When the cock crowed thrice prior to sunrise in Chikombole village, a majority of people knew that old Gogo Thungulufiyo was already awake. Her fire would be lit in the kitchen hut, her clay pot steaming with porridge made from last year’s maize. But this morning there was no smoke rising from her hut. The air was still, and even dogs were lying quietly as though they too felt something sacred.
Gogo Thungulufiyo had lived long—so long that her children’s children already had children of their own. Her skin was creased bark, her eyes cloudy like the morning mist on the hills, but her mind was sharp as the thorn of an nsatsi tree. But for many months now, she had been uttering strange words. “Ndimwalire kuti ndikapumule,” she would say—Let me die so that I may rest.
They thought it was just the sighing of an old woman tired of living. But those words were like the sound of a distant drumbeat; they had meaning deeper than anyone wanted to hear.
Thungulufiyo had seen too much sorrow. Her husband, Mbenje, died in the drought year when the maize yellowed prior to tasseling. Two of her sons followed—one taken by the waves of Lake Lwasozi in a fishing storm, the other taken by a coughing illness the villagers called “the silent thief.” Her last daughter, Phindano, went to town and never returned. It was said she worked at MARKA- BANGULA RAIL PROJECT, but the letters stopped years ago.
Now, Thungulufiyo lived alone in a hut that leaned to one side like a weary traveller. Her small field yielded her little, and her back could no longer go to the forest to bring firewood. It was only little Bvundika, the daughter of her neighbour, who visited her daily to draw water and sweep the yard.
“Gogo,” Bvundika would say, “why do you always say that you want to die?”
Thungulufiyo would weakly smile, her toothless mouth trembling. “My child,” she would whisper, “the body is a basket. When it gets old, it begins to leak. You repair it once, you repair it twice, but eventually, the water will find its way out.”
Times had changed in Chikombole now. The young people no longer sat around the fire listening to stories of the ancestors. They went to the trading centre to watch television through the window of a soft drink store. Church drums had taken over from the ng’oma; prayers had taken the place of proverbs. Gogo’s words to them were like echoes of a dead language.
One evening, as the sun set behind the hills, Thungulufiyo was outside her hut, staring at the path that led to the graveyard. She remembered the days when there was plenty—laughter of her children, the noise of pestles pounding during harvesting season, the smell of fresh nsima that filled the compound. Now she had nothing but quiet.
That night, Bvundika found her still sitting. “Gogo,” she coaxed, “come inside before the hyenas cry.”
But Thungulufiyo merely said, “Child, I am tired. Even this ground I’m sitting on is heavy. Let me die so I can rest.”
Bvundika, in a fright, ran to call the neighbours. When they came, they saw Thungulufiyo looking upwards towards the sky, her cheeks wet with tears. “Why do you speak of death?” said one of the women.
“Because,” she answered, “I have lived many seasons. I have eaten the fruit of joy and the roots of suffering. Now, my body is a hut whose roof leaks, whose door creaks, and whose fire has gone out. Let me rest.”
They tried to comfort her with Bible verses and hymns, but she only smiled weakly. That night, she slept well and never awoke.
The news spread around the village at dawn. The men gathered with hoes and pangas to dig her grave, and the women cooked food for the mourners. The pastor came with his Bible, though there were elders who muttered, “We shall pour libation as well, for she lived in the days before the new gods came.”
As the coffin—made from borrowed planks—was lowered into the earth, the wind gently swept a sigh across the hills. It was as though the earth itself sighed in relief for a daughter who had long asked for peace. Bvundika wept silently, clutching a small mat that Gogo had woven for her.
Do not cry, child,” said one of the elders. “She did not pass away in pain. She walked home to the ancestors. When an old tree falls, it rests where its roots began.”.
Days turned into weeks, yet Bvundika could not forget her. She continued to sweep the empty yard, leave flowers at the door. One evening, sitting by the fire, she told her mother, “Gogo said the body is a leaking basket when it is old. But I feel her spirit has spilled into us.”
Her mother nodded. “Yes, child. The old die that the young may live and remember. Her rest is now our wisdom.”
And so in Chikombole, a memory of Thungulufiyo’s words began. Whenever one complained of suffering, the elders would say, “Remember Gogo Thungulufiyo—she suffered for her part with quiet dignity.” Whenever a young person was disrespectful to elders, they were told, “There will be a time when you too will say, let me die so that I may rest.”
In the years that followed, her grave was a place of reflection. Passersby on the road would stop, touch the earth, and say, “Rest well, mother of patience.” For though her body had returned to the earth, her words had taken root in the hearts of the living.
As one old man said at a later funeral, “Death is not an ending; it is a long sleep in the shadow of memory. Only those who lived truthfully are at peace.”
And so, in that small Malawian village, Gogo Thungulufiyo’s wish was granted—not in desperation, but in peace. Her sleep was not a surrender to death, but a homecoming to the ancestors who waited under the trees, whispering in the night wind:
‘Sleep well, old mother. You have rested indeed.’
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Image: ChatGPT remixed