MONKEY'S WEDDING AND A BURIAL

Hello all, @pasaift here. I happen to be participating in the 5 minutes freewrite for today by @mariannewest. The prompt is MONKEY'S WEDDING do you have no idea what freewrite is about? Click Here to find out.

Credit

Before I begin my freewrite for today, I'll like to explain what the phrase "monkey's wedding" means. This phrase is actually of South African origin, it refers to a situation in which there is occurrence of both rainfall and sunshine at the same time. I believe if you didn't know this earlier, yu'd be thinking that it was a wedding for monkeys. Lolz. In Nigeria, this phenomenon is usually regarded as a time when the Elephant is given birth, I actually don't know why. So back to the freewrite.

I remember attending a burial and this monkey's wedding occurred. In Nigeria, you definitely don't want rain falling on your burial. Burials here are quite different from the contemporary western culture burial where it's all black dress and convergence at a cemetery. Here the deceased is actually buried in his own house (compound), probably after a long procession.

This burial was normal, like every other on a Saturday. The weather was quite hot as the sun greeted us with its rays. We began the procession and out of nowhere, it began to rain despite the sun still shinning. I thought that nature actually wanted to weep a little for the loss of a great man, but this was not the case. It was like both rain and sun were in a competition to see who would give in to pressure from the other. The sun got hotter and the rain was still persistent. None of both these forces of nature wanted to give in to each other.

This was a burial, so we couldn't abandon the coffin and scamper towards shelter. So we all continued the procession with our drenched clothes till we got to the house of the deseased where a grave had been dug. Towards arrival at the house, it seemed the sun finally defeated rain. The rain ceased, but we were faced with a new problem. The grave had been flooded with water. Well the burial had to be paused for a while till the water was drained out using a water pump. The burial was eventually sucessful, but lots of stories were told about it. @pasaift