of the society that they are living in where death lurks in every corner.

Since much of the AIDs epidemic seems to target the working age group, there are a lot of families that take in orphans if they had some kind of family tie to them and have the means to do so. What I found a little heartwarming, but a little sad was that when an orphan gets taken into the family, he/she automatically got called “son” and “daughter” and “brother” and “sister” to the family that took them in. They were never introduced as, “This is my brother-in-law’s son’s daughter”, but “This is my daughter (period)”. I’ve been told that there’s a big age gap here because of the AIDs epidemic. You see a lot of old grandmothers taking care of little children.